• intensely_human@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    No, believe the victim actually, literally, does mean exactly the same thing in spirit as trust but verify. In the two different contexts they both mean:

    • People can lie
    • But with these people, we will act trusting toward them
    • But not abandon our process that checks their claims

    In one case it’s a cultural policy around sexual assault claims, and in the other it’s a NKVD policy around receiving agent field reports, but it is literally (yes I know what the word means) the same policy applied to two different contexts.