The FBI’s On The Hot Seat – Again
It’s a funny thing. Back in the sixties and seventies, we were all sure that the FBI WAS a criminal enterprise that spent its time spying on the anti-war movement, planting drugs on black separatists, and generally making nuisances of themselves.
There is no doubt that the FBI fabricated evidence against the Rosenbergs, collected dossiers on everyone from Martin Luther King to Bozo the Clown (literally), tried to destroy Cassius Clay when he adopted Islam and became Mohammad Ali, levied charges against a wide array of innocent parties, by creating a blacklist, and generally did a lot of bad things that no one really believed, although they were true.
Fast forward to 2022 and now we are hearing the same charges being leveled by ultra-far-right apparatchiks with not-so-secret ties to Russia, egged on by a Russian asset who somehow managed to become president of the United States…but the FBI hasn’t changed at all.
What kind of people join the FBI? The pay sucks, relatively speaking. The working conditions are rather horrendous. It takes a real patriot to absorb the kinds of hostility that agents are exposed to.
What kinds of people take jobs like that? Right-wing, conservative patriots.
If the right-wing conservative patriots who dominate the FBI workforce are pressing the attack against Donald Trump, as they obviously are, then there has to be some fire under all that smoke.
In the meantime, in a classic case of a carnivore eating its own young. the MAGA-MAGGOTS are now turning on the very government agency that they once depended upon to advance their agenda.
The worm turns.
08/16/2022 @ 8:44 pm
Three words for the difference in the FBI between then and now:
John Edgar Hoover
08/16/2022 @ 9:07 pm
It really wasn’t J. Edgar. Hoover stocked the FBI with the kinds of people who would do the kinds of things he wanted them to do. It took ten years before the old guard aged out.
08/16/2022 @ 11:44 pm
As recently as 2016, an FBI announcement late in the election cycle about emails that weren’t even on Hillary’s computer but an aide’s may very well have turned the election to Trump.
08/16/2022 @ 11:57 pm
Alan,
J. Edgar Hoover was responsible for what the FBI was at its core and foundation.
He was appointed Director of the Bureau of Investigation in 1924 and was instrumental in founding the Federal Bureau of Investigation which came into being in 1935.
He was the Director of the FBI for 37 years until his death in 1972.
That’s a total of 48 years at the head of the the premier law enforcement entity in this country…
Hoover was responsible for the creation and development of the FBI blacklist, also known as the the FBI Index which carried the names of prominent civil rights leaders and anti-war protesters…
Many would say that were it not for Hoover, there would be no FBI or agency policies, procedures, and protocols…which includes the type of individuals recruited to
become ‘G-Men’.
08/17/2022 @ 12:07 am
Kosh,
Comey’s announcement about the investigation of Clinton’s emails made a difference but Hillary didn’t take the Trump candidacy seriously enough to press her campaign rather than prepare for a coronation.
As far as I’m concerned, Hillary Clinton blew it …BIG TIME!!!
08/17/2022 @ 12:40 am
Watching the 2016 Democratic convention, when Michelle said, “When they go low, we go high,” I turned to Satya and said. “That’s it. We’re going to lose.”
That’s not how the game of politics is played….but the Democrats never seem to grasp that. I am no longer a card-carrying member of the Democratic party. I still vote a straight Democratic ticket but I can’t stand the arrogant stupidity that is rampant in the party, which I saw firsthand as a member of the steering committee of my city’s Democratic club.
But Hillary was over-confident, and her campaign was riddled with doppelgangers who were really working for the Republicans. I forget the specific names now, but I remember writing about it at the time.
She failed to follow Obama’s lead. She refused to listen to Bill Clinton’s warnings. She didn’t count the fucking electoral college votes, concentrating (literally) on the popular vote.
There are six reasons we are where we are: Al Gore stupidity in selecting Joe Lieberman as his running mate, which cost him Tennessee. (Tennessee is one of the most antisemitic states in Union. My father was stationed there during WW2. There was a Jewish family that ran a greeting card store that was very popular with the troops. Someone burned it to the ground, leaving a burning cross as a calling card. The next day, the Jewish soldiers got together and trashed the entire town…under orders from the base commander who, it turned out, was Jewish on his father’s side. Such is Tennessee.)
And then again there’s Ralph Nader, who took away just enough Democratic votes to tip Florida into the Republican party’s hands, with a big assist from the Supreme Court.
In 2016, Jill Stein also played the spoiler. I ran the numbers at the time and it sure looked like Stein had pulled enough votes from Clinton to turn at least two states over.
The final straw was Obama’s inability to get Merrick Garland onto the court, and Ruthie’s refusal to step down when Obama could (possibly) have appointed her successor.
In the meantime, we are stuck with a judiiciary loaded with Trumpers, a 30-to 20 Republican edge in the House delegations, where the next presidential election might be decided,, and a similar edge in the state legislatures, where they have 23 trifectas to 14 Democratic trifectas.
I have friends who keep asking me why I am so negative. Pragmatists are often labelled as negative but one thing about pessimists: if they’re wrong, they’re happy they’re wrong.
So, yeah, Hillary fucked up big time…but she had a LOT of help.
08/17/2022 @ 2:29 pm
Of course Hillary screwed herself but this is about the FBI’s role so I kept it on topic.
08/17/2022 @ 5:01 am
Why do white men hate women so much?
08/17/2022 @ 2:30 pm
Do you include Jewish men in that?
08/17/2022 @ 9:06 am
I don’t know why white men hate women. I don’t know that white men hate women in the first place. In fact, I don’t believe that the generality of white men hate the generality of women but I sure do have an animus toward people – men or women – who have brought us to our present nadir. Ron said that Hillary blew it BIG TIME. I concurred with that opinion. Ron is Black, right? So, is it white men who hate women or white men plus Ron who hate women? I mentioned Al Gore’s stupidity in selecting Joe Lieberman, Ralph Nader’s culpability in helping to put a second Bush in the White House, and Obama’s failure to get Garland onto the High Court as contributing causes for our present dilemma.
08/17/2022 @ 9:58 am
Bitey;
Is that some kind of ‘trick’ question?
08/18/2022 @ 5:44 pm
I suppose it was.
08/18/2022 @ 5:49 pm
That depends, Kosh. First, they may be any ethnicity and also be Jewish, so in the event that they are not, then no. Secondly, they may be of European heritage, but more practicing the white supremacy/privilege than Judaism, or any other faith, even if they are believers. In that case, if they can’t see the moral value of, “when they go low, we go high”, if they see the need to disparage everything that someone like she expresses, or Kamala Harris, or Hillary Clinton…F*K yeah, I begin to wonder. That’s understating it. I begin to arrive at conclusions.
And, my question stands.
08/18/2022 @ 6:02 pm
I can’t answer it because I can’t relate to it. I suppose it’s possible that they feel threatened by female competence and authority, that they view that as some sort of threat to their masculinity.
But culturally among Ashkenaz Jews, at least those who aren’t ultra-orthodox, that hatred would be the exception rather than the rule.
08/18/2022 @ 6:42 pm
In politics, taking the high road rarely goes anywhere other than off a cliff. Right now, the Democratic party has been fractured into factions, each riding its own hobby horse so that we have a bunch of one-issue cliques and then the really over-the-edge people who want to embrace all of those factional beliefs…but no center, no glue to hold the party together.,
In 2016, I made note of the fact that the Republican party platform was clear as glass, easy to understand and therefore twice as terrifying because it was unifying.
The Democratic platform was unreadable, and once you read it, unappealing. You don’t win elections by telling people what you’re going to do. You win by appealing to their baser instincts and then you go out and do what you wanted to do. Elections aren’t won on principles. If they were, Nixon would have lost, Reagan would have lost, and Bush would have lost, not to mention Trump.
I probably believe all the same things yo do, but I am not even interested in my own beliefs. What I am interested in is winning elections. Those who think that coalitions win elections haven’t noticed that many of the members of the Democrtic coalitions hate each other’s guts.
08/18/2022 @ 7:49 pm
Goddammit, the system that allows for a candidate to win the popular vote and lose the office was a system created by WHITE MEN. Oddly, none of those dudes bear mention about why democracy is failing. It’s only because of a Black woman’s speech, and a white woman’s focus as a candidate that managed to get practically every other candidate elected.
Furthermore, if elections are not about principle, if rule of law is not about principle, and if democracy is not about principle, then it is already lost.
08/18/2022 @ 9:39 pm
I am not going to ignore you, but I am not going to continue this conversation. You can think what you will about me but I am not going either defend myself or offer new arguments. You are entitled to your opinions but remember there are always three sides to every argument.
08/18/2022 @ 7:25 pm
I wont say that I disagree with you here, Alan. I’ll just say that you’re fucking wrong. Saying I disagree would be understating it to the point of ridiculousness.
The phrase that Michelle Obama used, which you seem to have such disdain for, is not purely about politics. Your dismissal was broad and disrespectful. The saying refers to dignified, well within the boundaries types of responses, made necessary by an evil, vicious dominant culture.
You’re so casual with your dismissals that you don’t see the racism embedded in them. “There is no doubt that the FBI {fabricated} evidence against the Rosenbergs, and {collected} dossiers on everyone from Martin Luther King to Bozo…”. The easily drawn inference here is that evidence is fake against your people, and merely there to be collected against mine. Set apart from a casual misinterpretation and criticism of Michelle Obama, maybe it is overlooked. However, when you slight everyone but the whites and the Jews, and when you casually dismiss TWO highly respected and valued Black Americans, it is more suspicious. Oh, I forgot. Our current Vice President has drawn your scorn also. She’s too “casual” somehow. All of this looks more like a ‘collected dossier” than “fabricated evidence”, but my pushback on this is a heresy. I don’t subscribe to your religion that Harris, and King, and Obama are less than, so my demand that you give at least equal respect that you give the Rosenbergs will likely go unheeded. But, there it is. Collected.
08/19/2022 @ 5:13 am
I understand. I felt the same way when I read your comment which implied that Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama were the reason why the Democrats lost in 2016. I am learning to look the other way when people say weird things about Martin Luther King Jr. (Yes, I am aware of the dossier kept by J. Edgar Hoover. And yes, as a writer, I expect you to be aware of your juxtaposition of his situation and the way you described the Rosenbergs).
In the last year, I have heard someone try to explain to me that George Floyd was a dangerous criminal and the cops who killed him were doing the right thing. I’ve seen a former President blame the January 6th violence on BLM and Antifa. I watched a nation vilify Hillary Clinton for lots of nothing because they could not stand to see a woman in a position more important than their male whiteness. Several years ago, I watched as a nation called Michelle Obama too radical, and called a common fist bump a “terrorist fist jab”, and at the same time call her too co-opted by her middle class upbringing. She was both a gorilla, and overly educated. Always too hot, or too cold, never just white…er, right.
But, you see. I’m Black. And I am a Democrat. Neither of those are perfect, but they are mine, and I am committed to helping them succeed. I’m not stopping outside, becoming an independent/libertarian (whatever the f*k that is), and lobbing tepid racist criticism at the only people trying to make our society better. I have the privilege of not having privilege. So, I get you. It’s just easier to blame the women and the Black people. I just think that is wrong.
Oh, let me add, our elections are about principle. The party system/method make it necessary to balance power and principle. Everything in our society requires that we balance power and principle. If we abandon principle, we have nothing but might makes right. The collapse of our system is not the result of one group or another failing to pursue or apply power. The collapse we are experiencing is from abandoning our principles.
08/19/2022 @ 1:48 pm
Bitey,
For some reason, JMac came to mind while reading through this.
08/19/2022 @ 6:09 pm
Wow, I must have done something right.
08/20/2022 @ 3:50 pm
I don’t remember who JMac was.
08/21/2022 @ 6:00 am
He is someone who considers racism to be a negative.
08/21/2022 @ 3:50 pm
I still don’t know what that means either.
08/21/2022 @ 8:41 pm
He was someone on Open Salon etc. who vociferously denied his racism although it lacked credibility.
08/22/2022 @ 6:55 am
I obviously remembered the wrong individual.
08/29/2022 @ 9:19 am
JMac wrote a long serial piece of fiction about a character in King David’s time that he published on OS (I don’t remember which one). He was a close friend of James Emmerling and for a while wrote odd fiction with him where they alternated episodes. He is a gifted storyteller in that he could make the mundane seem epic when telling personal stories. He was for a while a television actor. He left because he was taking care of his sick brother in Texas.
As to the main argument here about principle:
There are two aspects to any election:
the product and the sales pitch. It is absolutely true that the sales pitch often has more of an impact than the product itself on the election because the public just isn’t all that conscientiously responsible, which is I’d say in part due to failures of education. We watched this happen in Britain with Brexit. For perhaps our silliest example, see what happened to Howard Dean when he ran for President, where a triumphant scream took him out of an election.
This issue gets really complicated, particularly when one side is way less ethical about its pitches than the other and the press insists on scorekeeping rather than refereeing. And the press absolutely ignores racism even when it’s driving the train. There were just references to Michelle Obama. We saw it in 2012 far greater with her husband where a man could be accused of being a Muslim while being too close to his church pastor at the same time by the same people without being called on it.
In this day and age it is irresponsible not to be careful with your sales pitch if you want to help people. Its extreme necessity is tragic but still present. This is why I will never vote Green. They insist on being political without politics and I don’t vote for the deliberately ineffectual.