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It Induces Regurgitation
New members may not know me, but once upon a time I was posting twice a week, maybe more. Why have I cut back? Well, I’ve pretty much run out of new things to say. Increasingly my reaction to the news is to want to quote my own posts from a month ago, or a year ago, or two. And that’s just bad form.
But in view of the FBI’s release of their Hillary interview notes — and the revelation that an agency with a reputation for incorruptibility has been utterly politicized — I just can’t help myself. I refer you to this post from August 2015, as the Republican presidential nomination contest was just beginning:
Two competing narratives dominate the 2016 GOP nomination contest. The first stresses competence and experience. Obama, this narrative goes, came to office as a community organizer with no real-world experience and little political experience. He surrounded himself with ignorant young hacks, and has stumbled from one mistake to another. Thus we need to nominate an experienced administrator with a proven record as an executive: no more first-term senators.
The second narrative is that despite his inexperience, Obama has achieved his goals. He surrounded himself with ideologues. His vision and his will were all it took. Experience, according to this narrative, is overrated. We need a candidate who can inspire.
What if both narratives are wrong?
In fact, Obama has not achieved his successes through formal, Constitutional means, but through executive agencies and the courts. Those democratically-unaccountable institutions are comprised of people who share Obama’s vision and have largely been happy to stretch the boundaries of their institutions’ power and the law. The only arena in which Obama has been obliged to persuade, cajole, or fire is defense; even there, a culture of deference to elected civilian authority has made Obama’s job fairly easy. Otherwise, he just rode the Federal Beast in the direction it already wanted to go. He has been able to spend his days golfing, while the media — a cadre of progressive activists — has been there to cheer him on.
It is so demoralizing to see that the rot has spread even as far as the FBI. But then, problems at the FBI were evident as recently as June — and politicians from neither party seemed to care:
Omar Mateen, the Orlando shooter, was under FBI investigation twice in 2013 and 2014. So you’d think the FBI’s ears would have perked up when a member of his own mosque reported suspicions that Mateen was planning an attack. And when Disney reported that they believed he was casing their park for an attack, it’s reasonable to expect that the FBI would have had sufficient leads to stop him, if they had only connected the dots. Ditto when a gun shop owner reported his attempt to buy body armor and bulk ammo. If the FBI had followed up, they probably would have learned some interesting things from the whistleblower at the security firm where Mateen worked.
But the FBI did not follow up, and Mateen killed 49 innocent Americans. Then, a week ago, news emerged that the FBI lost track of Mateen’s wife, who is suspected as an accomplice in the attack. If reports are to be believed, the FBI still has no idea where she is.
Since I’ve already quoted myself twice, I have little to lose by making it a hat trick. From a frustrated post last last September 11:
An investigation into this second 9/11 attack revealed that the Secretary of State had been compromising national security for years by communicating through insecure channels. Those channels were set up in a deliberate effort to evade accountability. Government officials in high places clearly knew about the potential breach and said nothing. The unaccountable bureaucracy has closed ranks behind her and slow-walked the investigation. The investigation has been slowed too by lies, lies, and more lies.
One would expect to find her languishing under house arrest and sporting an ankle bracelet. But astonishingly, that former Secretary of State is the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer for the next presidential election.
This lack of accountability will have consequences. Someday, our country and at least one of its two political parties will get serious about immigration and border security. Let us pray that it happens before the next massive failure, not after.
And with that, friends, I’m out of things to say.
Published in General
Bob Hope repeated himself a lot.
Milton Berle repeated what everyone else said.
It’s the way it works…
Why, if I find myself saying something I haven’t said before–you know, it’s serious, it can wake me up in a heartbeat…
“May I offer a superb Spengler 2015? It’s a particularly good vintage…”
And it is.
I’m as weary of this as you are Son, but worse, I am mystified. We conservatives have long understood that facts are not the powerful things they ought to be, but this amounts to a death wish and I’ve always thought we could rely on a fundamental sense of self-preservation. It appears that we cannot. That is, we can rely upon the bureaucrat’s own sense of what he must do to protect himself, but that’s about as far as it goes. Thanks for reminding us. I guess.
Nice to hear from you @sonofspengler. All good thoughts whether from last year or this.
Hear, hear, SOS! May I offer you an appropriate receptacle? (I know I need one.) Might Uncle Max be about? :-)
It amazes me that the FBI isn’t getting burned to the ground over the Mateen case. His wife went missing about a week after the shooting and they still don’t know where she is.
Sorry. Can’t agree. You can’t improve on the truth.
And frankly, there are times that simply stating ” I told you so ” is eminently satisfying. It quells frustration-induced reflux and reduces the real need for an emesis basin.
Who are you again?
Now you are getting it. Obama is not smart enough or strong enough to do what he has accomplished. All he did was allowed the government loose to devour everything it’s corrupt soul desired. Reagan said it best, “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” But still we the people keep looking for it for solutions.
“And with that, friends, I’m out of things to say.”
Well said truth repeated, remains well said. Thank you SoS
It’s really discouraging to read this.
There is no honor in a den of bureaucrats.
The imagery of Federal Beast is horrifying to me.
Uncle Max is hale and hearty, thank God! He’s willing to entertain questions, but no one asks him anymore.
Then again, he too feels like his past answers still work for the present moment. Like this post from last December, in which a certain sexting former Congresscritter makes a cameo:
http://ricochet.com/ask-uncle-max-schmuck-putz-or-schlong/
What can I say? It should be a bipartisan scandal…. The fact that it isn’t concerns me most of all.
I’m tempted to quote myself some more…
http://ricochet.com/today-in-misguided-counterproductive-onerous-pernicious-federal-regulation/
http://ricochet.com/this-week-in-federal-regulatory-takeover/
And now, what with bans on antibacterial soap and such, and Feds proposing to take over state elections, it’s probably time for a sequel.
Heh. I’m partial to 2014.
It isn’t even a partisan scandal. Why hasn’t FBI Directee Comey been hauled in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to explain who was supposed to be connecting dots?
Worse yet, it’s not the first time. The Boston brothers and San Bernadino. Over and over terrorists turn out to have been on their radar.
Excellent reflective post, SOS.
We are thankfully watching your predicted scenario unfold. Both major parties have lacked any notion of responsibility for decades, so we have an immigration and border savvy applicant for the job, who is ironically using one of those major parties as his vehicle.
The elephant isn’t very happy about being used to transport a rider who talks to us mice. But, he can’t move fast enough or think far enough ahead to take advantage of his new rider’s skills.
Happy Sunday!
I’m glad you put this stuff up again. Paraphrasing C.S.Lewis (who was paraphrasing G. McDonald), we need to be reminded more than we need to be instructed.
The left prevails by endlessly repeating lies, it is necessary for our side to continually reassert and repeat the truth. I’m frustrated by the people, even on our side , who say ,’ yeah , yeah, the media is biased , that’s old news’ . If a man pokes you in the eye every day are they saying at some point you should accept it, get used to it, and stop complaining about it.
Japanese planes approaching Pearl Harbor appeared on radar as well. It’s the response to the knowledge that is the problem. Government can only be preventative by restricting liberty.
On May 22, I submitted a post entitled “Naive on Shady Lake”, in which I advanced the following, now embarrassing in the breadth of its, yes, naivete, in part:
“I am naïve.
“I actually believe there are men and women of honor in public service and that one or more of them will come forward to name –in public-Hillary Rodham Clinton what she really is, a person whose dishonesty, venality and corruption has now reached the level of illegality at which an indictment for numerous Federal felonies (over 2,000, according to the most recent reporting) simply must be recommended by the FBI. I will, right here, go on record as saying that I believe one of those persons of honor is James Comey, Director of the FBI, who will not allow the integrity of the agency he heads to be besmirched by the gutter politics of what is very clearly the sleaziest and most lawless Administration (see, e.g., Lawless, by David E. Bernstein, among many relevant sources on this topic) in American history.”
The descriptive word came from my brother-in-law, who, correctly as it turned out, said that I was hopelessly naive to believe there were still public “servants” who were honest and incorruptible. Your phrase is spot on: “..the rot has spread even as far as the FBI.” I still cannot comprehend how a person can so publicly soil his own good name as Comey did. Naive? Yes.
Son of Spengler, your writing is superb, clear, concise, and very true. Unfortunately, like just about everything we read here and on other sites that speak the truth, it is all preaching to the choir. That is the problem, and it is why you find yourself repeating yourself. No one who doesn’t know and agree is listening. It has been my greatest frustration to listen to people like Ben Shapiro and Andrew Klavin and to realize that, though everything they say is true, no one who really needs to hear it is listening. This is the problem and this is the major frustration. It is as though we are speaking another language unknown to the other side, Truth.
When Lois Lerner skated, and the FBI shrugged as IRS backup drives all failed simultaneously, it was clear to me that the fix was in.
Hundreds of thousands of people work for the government, in uncountable agencies. Each has its own culture. It is a mistake to view “government” as a monolith. Some agencies, like the Census Bureau, manufacture data for political purposes. Others, like BLS, have a well-deserved reputation for honesty, integrity, and professionalism.
Whatever its origins, in recent times the FBI had a reputation as nonpartisan and dedicated to upholding the law. Director Comey, for that matter, had a reputation as a straight shooter, among Democrats and Republicans alike. (A friend I trust who’s a former Assistant US Attorney once told me that if Comey wasn’t concerned, he wasn’t either — and vice versa.)
But organizations can change. The Secret Service was once considered an elite and wholly trustworthy group; then it was incorporated into DHS, and careerism changed the culture. Now we see, transparently, just how politicized the FBI has become.
SoS, I was just thinking that we hadn’t heard from you in a while, or very often. I miss your posts–they are always clear-headed. I don’t know what to think of the FBI, the invisible rule of law, the lies, deceit, ineptness–all of it. And I hate the sense of helplessness and disgust I have every time I pick up the newspaper. I find there are many posts I skip over on Ricochet because I believe they are saying the same thing, over and over again. But I look for gems like yours. Please grace us with your wisdom more often.
I think you were simply wrong to have ever considered it thus. I’ve never lived under that delusion.
Thanks, Susan!