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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
Yes!!!! SoS is one of Ricochet’s finest thinkers. We should be re-posting his (and others’) solid conservative thinking on a regular basis. An idea does not take root after a single hearing.
Using an analogy from my own business world: One of the reasons a hit song on the radio becomes a hit is because it is played over and over again.
“Some day our country will get serious about immigration” – excellent quote. I seriously worry that the someday will be a day late. I am angry about all of it – I think our law enforcement including the FBI, had been asked to tone it down and discourage profiling – the border agents have been told to pass people through and don’t ask questions – add SOS unsecured server. People have lost their lives because of all this incompetence and self-serving, and O pushing destructive agendas that have divided our country, and our allies effectiveness in being safe.
As we are soon upon the eve of 9/11, where my eyes will once again well up, my stomach tighten and my teeth clench while that day, 15 years ago comes roaring back to memory – not that it ever left. I lived in Boston then and it was overwhelmingly heartbreaking to hear and see all the locals and friends of neighbors and co-workers missing or dead on the news each night for weeks. Firefighters week after week with sad stares holding out their boots to collect for the fallen, blood drives, churches and synagogues filled to standing, I pray never again.
Spengler – keep on writing – keep up the good fight – we need you and your words.
It seems the entire Government has become simply a Progressivism enforcement mechanism.
I used to wonder what the “Gender Studies” majors were going to do with their quarter-million-dollar educations. Now I see they are curriculum writers and enforcement authorities K-20, administrators in every city, county, state and for the Feds, etc.
I read where a SEAL trainer quit when he felt he was no longer training war fighters. He felt his principal job was to insure that all the appropriate diversity, inclusion and harassment workshops had been ticked off the list.
So, to touch on one of the OP’s points, SoS, I suspect it was policy at the FBI to not presumptively target Mateen’s wife initially, as that would have been Islamophobic. When the level of her involvement began to emerge, I suspect some within the upper levels of the FBI said “Whoops, but at least we didn’t violate one of our core missions and principles, which is to fight Islamophobia. That’s the more important issue here.”
Expect Hillary to fill a newly-established position, “Undersecretary of Homeland Security for Islamic Relations” with a Wahhabist cleric.
So is it politicization in the FBI, or just helping to make sure Americans move forward to live more the correct kind of lives.
Well,if you can repeat yourself, I can repeat myself. From my comment on your comment to a Claire Berlinski post( I believe it was “Hedgehog or Fox?”):
“You are Son of Spengler. Because this is not an approved Borg designation, all Ricochetti benefit.”
You really need to post more.:)
Something even deeper is at work here. I don’t really know who shows up at the polls and votes but I venture that the relatively low number who actually need solutions are absent since they are busy. I suspect we have larger numbers who are complacent and comfortable with their present state and are ignorant of facts with regard to the lies and corruption and what this can mean for their future. This goes on because they get their information from the incompetent, superficial and biased media and through internet, television and public event entertainment. This segment is large in numbers, young and probably a broad mixture of voters and non-voters(people who don’t take time to show up to vote). Maybe this has a bearing on why and how Trump has gotten the Republican nomination. I’m speculating, of course, but my speculation answers for me why I support and think it imperative to get Trump elected. Just take a look at who gets locked up for the most minor offenses and who walks away from major crimes.
Alright… What’s going on here? Where’s the part about Trump in this post? How did this post get recommended?
Thank you!
I wish I had said that.
All right… I just said something about Trump. Trump is the candidate who has some potential to compete against Democrats in this environment of lies and corruption where almost all national and international political information is dispensed and absorbed through the visual entertainment industry. He has managed to get some attention from media regarding conditions affecting minorities in cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Baltimore, something no other Republican has been able to do. Democrats spend much energy telling inhabitants of these cities how evil Republicans are and the people there rarely if ever actually meet or get to know a republican. But they do know Trump. He is playing on their field which is troublesome to many traditional and conservative Republicans, but it may be the only field to compete on.
Yes, he really does bring something that the coalition badly needs.
Unreasonable expectations. Any human organization is subject to random failures. The reason “We have to be right all the time but the terrorists only once.”, is a cliche is because it’s true.*
We expect perfection from inherently imperfect institutions.
This is not to excuse incompetence or wrong headed policies. Nor the ethos that causes the Chief of Staff of the US Army to show more concern for the feelings of a minute minority than the dead and wounded of the massacre at Fort Hood.
As we learned post 9/11, the consequences of government security failure is an unsavory mix of smoking ruins, dead citizens and promotions for those responsible for national security.
Maybe COL Jessup was right. We can’t handle the truth.
* Even JohnKerry can regurgitate this line on command.
What?
Am I the only one who thinks Col. Jessup was the good guy in “A Few Good Men”?
Am I the only person who remembers Hilary saying that her long term goal was to introduce a permanent, British style, civil service? IIRC she spoke of introducing university courses for the training of said civil servants. This was when she was traveling around the country trying to sell Hilary-care. It seems as if this has already been achieved by stealth rather than popular consent.
Future (current?) scenario:
FBI: “Mr./Mrs. President, we have this slate of people we’re watching this week. Who do want us to go after?”
POTUS: (mumbles a non-committal response.)
FBI: “Who do you want us not to go after?”
I know a large number of people who do not bother to vote since they do not think it matters. The powers will elite who they want when they want and the vote is just for show. I used to scoff such things but it has become obvious under Obama that the corruption is so bad they are not even bothering to hide it. It may be they are right and the elections in the us is just like the other countries of the world. Rigged to produce the result those in control want.
Congress can’t deal with issues like this and continue with its corporate welfare program. One or the other.
Nice observations.