by Mustang

Good morning, America — or, as Joey Tribbiani might say, “How you do’in?”  Good, I hope — but I’m not placing any bets.  Recently, our friend Mark alerted us to a recent Rasmussen poll suggesting that Nearly half of Americans see Biden’s FBI as a “personal Gestapo.”  That may seem a bit extreme, except that the Biden Attorney General’s Office recently doubled down on its requirement that the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division open up investigations on parents demanding accountability from their local school boards.  That’s right, folks.  The FBI is less concerned with Moslem extremists than John and Mary Doe, who object to idiotic racial theories being crammed down the gullets of their young, impressionable children.

Where to begin?

I’m no fan of Joe Biden in any capacity, much less the presidency, but I’m not sure it’s fair to think that this is Biden’s FBI.  If this increasingly Gestapo-type federal agency belongs to anyone, it must be Barack Obama who created it.  The same FBI that conspired to bring down the Trump presidency.  Who in America would sign on to such blatantly un-American and patently illegal behaviors?

Well, the truth is that the FBI has been violating our Constitutional Rights almost from its very inception.  And let me say up-front, facts are inconvenient things.  No one in the early 1940s who wasn’t Japanese cared much that the FBI and Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) began a campaign of domestic spying that soon resulted in “no convictions” but the wholesale incarceration of an entire ethnic group.  No one in the land of the free objected to the FBI’s spying and surveillance of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — mainly because they weren’t black.  No one objected to what the FBI did to actress Jean Seaberg, which led to her suicide in 1979.  No one, at least so far, has voiced any loud objections to the treatment of the party-goers on 6 January 2021.

Why is that, exactly?

Let us consider the case of German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984), who was vigorously opposed to communism in the period before World War II.  Initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, he became disillusioned when Germany insisted on the state’s power over that of the people.  Niemöller became the leader of a group of pastors who opposed Hitler.  For his trouble, he ended up in a concentration camp with Jews in 1937 and remained there until 1945.  Niemöller left us with these thoughts:

First, they came for the Communists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Communist

Then they came for the Socialists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Socialist

Then they came for the trade unionists
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a trade unionist

Then they came for the Jews
And I did not speak out
Because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me
But there was no one left
To speak out for me

Today, we face an updated version of the FBI’s domestic intelligence/counterintelligence spy network referred to as COINTELPRO.  No, not against legitimate targets who may be involved in planning massive attacks against our communities, but against those who prefer that the government keep its nose out of our private affairs.  What led us back to this dismal condition in the land of the free was the most un-American law since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 — the very act that led to the development of Nullification Doctrine — the “Patriot Act.”  There is nothing “patriotic” about the Patriot Act.  There is nothing beneficial (to we the people) about the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, either, used to obtain secret warrants against American citizens … including, more recently, a sitting President of the United States.

America’s law enforcement agencies have become “lawbreakers,” which involves illegal wiretaps, break-ins, and just about any dirty trick against their enemies you can imagine.  And perhaps the worst of all, as provocateurs, the entrapment of citizens by infiltrating groups and helping disaffected people plan illegal activities, and then arresting them.

So, America — how you do’in?

Mustang also blogs at Fix Bayonets and Thoughts From Afar0