Hardly anyone says this. You can be a critic of the FBI, past and present, and still see the immense danger of a President attacking law enforcement agencies charged w investigating what we have good reason to believe was his criminal behavior &attacks on democratic institutions.
2/ I agree there is some of this at the margins. But it really is the margins. More importantly, it’s one thing to criticize the FBI for violations of civil liberties and other offenses. It’s quite another to criticize it for imperfectly acting as ...
3/ an institutional element of the rule of law in the country over and against a chief executive who very clearly doesn’t respect the concept of the rule of law. Similarly, we have good reasons to maintain vigilance about potential abuses of our intelligence ...
4/ agencies. They have great power. They risk they pose is inherent in the craft. But it’s one thing to criticize them on that basis and another to fight their role grappling with Americans working with foreign powers to subvert the architecture of govt itself.
5/ I’ve probably set these forth in over-wordy phrasings. But these are not difficult distinctions to make. But this seems to be the essence of much anti-anti-Trumpism.
6/ I would further add that it is probably worth seeing the FBI as two fairly distinct institutions, a flawed agency with large and small abuses over the last 45 years or so, and another agency for its first half century or so that was in real ways ...
7/ a criminal agency. Or to put it differently, practiced extra-legal and illegal actions as a matter of standard procedure. Roughly this is during and after the Hoover Era. Of course, there’s no near dividing line. Highly honorable special agents worked ...
8/ during the Hoover era and the opposite have since. But it’s a significant historical dividing line. In any case, all of this is really beside the point. We have a president who is not only dangerously unsuited to the job but one who is ideologically and ...
9/ temperamentally inclined toward the kind of strongman rule we see in a Turkey, Russia, Philippines etc. The first step in securing such rule is always destroying the independence of state institutions and disciplining them to loyalty not to state or ...
10/ constitution but to the person of the strongman. Our institutions are far more robust than those of any of these other states. I have relative confidence that he will not succeed. But it’s quite clear that this is his aim. Confusing this situation ...
11/ with a sort of woke whataboutism of “well, sure Trump ain’t great, but what about conintelpro or what about mosque surveillance” is either disingenuous, ridiculously obtuse or just an example of being so wedded to yr comfortable cast of enemies and...
12/ arguments that yo cannot see what is happening in front of your own face.
