Government is supposed to be of the people, by the people and for the people. What we see more frequently is governmental bureaucracies acting for the benefit of certain politicians and/or highly-political agendas.
Maybe a convenient starting point for our modern “deep state” becoming a weapon rather than an annoyance would be in 2013 with the revelation of the actions of one Lois Lerner. Ms. Lerner used her position at the IRS to either deny tax-exempt status or to string along Tea Party organizations seeking the same by illegally demanding to see their donor lists. Her goal was to kneecap such organizations by preventing their fundraising prior to the 2012 election, which her ultimate boss, Barack Obama, won. Ms. Lerner used her unique position to weaken what might be called pre-MAGA, namely the grassroots Tea Party movement that wanted a more traditional America and politicians whose focus would be on the needs of Americans and not corporations or non-American interests. Ms. Lerner’s story is a sordid one of missing emails, a hard-drive crash, erased backup tapes and a meaningless contempt of Congress citation. She eventually retired and received her government pension. Hilary Clinton over at State was also destroying communication devices and erasing emails under Congressional subpoena.
It was no great surprise when years later an IRS contractor released one of Donald Trump’s tax returns. Rachel Maddow and others had a field day going through a document that should never have been made public. Tax information is considered highly personal and not something that should ever be made public, but Donald Trump as well as others such as billionaire Ken Griffin suddenly found their personal tax information in the public domain, with the only purpose to embarrass them.
The IRS has not been alone in transitioning from a bloated bureaucratic behemoth into a tactical cruise missile directed at its ideological opponents. The Stasi and Gestapo will no doubt set aside a wing for the modern FBI. Remember that it was the FBI that spearheaded the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into nonexistent relations between the incoming Trump administration and Vladimir Putin. Peter Strzok promised his FBI partner that they would have an “insurance policy” against a future President Trump. It is the FBI that has arrested conservative or religious activists in televised, heavy-handed SWAT actions. People who were in the general area of the Capitol, others who prayed at abortion clinics, legal and political associates of Donald Trump and of course the former president himself: all have found themselves having FBI agents for breakfast. As some have pointed out, it’s not just a handful of bad eggs at the top in Washington. The ones arresting the grandmas who walked around the Capitol rotunda or the pastor who prayed silently across from an abortion clinic are part of the problem and are not resigning in protest or refusing their assignments.
The FBI is a division of the Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ has found creative and novel ways not only to indict and harass Donald Trump, but it has this one neat trick that even if Trump and Biden both had governmental documents on their properties, only one will be prosecuted. The Republican Congress has demanded from DOJ the Biden-Hur tapes to know why Biden got a free ride, whereas Trump is being actively prosecuted for holding documents at Mar-O-Lago. The DOJ will not turn over the tapes, because if Biden’s behavior over the last few months is any indicator, the tapes will be a political suicide note for the sitting president. No doubt in those tapes he relates how he fought Goliath and flew the planes with the atomic bombs over Japan and how hard it is going to Stockholm every year to pick up another Nobel Prize. DOJ’s head, Merrick Garland, was just found in contempt of Congress, but—surprise, surprise—the DOJ has declined to open a prosecution of their boss. Somewhere in the deepest recesses of hell, Joseph Stalin and Lavrentiy Beria are taking copious notes.
While other executive departments may not have been aggressive in going after political opponents, they have rewritten their mandates for political purposes. The Pentagon has pushed the trans stuff to the point that the SEALs had to put something out on Twitter for “Pride Month.” Mayor Pete has thrown over $7 billion at fast charging stations and you have more fingers on your hands than he has new chargers. He informed us that interstates were racist. Who knew? The Department of Agriculture has a plan to give money to black farmers--only. Weren’t we told that discrimination based on race, color, or religion is bad?
The Department of Education stands blindsided as antisemitism has exploded at all levels of education—from grade schools through universities. Instead of fighting the scourge of antisemitism and using the power of federal law and the purse to address the growing problem, it opens Title VI files that lead to no punishment for the offending institutions. The department is also overseeing the total destruction of women’s sports, built up over fifty years into great success. Now every middling male athlete can declare that he is a woman and take home all of the hardware. During the Covid pandemic, the CDC (illegally, according to the Supreme Court) determined that renters did not have to pay their rent, while OSHA said that anyone not taking the vax could be fired.
Bureaucracies throughout the world are opaque, slow, difficult, and enervating. But the one thing they should not be is political. Here in Israel, someone who loves Bibi Netanyahu or cannot stand him should be treated equally by the Tax Authority and the Office of Motor Vehicles. In the US, at the top levels of the most powerful departments, political decisions are being made, nearly universally against conservatives, Donald Trump, his associates and supporters. This arrangement cannot stand any longer. A department can be annoying but it cannot be political. Tax returns should never be made public for any American citizen, period. The FBI needs to be free of political consideration in all of its work.
If Donald Trump is once again elected president, he must tame the executive departments. They can no longer be a tool to achieve political or ideological goals at the expense of the American people.