The events surrounding the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump once again show that supposedly open, democratic governments like to do most of their business away from the prying eyes of the electorate.
In our busy lives, we often forget the incredible power we have in our hands and our pockets. Our wireless devices have access to all of human knowledge, in every language, from every period and on every subject. The days of schlepping to the local library or looking through a wildly-outdated encyclopedia to know the exact tonnage of a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier are gone. A few clicks on a piece of glass and you’ve got it.
The problem with the current state of affairs is that not all information is equal. We like to think that news articles, Wikipedia entries and the like are the pinnacle of objectivity, but they are not. I have never wasted my time trying to be an editor for anything on Wikipedia—except for one time. I looked up the entry for arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti. Other than not performing in the Vienna Boys Choir, he was described as a saint in every way. As I had indictments of terrorists involved in an attack in which my son and I were injured, I felt it my duty to add to his entry that he paid the terror cell $600 the day before the attack in 2002. Satisfied, I moved over to check the sports websites. When I came back the next day, my entry—based fully on confessions of Barghouti’s confederates—was scrubbed from the site by a super-editor. So yes, we have lots of information, but one always has to be skeptical as to its accuracy.
While we have a great deal of information, we by no means have all of the information. Here in Israel, the government still hides files relating to the organized kidnapping of Jewish Yemenite children who were given to Ashkenazic families 80 years ago. The government files relating to Covid have been sealed for 40 years, hoping that by that time everyone will forget about that challenging time or will have enough vaccine in them to be incapable of asking questions. The same is true in the US, whether the subject is the assassination of John F. Kennedy or the specifics of Jeffrey Epstein’s clients. There is some information that Democracy(R) feels is too hot to be released to the poor citizens who are supposed to be in charge of democratic governments. It’s in your best interest not to know. Just watch America’s Got Talent instead of asking questions.
The attempt on Donald Trump’s life is still fresh, but there are already a bevy of questions that should be answered but in true Washington fashion probably will not.
*If a policeman confronted the shooter on the roof, why didn’t the policeman at least shoot in the air to warn the Secret Service that there was a shooter in proximity to the president?
*Were resources from Trump sent to protect Jill Biden who was in Pittsburgh?
*Did Trump’s people ask for more resources and were they denied by DHS?
*Did the counter-sniper ask for permission to shoot Thomas Matthew Crooks prior to him opening fire? Was he denied?
*Were authorities aware of the shooter half-an-hour before the shooting? Why would a counter-sniper team be inside the same building where the shooter was on the roof?
*Why was Trump taken off the stage fully exposed to the crowd, when no one at that time could know that there was no additional threat?
According to the democracy courses taught in grade school, there is supposed to be an investigation and an honest presentation of all information, including contradictory details as well as opinions that may or may not be verified. But investigations and committees involve human beings, and those human beings have their own personal agendas. If the Secret Service did spirit away agents to a Jill Biden event, those in charge would never want to admit the same. If the policeman who went to the roof and then went back down the ladder is afraid that he will be thrown in with the police who refused to save children being killed in a school shooting, he may invent a story of his gun being jammed or the like. The problem we have in our modern Western democracies is that the parties who are supposed to do the honest investigating are the same ones who have the most interest in the pertinent details never seeing the light of day.
The FBI is in charge of looking into what happened in Butler, Pa. Isn’t that the same FBI that tried to frame Donald Trump as a Russian stooge? The same FBI whose leaders leaked classified material to the press to harm the same Donald Trump? So, let’s say that there is something in the investigation that shows a failure of communication or action by the FBI, Secret Service or other governmental behemoth: will they let us know their findings? Will they simply make the information go away, hold it back until after the election, or make it top secret so that Trump’s grandchildren might see it in 2072?
Democracies are no better, honest, or faithful than their leaders. And just as those leaders have interests and agendas, so too do the departments, offices, and employees who report to them. Nobody likes to be embarrassed. But if we cannot engage in honest discussions after-action of what went wrong on 9/11 or with the Covid response or in the fields of Pennsylvania, how can we progress? How can we learn from our mistakes and failings, if their details are either hidden or locked away for a generation or two? There was a great cartoon after the Challenger disaster. It showed the “O-Ring Committee” in which all of the parties to the accident form a circle, and each one points to and blames the one next to it for the decision to fly the Space Shuttle and lose the crew. The Secret Service will not take the fall. They will blame the local police on whom they supposedly dumped the responsibility for the rooftop. The local police will say that they were undermanned or that they were not given communication equipment to speak with the Secret Service. Eventually, they will pawn the responsibility onto the Trump campaign for selecting the site and not taking into account a perfect shooting position. The questions I listed above are based on some online comments that may be right or wrong. But the likelihood of us getting the answers to those questions is vanishingly small. Democracies don’t want you to know how awfully they perform. Freedom demands responsibility. Staying in power demands hiding the bad stuff.