Last Thursday, heads exploded all across the conservative plateau, as evidenced by the fevered spate of X posts. And, no one less than the great hope of the uber-based right pressed the plunger on the detonator. With a single Truth Social post, former President Donald J. Trump turned team “abolish the FBI” into a smoking crater.
A cabal of social media personalities, X Spaces phony-toughsters, and boutique, grievance podcasters were caught in the blast. A confused, smoking, and pantsed rabble left strewn across a landscape created by their own bitter brand of hubris. Thursday’s post littered the rhetorical battlefield with the torn remains of megaphones, which once blared like a soviet era propaganda lorry — “Abolish, dismantle, defund the FBI!”
Here’s the pertinent statement from Trump: “The FBI Headquarters should not be moved to a far away location, but should stay right where it is, in a new and spectacular building…” Ouch! That’s gotta sting.
But, as I’ve pointed out before, this has always been Trump’s position. Trump made the same statements during his presidency, and continues to hold the same position, even in the face of being the victim of the most egregious FBI weaponization and corruption practices.
Why is that? Because Trump knows what all the hucksters don’t know or won’t tell you: our national security interests are not served by dismantling the FBI.
Furthermore, Trump knows, if elected, he’ll have all the authority he needs to fix the problem. At its core, FBI weaponization is a leadership problem, and not just at the FBI. It’s actually downstream of the most significant issue — Democrat control of the White House.
The FBI’s problems became acute during the Obama administration, with the appointment of Eric Holder as the U.S. Attorney General. Though Director Mueller (a Bush appointee) played a major role through the formulation and implementation of deleterious policies that have affected FBI culture, Obama’s policies of radical transformation (to include political prosecutions) were carried out by former FBI Director Comey. The Biden White House has extended those policies, being implemented through the obsequious AG Garland and current FBI Director Wray.
A subcomponent of the weaponization problem are the DEI policies enacted by Biden on his first day in office. These policies of wokester racism are so caustic even Google and Microsoft have moved to divest themselves of this rebranded system of racial quotas with a new identity twist. In short, the effect of DEI policies at the FBI will be to enculturate activism and weaponization.
With the stroke of Trump’s pen, he could end the DEI travesty. Again, leadership is key.
For most of 2023, a growing chorus of voices has heeded the demagoguery, ignoring all rational discussion about actual solutions for the FBI and the wider weaponization crisis. It’s what Mattais Desmet describes in his book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism. The self-described “based” right has fallen prey to a form of mass formation hypnosis — more like psychosis. “Mass formation, as a form of hypnosis, is a phenomenon where individuals are in the grip of the resonance of a voice — the voice of the leader of the crowd.”
The leaders in the crowd should be obvious to even the casual observer. Typically, those of us on the right believe the left is particularly susceptible to “the resonance of a voice.” For the most part, that’s true. The left is, by doctrine, prone to subservience, given the fanatical belief in the beneficence of the state, and the resultant tendency to centralize power. However, the right is vulnerable to the same spirit of totalitarianism when unmoored from its tenets of rational investigation, thoughtfulness, and congenial debate. This decoupling has occurred within the highly pressurized environment surrounding one of the biggest, internal existential threats we face — federal government weaponization.
The debate is further complicated by the disingenuous, whose self interests and emotional immaturities cement them intractably into a politically unviable position as well as a quantifiable threat to national security. The worst of them know this, and have admitted it, yet continue to platform propaganda that is proving to be personally lucrative.
My working theory (having consulted leading professionals and a prominent academic in the Intelligence Community) is that people who are stridently advocating for abolishing the FBI are dupes of foreign powers who work feverishly to diminish America’s counterintelligence capabilities. Wittingly or not, their recklessness aids the agenda of America’s adversaries.
There is simply no excuse, especially for those formerly employed in federal law enforcement, to continue to advocate for the destruction of a mission critical component of America’s national security apparatus — when Trump can fix it.
Social media is rife with school yard taunting, bullying, and snark on this issue, but a clever quip doesn’t make one right. Nor does a following of simpletons, eager to do someone’s digital bidding. Resorting to adolescent taunts in response to reasoned thought seems to be the hallmark of some social media phenoms, who affect a disinterest in engagement statistics, while spending hours egomaniacally generating content.
For example, the misuse of FBI and DOJ resources to investigate soccer moms at school board meetings IS egregious, but is not an effective ward against every opinion that opposes the “abolish” screed.
Thursday was a good day. Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee, validated what I’ve been saying for months. The abolish the FBI narrative is dead on arrival. That’s a good thing for the country. Having observed politics for decades now, I’m never surprised by the self-serving depravity of some, and I’m not surprised by Trump’s smart statement. He’s in the position to know, and he’s making the decision to place the good of the country above his own interests. Trump is many things. Most importantly, he’s a man who loves his country. He’s got my vote. I hope he has yours.
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