When I was a kid, back in the 50s and 60s, television depicted the FBI in a relentlessly positive light: the J. Edgar Hoover-approved The Untouchables from the late-50s. Television carried on the joke with The F.B.I, in the 60s, the 80s and 90s collection of The F.B.I. Files, FBI: Most Wanted, FBI: International, FBI: The Untold Stories, Criminal Minds, Numb3rs, and the farce is still playing with the current CBS FBI show, In those fictional fairy tales, we’re led to believe that FBI agents are relentlessly protecting the public from serial killers, terrorists, bank robbers, and general purpose bad guys. The delusion got played to its ultimate farcical denouement when the nation sat on the edges of 320 million chairs waiting for ex-FBI Robert Mueller to uncover and prosecute Trump for being a Russian asset and FBI Director James Comey to bring the Republican band of traitors to trial. Of course, none of that ever happened, even though the evidence was overwhelming.
In sad retrospect, it was pretty funny watching (and being one) liberals and even 60s anti-establishment types wildly hoping that the FBI would overcome it’s long history of corruption, right wing politics, being the federal strongarm for big business and bad government, and relentless incompetence and, finally, put Trump in jail where he has belonged for at least 50 years. A lot of that pipedream had to have been based on generations of television and movie propaganda misleading the public into believing the FBI was a protector of “law and order.” The opposite is, generally, the truth.
The origin story of the FBI was J. Edgar Hoover’s scheme to create an internal federal police force to keep politicians in line and to protect the interests of big business and idle wealth. Hoover turned the FBI into a collection of mobsters who hunted down, sometimes murdered, threatened, and prosecuted anyone who smelled even a little bit like a small-“D” democrat. There have been few moments since 1924 when the FBI could make any kind of claim to being on the side or working people, democracy, or even the United States of America.
Competence-wise, the FBI has been made fools by WWII Germany, Cuba, Russia, Iran, and practically every other enemy of the United States over the past 100 years. While there have been a few notable FBI agents who managed to do their jobs, in spite of a lack of leadership, most are perfectly suited to the job Trump has them doing now: intimidating US citizens and assisting ICE in terrorizing the country. The agency’s vaunted “high standards” for applicants has long been little more than window-dressing, but today is is less than that. As agents who actually investigated Trump and his minions for treason, corruption, and other crimes are being purged from the FBI, those positions are being filled by people who should be behind bars, not pretending to be law enforcement. Along with the dilution of the military leadership, the NSA and CIA, the U.S. Marshalls, and even the Secret Service, the nation has never been this unprotected and exposed. It’s hard to see a way back from this and I don’t expect it to improve in my lifetime.
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