So the other day we notice Victor Davis Hanson
Another, more helpful, exegesis, however, is to understand that if we’d seen a Hillary Clinton victory in November 2016, which was supposed to be a sure thing, there would now be no scandals at all.
That is, the current players probably broke laws and committed ethical violations not just because they were assured there would be no consequences but also because they thought they’d be rewarded for their laxity. . . .
If we consider the mentality of government elite careerists, we see that the election-cycle machinations and later indiscretions of Strzok and Page were not liabilities at all. They were good investments. They signaled their loyalty to the incoming administration and that they were worthy of commendation and reward.
Hillary Clinton’s sure victory certainly also explains the likely warping of the FISA courts by FBI careerists seeking to use a suspect dossier to surveille Trump associates — and the apparent requests by Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and others to read surveilled transcripts of Trump associates, unmask names, and leak them to pet reporters. Again, all these insiders were playing the careerist odds. What we view as reprehensible behavior, they at the time considered wise investments that would earn rewards with an ascendant President Hillary Clinton.
(Sigh)
Well, that’s certainly part of it …but only part.
Long time readers will remember that at the time of the 9-11 attacks, while recognizing the need for this kind of ability under the conditions that 9/11 presented, I warned that abuses of our ability to monitor various conversations documents and so on under the umbrella of National Security would certainly increase absent moral people in positions of power within this process including the White House. If nothing else, these events as they have so far been revealed, are examples of precisely that… And more such Revelations are certainly coming.
But this is not quite as simple as politically motivated or career-minded FBI agents putting their own values above those that they swore to uphold.
As J.D. Tuccille observes:
Leaked text messages shared by two romantically involved FBI employees who were involved in the probe into Russian meddling revealed their belief that Trump is “loathsome” and an “idiot.” At the same time, they had a soft spot for his major opponent, Hillary Clinton, noting that they should take it easy in investigating her conduct because “She might be our next president. The last thing you need us going in there loaded for bear’”
So clearly, the absence of the morality, to say nothing of the laws that law enforcement are supposed to subscribe to, has us with these two acting as the Stazi, or perhaps a part of it since we know this corruption goes higher, and is probably wider then what we know of so far. Witness, for example, the Steele dossier and its history. Witness also the number of people resigning over this business. One gets the impression that we’re going to see these people dragged up in either a congressional investigation or a court of law, someplace.
(#ReleaseTheMemo)
Will releasing the information about these abuses damage our ability to collect information on this nation’s enemies?
Quite probably… But I submit that the damage has already been done by those seeking to bypass the Constitution and place Hillary Clinton in the White House for whatever reason.
I submit further that anything short of releasing all the information about who did what when and to whom is going to result in a rising call from everyone in the country to put a halt to monitoring our enemies because certain among us believe that American conservatives are the enemy. The way to put an end to those calls is to work quickly to reestablish the trust required.
Look…
Does anybody doubt that the gang of thugs that tried to falsely blame a YouTube video for the deaths of our ambassadors in Benghazi, the gang that quite certainly fixed their parties primary and probably tried to fix an election with the help of their longtime friends and uranium customers, the Russians, would be guilty also of polluting the nation’s top law enforcement agency?
At this stage I submit that the only way to reestablish Trust in our government, in our law enforcement, and in their processes is to drag those responsible, quite publicly, to the vertical bar Hotel. Let the American people know that the high-sounding words actually mean something.
The first step is to release the memo.
