Going To Political Extremes
– By Ed Kociela –
It was not that long ago that the ultra-far right was a cop’s best friend.
They embraced the long, blue line even as it faced charges of murder in the deaths of black men and women, from Michael Brown to Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Daunte Wright, and so many others.
Last Thursday, a man with a grudge and a head filled with conspiracy theories, twisted political lies, and MAGA delusions attacked an FBI office in Cincinnati to settle a score after agents seized highly classified materials at Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago residence.
At another time in another place, this guy would have been thought of in heroic terms — a military veteran who served in both the U.S. Navy and Florida’s Army National Guard with whom he did a tour of duty in Iraq. Thursday, however, he was just another lunatic with an AR-15 and a nail gun determined to take up arms against the country and Constitution he swore an oath to defend.
While this in itself is disturbing, that concern is heightened by the fact that so many right-wing creepy crawlies are taking his action as a call to arms in response to the FBI carting away 11 boxes of materials from Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago as part of its investigation into the former president possibly violating the Espionage Act. According to documents related to the search, the agents were looking for classified materials ranging from the standard “Confidential,” “Secret,” and “Top Secret” levels to those known as “Special Access” documents, a classification for sensitive compartmentalized documents related to specific programs, some of which involve covert operations. It is alleged that some of the documents could be sensitive documents related to nuclear weapons. The feds are also investigating the possibility that Trump violated the Presidential Records Act, which requires all presidential documents to be preserved and submitted to the National Archives.
As a result, intelligence reports reveal growing domestic terroristic chatter on social media and a rising contempt for U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the FBI in general. Agency Director Christopher Wray, appointed by Trump, by the way, has warned agents to be on alert to the point of keeping their identification badges from public view as an extra measure to keep them safe amid calls to assassinate Garland and take down any and all FBI agents they encounter. Right-wing social media has indicated a desire for a civil war as payback for Trump having his home raided.
All we hear from the former president and his followers is more and more piling on of Trumpaganda.
I don’t like secrecy, don’t feel comfortable with the all-too-frequent lack of transparency in government, from the local to the highest levels of government and its administration.
But, I do understand the need for secrecy regarding national defense and the technology that ensures that. We have amazing, incredible technology at our disposal that the Chinese, the Russians, North Koreans, or anybody else who would do us harm, has no business accessing, and the documentation surrounding that needs our most vigorous protection not only for ourselves but from ourselves, whether president or proletariat.
The thing is, this latest round of legal wrangling places Trump in more legal jeopardy than all of the past allegations put together. It takes a lot to convince a federal judge to sign a search warrant, and once law enforcement gets one, you can just about bet the milk money that something will stick.
Through all of Trump’s legal slalom, I have not been one to jump into the fray, dry washing my hands in anticipation of seeing the former president do the perp walk in prison orange. I reasoned that it would not be good for the nation to go through such an ordeal, whether through impeachment or any of the comparatively minor civil and criminal cases swirling around him.
Violation of the Espionage Act, however, is something else entirely, and, if indeed, he is found guilty, regardless of how tough it would be politically, culturally, or socially, he needs to do time.
This latest round of legal entanglements does one thing, however. It eases some of the burdens of liberals tagged as wild-eyed extremists, at least in comparison.
I mean, is it extreme to take issue with the mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic?
Is it extreme to oppose his inherent racism, as displayed when he defended The Proud Boys, Oathkeepers, and White Supremacists involved in violence during a Unite The Right rally?
Is it extreme to investigate allegations that he tried to get Georgia election officials to change the vote count last presidential election?
Is it extreme to hold him accountable for how his words influenced a gang to attack the Capitol and try to circumvent the Constitutional process of collecting the Electoral College vote?
Is it extreme to investigate why he held onto classified documents in an unsecured safe on an unsecured property?
Look, I’m not saying there has been no extremism from the left, where a good many people have come to loathe anything conservative. But, in all fairness, we on the left have been shaking our heads in wonder as to how Donald Trump could hold so much political power over so many traditional Republicans, how some fine conservative minds have been kicked to the curb because they were not far enough to the right. I mean, would Bob Dole still be acceptable as a conservative icon these days? We saw what happened to such conservative stalwarts as Bob Bennett, Orrin Hatch, Paul Ryan, John Boehner and others who refused to fall in line behind Sarah Palin and Joe The Plumber. While ideologically opposed to them I could at least understand them and respect their traditional conservative positions as being necessary to our political process. As a nation we benefit from the occasional dustups between the parties and political conflict from which good things grow. Now, thanks to rabid partisanship, all that grows is weeds and that is because we have become a nation divided by three — the extreme left and right and a middle ground trying desperately to pull the two sides at least a little closer. Despite their good intentions, they are often regarded as a pariah, an outcast, to many in today’s political environment whose primary job, it seems, is to foment discontent.
Will we ever get it together again?
A lot depends on what they find in those 11 boxes of evidence and what they do with it.
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