Very good article. I honestly can’t think of any good resolution to the situation. I wish Trump could simply dissolve the intelligence services and start over, just using military intelligence and lower-level law enforcement agencies. But what if they refused to be dissolved? I think, unfortunately, that’s what would happen.
The CIA has been a leftist rogue agency for decades and I think has often betrayed US interests by deliberately misinforming presidents and thus shaping their policy. Bush certainly was misinformed by the regarding Iraq, and I think it may even go all the way back to JFK, who I think sincerely wanted to end Communism in Cuba but was betrayed by the CIA.
As for the FBI, I think they had a combination of arrogance (ask any police force in the country that has had to work with them or had a case taken away by them!) and ruthlessness that made them a prime candidate for use towards political ends. I think their politicization really began under Clinton.
But their current open and openly political attack on the executive is a wholly new thing and I too am concerned about how it will end. I think if he fired them, they’d just refuse to go and proclaim that they were now in charge. And the Democrats would support them. Very frightening times, which Taibbi seems to acknowledge even though he’d be on the winning side. The only encouraging thing is that he shows that there are at least a few sane leftists out there.
Taibbi’s going to lose a lot of party invitations. He hates Trump, but he sees what’s going on: a soft coup by the intelligence agencies, in cooperation with the media and scumbag Dems like Nadler, Schiff, and Schumer.
The ongoing coup is bipartisan in nature. It’s going to come out what what a pivotal role Rotten Rod played in the coup. He was only able to do that because of support from the GOP.
Incidentally, I thought this was a brilliant description of the descent of a country into lawlessness:
“The kickoff begins when a key official decides to buck the executive. From that moment, government becomes a high-speed head-counting exercise. Who’s got the power plant, the airport, the police in the capital? How many department chiefs are answering their phones? Who’s writing tonight’s newscast?”