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Rasmussen poll on attitudes towards the FBI — 24 Comments

1. I would agree with Stone, except I would not use Nazi-era language or allusions, as those allusions reek of hyperbole, and they tend to discredit otherwise salient points about what’s been happening in our USA.

2. “Godwin’s law, short for Godwin’s law (or rule) of Nazi analogies, is an Internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1.”

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

   Just poor form on the part of Roger Stone, in my rarely humble opinion.

3. M J R:

   I don’t think “Gestapo” is quite correct, because the Gestapo was more into murder, and after 1936 was allowed to operate totally without judicial review (the FBI has nominal, although pretty much meaningless, judicial review). But there certainly are parallels, especially conceptual ones:

   Many of the Gestapo employees in the newly established offices were young and highly educated in a wide variety of academic fields and moreover, represented a new generation of National Socialist adherents, who were hard-working, efficient, and prepared to carry the Nazi state forward through the persecution of their political opponents…

   The power of the Gestapo included the use of what was called, Schutzhaft—”protective custody”, a euphemism for the power to imprison people without judicial proceedings. An oddity of the system was that the prisoner had to sign his own Schutzhaftbefehl, an order declaring that the person had requested imprisonment—presumably out of fear of personal harm. In addition, political prisoners throughout Germany—and from 1941, throughout the occupied territories under the Night and Fog Decree (German: Nacht und Nebel)—simply disappeared while in Gestapo custody.

   There’s a great deal more in that article. Wiki sometimes can be a pretty decent source for certain aspects of history, in my opinion. Here’s an interesting section, for example:

   However, the Nazi regime sought to suppress any source of ideology other than its own, and set out to muzzle or crush the churches in the so-called Kirchenkampf. When Church leaders (clergy) voiced their misgiving about the euthanasia program and Nazi racial policies, Hitler intimated that he considered them “traitors to the people” and went so far as to call them “the destroyers of Germany”. The extreme anti-semitism and neo-pagan heresies of the Nazis caused some Christians to outright resist, and Pope Pius XI to issue the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge denouncing Nazism and warning Catholics against joining or supporting the Party. Some pastors, like the Protestant clergyman Dietrich Bonhoeffer, paid for their opposition with their lives.

   In an effort to counter the strength and influence of spiritual resistance, Nazi records reveal that the Gestapo’s Referat B1 monitored the activities of bishops very closely—instructing that agents be set up in every diocese, that the bishops’ reports to the Vatican should be obtained and that the bishops’ areas of activity must be found out. Deans were to be targeted as the “eyes and ears of the bishops” and a “vast network” established to monitor the activities of ordinary clergy: “The importance of this enemy is such that inspectors of security police and of the security service will make this group of people and the questions discussed by them their special concern”.

   In Dachau: The Official History 1933–1945, Paul Berben wrote that clergy were watched closely, and frequently denounced, arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps: “One priest was imprisoned in Dachau for having stated that there were good folk in England too…Others were arrested simply on the basis of being “suspected of activities hostile to the State” or that there was reason to “suppose that his dealings might harm society”. Over 2,700 Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox clergy were imprisoned at Dachau alone.

4. neo (5:15 pm), I do appreciate your response. I appreciate in particular the examples of tyrannical abuse you cite: *no* quarrel here.

   I guess I’m still somewhat in the business of measuring my words in the event that they can be used against me in some potential debate somewhere — that’s maybe a deeper reason why I personally would shy away from using a Nazi allusion.

   I wouldn’t want my word usage to detract from the point I’d be making, even if in your forum here I probably don’t have to burden myself with such a worry. After all my decades spent fighting the Good Fight, for me it’s an ingrained habit by now.

   Your response certainly adds force to the point being made, and I’m quite glad you’re making it. Carry on . . .

5. seeing events in michigan for instance, along with january 6th, it’s more like the okrana, the social revolutionaries armed wing, was headed by azev, an operative
   of the security organ of the czars,

   from san bernardino to parkland and los vegas, (we still don’t what the bureau knew about uvalde, don’t think they were unaware) the victims of epstein, raniere,
   weinstein, nassar, those that come to mind that had justice deferred or denied,

6. I would be willing to alter Stone’s analogy to the FBI resembles the Stasi or the KGB. Maybe that will avoid Godwin’s Law. I might add that I have a daughter who is an FBI agent for 20 years. We avoid politics but she is a far leftist who chastised me last Christmas for “watching Fox News.” Her brother quickly shushed her up and I only replied that I don’t watch TV, which is true. I do watch Tucker Carlson but avoid the rest.

7. Cops of all sorts can get out of hand. That’s why we need outside oversight.

   I’m a supporter of law and order and police in general, but It’s apparent that the FBI and DOJ are in need of oversight. Both agencies have been politicized at the top and I would bet that such politics has influenced a lot of the new hires as well. When people like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page can rise high on the totem pole, you know politics is at play. Same thing at DOJ.

   Don’t defund them. Depoliticize and reform them. If it’s not done, we all know where it leads.

   But then our entire federal government needs to be changed to something better. Here’s why:
   My fellow citizens, we’re living in dark times.

   Inflation is driving up the price of everything, Gas, food, rent, rising mortgage interest and other necessities are causing financial pain for most of us.

   Violent crime is rising in our cities and even invading some suburbs, while Democrats still call for defunding the police, and support soft-on-crime prosecutors.

   Our southern border is wide open with millions of illegal immigrants, drugs, and undiagnosed diseases flooding into our country. Yet, our federal government proclaims the border is secure.

   Our military is losing strength because many have been forced out for not getting vaccinated (with a vaccinee that has proven less than all-protective.) and the unworkable “woke” policies have made it difficult to recruit new soldiers. It seems that most citizens want to fight our enemies, not join social justice programs.

   Our Democrat dominated Congress and the President want to tax and spend even though the spending makes inflation worse and continually raises our national deficit. A classic example is their new, so-called Inflation Reduction Act, which will do nothing to actually reduce inflation.

   Our economy is suffering because the supply chain is broken, and demand exceeds supply for many necessary items we all need. Our federal government has done little to try to get it unblocked.

   We have become too reliant on China and other foreign nations to supply us with goods that we should be manufacturing here. Our federal government is not creating the conditions that would bring such manufacturing back to this country.

   Our federal government has declared war on the fossil fuel industry. They want to replace fossil fuels with solar and wind energy. There’s only one problem. Solar and wind cannot scale up to provide most of our energy. There is no known way to store the energy necessary to pick up the load when these intermittent sources go offline because of no sun or no wind. There are also major environmental problems with wind and solar – rare earth mining, short useful life of solar panels and wind turbines, and their disposal problems. There are only two green energy sources that can realistically replace fossil fuels – nuclear and hydro-electric. Our Democrat leaders will not support these.

   Every aspect of our lives has become politicized. Education, farming, the car you drive, grocery shopping, medical care, TV news, comedy shows, and much more have all been politicized. And the Democrats are now criminalizing their political opposition. Free political speech is endangered and regularly censored on social media. Politics and political controversy are endemic in our society. You can’t escape them. Our culture is over politicized and under attack from anti-American ideas.

   We get the leadership we deserve. When only 60% of voters actually vote in most elections, it means that many voters are discouraged or don’t understand the issues. If we are to have new leadership by politicians that believe in low taxes, sensible government spending, a strong military, energy policies that work, a business climate that attracts manufacturers as well as other types of businesses, a border that defends our sovereignty, and backs law enforcement to reduce crime; we will have to look elsewhere than the Democrat party. This Democrat party under Joe Biden has created these dark times. We can, and must, do better.

8. IMO, Congress has extended the remit of federal law enforcement well beyond where it belongs, has failed in statutory law to properly calibrate the sentencing schedule incorporated into federal statutes; retains in federal criminal procedure the use of grand juries, which are ineffective in screening charges; has provided for no institutional means of disciplining abusive prosecutors and abusive judges, permits the introduction in court of evidence gleaned from agents provacateurs, and maintains as the premier federal police service an agency with a rotten institutional culture.

9. Don’t defund them. Depoliticize and reform them. If it’s not done, we all know where it leads.

   Fire their senior management, fire every bad actor you can locate therein, and break the agency up into little tiny pieces.

10. Mike K on August 19, 2022 at 5:59 pm: “I have a daughter who is an FBI agent for 20 years. We avoid politics but she is a far leftist who chastised me last Christmas for “watching Fox News.” Her brother quickly shushed her up . . . .”

    I suggest that you and your son watch your backs.

    neo: “Wouldn’t that [i.e., Fifty percent (50%) of voters have a favorable impression of the FBI while a majority (53%) of voters now agree with Stone’s statement that there is a group of politicized thugs at the top of the FBI who are using the FBI as Joe Biden‘s personal Gestapo] suggest that not all the people who think the FBI is Biden’s Gestapo disapprove of that situation?”

    Yes

11. We get the leadership we deserve. When only 60% of voters actually vote in most elections, it means that many voters are discouraged or don’t understand the issues. I

    You don’t benefit from high voter turnout. You benefit when a critical mass of the electorate is paying attention and sensitive to good performance and bad performance. The critical mass needs to be large enough to swing an election and that’s all. Part of the problem is that voters of all kinds are very insensitive to performance, because partisan affiliation is an identity marker. Note, this is only half the equation. The other half is that modes of recruitment, retention, and institutional culture serve to attract and retain people in public office who can make satisfactory decisions and respond to feedback. The people voting have to be presented with passable choices. As a political society, we’re a senile old man failing all over the place.

12. Those who view the FBI favorably, indeed the entire federal government are either willfully blind or supporters of a totalitarianism that seeks to impose their ideas upon all Americans.

    And the willfully blind simply don’t want to face their acquiesent support for a now fascist FBI.

    “You know, someone very profoundly once said many years ago that if fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism.”

    “And what is fascism?” Reagan said. “Fascism is private ownership, private enterprise, but total government control and regulation. Well, isn’t this the liberal philosophy?” President Ronald Reagan, in a Dec. 14, 1975 interview with 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace

    Perhaps not entirely then, but certainly that’s the case now…

13. well I look at the results, including exemplars like peter strzok, frankie fig figluizzi, et al, there is an occasional sane official, but not in the current Bureau, the example of chad joy who called out the fraud abetter william allen, and his paramour mary beth kempner, is example,

    look across a whole panoply of division, and they seem at best inept, at worst complicit,

14. M J R:

    My attitude about Nazi comparisons is that they work insofar as they are comparisons to Nazis as an example of tyranny and how it works, including how it consolidates its power in the first place. Those comparisons is quite different from calling someone a Nazi. Nazism was one of the worst tyrannies, but some things about it were typical of and instructive about tyrannies in general, including lesser ones. Other things were particular to the particular awfulness of Nazism.

15. A quarter think Biden’s Gestapo is a dandy idea, and a quarter aren’t paying attention

16. High voter turnout is counterproductive, as long as we have nearly universal suffrage. The same people that graduate high school barely able to read still get to vote.

17. Yes its too many of the ignorant people thaf do vote thats what motor voter was for

18. File this under weaponization (Gestapoization?) of the intellectual class.

    Sam Harriss, scientist, writer and militant atheist, just outed himself as an authoritarian openly supporting subversion of the press and democracy should the Wrong Person, i.e. Donald Trump, threaten to be elected:
    ___________________________

    36:09
    Hunter Biden literally could have had had the corpses of children in his basement. I would not have cared.
    […]
    Taking down the New York Post’s [Hunter Biden laptop article]?

    That’s a Left-wing conspiracy to deny the presidency to Donald Trump. Absolutely it was.

    But I think it was warranted.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDqtFS_Pvcs&t=2165s
    ___________________________

    You can bet that went viral. That’s saying the Quiet Part Out Loud, as Twitchy put it.

    Then Harriss comically attempted to walk it back in a Twitter thread as a misunderstanding.

    https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2022/08/18/sam-harris-clarifies-that-clip-where-he-says-he-wouldnt-have-cared-if-hunter-biden-had-childrens-bodies-in-his-basement/

    No one was having it.

    Harriss isn’t a stupid or evil person. I’ve read some of his stuff. Jordan Peterson even gives Harriss the nod as someone on the left with whom Peterson can have a decent debate.

    Harriss is just conveniently blind to his biases and contradictions.

    I’m pleased Harriss has the consistency and stones to take on Islam — he’s not one of those atheists who will bag on Christianity and Judaism, then say not a word about Islam.

    But Harriss has long struck me as a arrogant smug smart guy, who can question everything except himself.

19. Given the extreme and outrageous treatment of Stone by the FBI , why should he be measured in his description of those who abused him? Especially since many people close to him have also suffered similar abuse.

    He’s a victim. Not some columnist or college professor.

20. I won’t do a line-by-line comparison of this story to the Wikipedia article on the Gestapo, but they sure do look a lot alike.

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/18/the-green-threat-to-the-first-amendment/
    “Freedom of speech must include the freedom to question climate-change policy.”

    It’s never a good sign when a government launches a policy and instantly decrees that criticism of that policy is not allowed. It’s happening in the US right now. This week President Biden signed a bill which, among other things, will pump billions of dollars into the renewable-energy sector. And woe betide the American citizen who queries the bill. Pity the American voter who wonders out loud if it might not be the best idea in the world for an advanced economy like America’s to become increasingly reliant on whimsical wind and solar power. For the Biden administration has already said that ‘seeding doubt’ about renewables is unacceptable, and might even need to be silenced.
    …
    That chilling decree came from Gina McCarthy, the White House’s national climate adviser. In June, as this bill was wending its way through the Senate, Ms McCarthy gave an interview in which she called for a ‘crack down on climate-change misinformation’, as one headline put it.
    There’s nothing new in green types dreaming of silencing their opponents, of course. For decades the eco-movement has cynically branded critics of climate-change alarmism ‘deniers’ and insisted they be deprived of the oxygen of publicity. But what is striking about McCarthy’s authoritarian disdain for ‘climate-change misinformation’ is that she says she wants to chase down not only those who supposedly deny ‘the science’, but also those who question government policy.

    McCarthy says denialism has moved on. ‘Now it’s not so much denying the problem [of climate change]’, she says; rather, it’s ‘seeding doubt about the costs associated with [green energy] and whether they work or not’. So we’ve gone from science denialism to… what? Political denialism? Policy denialism?
    …

    Welcome to the era of Gina McCarthyism, where officials insist that certain ideas are just too ‘dangerous’ for public life. It is really worth thinking about the magnitude of McCarthy’s intervention. As the bill that Biden signed this week was being pored over and discussed by the American people’s elected representatives, this official from the White House was saying that any questioning of ‘clean energy’ policy is equally dangerous to outright climate-change denial
    ….
    In problematising discussion about a particular policy, at the exact time that that policy was being weighed up by elected representatives, McCarthy was enforcing a chilling effect on the democratic process.
    McCarthy’s call on Big Tech to ‘jump in’ raises serious questions about the circumvention of the First Amendment. .
    ..
    The social-media overlords are increasingly doing the censorious bidding of US government officials – intervening in debates on everything from Covid to ‘clean energy’. Perhaps those conservative scholars who say Big Tech companies behave as ‘state actors’ when they censor at the behest of government, and therefore should be sued under the First Amendment, are right.

    It isn’t just Gina McCarthy. Many in the green elite now openly talk about ‘policy denial’. ‘Policy denial’ is when someone accepts that climate change is happening but ‘[denies] that there’s anything that can or should be done’, says one observer.
    …
    This is a blatant effort to demonise criticism, scepticism and debate, which should be the lifeblood of every democracy worth the name.

    Eco-censorship has always been fundamentally political. Even when greens said they were only going after people who question ‘the science’, really it was an ideological clampdown on heretics who dare to question the hysterical claims and harmful policies of the climate-change lobby. Now, however, it’s clearer than ever that this is political censorship.
    …
    The entire idea of advanced societies turning to unpredictable, unreliable renewables is questionable. And people must be free to say so. It isn’t ‘denialism’ to question government policy – it’s democracy.

    Change my mind.

21. Gina McCarthyism gets us through stages I-VIII “Persecution.”
    https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages

    Notice how far along the Democrats (and complicit Republicans, whether you call it the Deep State or the Uniparty) got in the shutting down of churches and other dissenters to the Covid dogma.
    And, if the J6 gulag doesn’t instantiate “the persecution of their political opponents,” I’m not sure what would qualify.

    It’s hard to see how the Democrats can move on to IX “Extermination” as an overt policy, but shutting down the fossil fuels industry, ham-stringing truckers, out-sourcing food and pharma to enemy nations, deliberately creating inflation, and importing more impecunious economic & political refugees than our welfare system can handle is looking like it will be pretty effective as a default this winter.

22. IIRC Gina McCarthy was an early EPA adopter of the policy of using non-governmental email systems to avoid compliance with federal regulations about official records and compliance with FOIA. As well as the refined policy of shady collusion with Green lawfare; EPA being sued by Green NGOs and caving to their demands. Corrupt and above the law, but for the good of the Planet!

23. neo (8:37 pm), I hear you (so to speak).

    You write, “Those comparisons are quite different from calling someone a Nazi.” Yes, they are, and verily. I certainly try to avoid calling someone a Nazi, unless it is literally so. (I am not aware that I was even hinting at advocating doing that, otherwise. I am very probably misunderstanding you.)

    Truly, “some things about it [Nazism] were typical of and instructive about tyrannies in general, including lesser ones.” If I’m conversing with someone who is persuadable, or even moveable a millimeter or three, I find that avoiding Nazi allusions works for me. Your mileage may vary, and evidently does. Shall we agree to disagree?

    Live long and prosper, friend . . .

24. My intent in posting the criticism of our federal government, was as a way to get feedback. I intend to send this to several newspapers, all my e-mail correspondents, and any other place I can get it published before the November election. I realize that voter turnout is key to winning elections, but I agree that those 40% or so who don’t vote are probably uninformed and would not vote wisely. So, I’m dropping the call for a higher percentage of voters to turn out. Thanks for the feedback by all who commented.

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