Not so secret

se·cret po·lice

ˈsēkrit pəˈlēs

noun

a police force working in secret against a government's political opponents

With an intense desire to understand my surroundings, and an ever growing realization of just how big our planet is, discovering new perspectives of our world has always fascinated me. As a child, the woods and creek near our various homes became foreign lands with undiscovered creatures and I was an explorer chronicling my adventures. The excitement of discovery, curiosity of my surroundings, and comprehension of our world continues today, through a social science lens, more so, my fellow Americans perspectives. This is no easy task!

 Like you, I suspect, when I hear the phrase 'secret police', images of Geheime Staatspolizei enter my imagination, because in my early formative years, it was the history of the Germans or the Soviets who defined the covert, shadowy suppression of dissent. Evil. Germany now defines something else while Putin's Russia seems incapable of shaking the rap. I digress... As the eternal optimist, certainly, and despite the fantasy of Sir Thomas More's Utopia or George Orwell's 1984, the prospect of our leaders being immune to the grip which power holds over mortals, and which has led to the downfall of many, is unrealistic, and still I did not want to believe that America's leadership was corrupt. Did not.

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” 
― George Orwell, 1984

Today we learn more about the Russians interference in our politics and depending upon your source for news you likely heard substantially different views. Some news sources downplayed and trivialized their part in our national conversation while others, with heads on fire and in melodramatic fashion, sensationalized Russia's involvement. All agreed on one topic. A memo purporting that Americans, specifically of a political group, had been spied on and targeted for the purpose of suppression by their own government. Yes, this is the definition of secret police. Again, depending upon your choice, er, source, of news, the degree to which this new discovery was defined, varied greatly. Let me help.

A four page memo described by lawmakers as "shocking", "troubling" and "alarming" is believed to contain information about government surveillance of an opposition party conducted during the Obama administration. It also claims that FBI investigators lied to a federal judge in order to obtain the FISA warrant approving the surveillance. Currently the central figure, in this secret police attempt to undermine the election of President Trump, is FBI Agent Peter Strzok. In July 2016, Agent Strzok was assigned to supervise the FBI investigation into whether the Trump campaign was aiding Russian interference. Interestingly, Strzok was the lead investigator into the Hillary Clinton email investigation and was responsible for changing then FBI Director James Comey's language, in his assessment on Hillary's handling of classified materials, from "grossly negligent" to "extremely careless".

Strzok was eventually 'reassigned' from his supervisory position in Mueller's Trump investigation to a HR job upon the revelation that he was exchanging anti-Trump text messages with an FBI lawyer - the two were allegedly having an affair; geez, Oliver Stone could turn this into a full length spy thriller! - during his time in charge of the investigation into Trump. Additionally, as if this isn't crazy enough, while the DOJ was looking into Strzok's text messages, they discovered 50,000 "missing" text messages. "The Inspector General has been reviewing these texts based on 'allegations that Department or FBI policies or procedures were not followed... and that certain underlying investigative decisions were based on improper considerations'", Attorney General Sessions said.

The missing text messages covered the dates between 12-14-16 and 5-17-17. 

Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel on 5-17-17.

C'mon America! Wake up!

 “Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” 

― George Orwell, 1984

Drain the Swamp!