Good For No One

No matter how you feel about President Trump, no private citizen should feel good about the raid conducted on his home by the Federal Bureau Of Investigation.

I don’t particularly like the term “weaponizing” when referring to an organization or a department within the government. That is the term being used over and over (and over) by some media outlets to describe how the Department of Justice and the FBI are being used. The media loves using terms like this to sensationalize anything and everything. Normally, I discard terms like this but in this particular case it may be accurate.

Why should private citizens be wary of the FBI and DOJ role in the raid? Because politicians are vengeful people and many of them have questionable ethics and the activities of those governmental organizations, which were sanctioned by the White House, have set a new precedent. I could lay out a laundry list of previous administrations, including cabinet members and family members, that could have warranted a raid like the one at Mar-a-Lago. In reality, those operations were never conducted because it had never been done before and, like the many unwritten rules in baseball, it was something you just didn’t do.

Now the seal has been broken. Pandora’s box has been opened. The unwritten rules have been broken. Politicians being what they are, this does not bode well for opposition to future administrations. No matter what your stance is on guns, abortion, religion, or any other highly controversial topic, the precedent of using a federal law enforcement agency to target their opposition should worry you.

While President Trump is a specific individual, what if the next administration uses the FBI or another agency to target an entire demographic that opposes their views? Not organized and lawful enforcement, but harassment and targeting. Is this what we want from the U.S. Department of Justice? The FBI? Is this what people are cheering for?

You may think this is a stretch. You may think “there is no way that could happen here”. I would offer that when approximately HALF the population supports whatever administration is in power, and cheers them on for acts like the raid at Mar-a-Lago, nothing is out of the realm of possible.

The bottom line is when political parties start “weaponizing” federal law enforcement organizations to enforce their will and target their opposition, it is GOOD FOR NO ONE.