Numerous reports suggest that police and military ranks contain an unknown number of racists, neo-Nazis, white nationalists, etc. They probably always have. Like other social ills, reporting on them is just better these days. Plus, social media makes them more visible. Torches and white robes aren’t the only giveaway anymore.
It is not surprising, therefore, that as Trumpism urged them crawl out from under their rocks, that we would find them in more places. Dan Gilmore, a National Security Agency contractor, tells Jeff Stein of Daily Beast that a Twitter-like, internal messaging platform run by the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC), “eChirp,” has since 2016 become a “dumpster fire” of hate speech:
“I was the admin of this application and after a couple years, it became a dumpster fire,” Gilmore, a 30-year veteran of Navy and NSA cryptologic systems, wrote Thursday in an extraordinary public post on his own web site. “Professionalism was thrown out the window, and flame wars became routine.”
[…]
“Hate speech was running rampant on our applications,” wrote Gilmore, whose identity and credentials have been vouched for by another Pentagon contractor. “I’m not being hyperbolic. Racist, homophobic, transphobic, Islamaphobic [sic], and misogynistic speech was being posted in many of our applications.”
Even more startling, Gilmore alleges, “there were many employees at CIA, DIA, NSA, and other IC agencies that openly stated that the January 6th terrorist attack on our Capitol was justified.”
Gilmore says that “more than a few government employees at many different IC agencies” grew “concerned about the content that Intelink was allowing to be hosted.”
The NSA (once known jokingly a No Such Agency) did not comment.
Gilmore says he was eventually fired over harassment case in which he was copied on complaints filed with a top IC official.
“I wanted to tell everyone that there is a cancer within the government and when I tried to weed it out, I got fired,” Gilmore wrote. “It was just easier for government management to get rid of me rather than to deal with the underlying issue.”
An anonymous NSA contractor relates that MAGA-types engaged in unprofessional behavior, some serious, kept their jobs while others were terminated for minor infractions. If Donald Trump reaches the Oval Office again, he will bring a new coterie of incompetent loyalists with him, fire whom he pleases, and make that practice official. Ask Marie Yovanovitch how that works.
A friend on an online forum just argued that the way to rebuild faith in government is to restore competence and accountability. We’ve seen accountability slide and corruption metastasize since Ford pardoned Nixon. People know in their guts that the rich get the elevator and the poor get the shaft. They’ve seen banksters crash the economy and draw bonuses even as they put millions of ordinary American families out of their jobs and homes. No clever messaging will counter that even if bickering Democrats could manage it.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren made a credible run for president by promising real reform.
Donald Trump won the presidency by focusing people’s anger on immigrants and minorities. Their enemies may be imaginary, but their anger is real.
People don’t trust and don’t believe in the U.S. not only because they see a Frank Wilhoit double-standard in who’s held accountable and who’s not, but because they feel hung out to dry by their country. Repeatedly. Routinely. Stallone voiced the sentiment at the end of the first Rambo movie in 1982:
John Rambo: I want, what they want, and every other guy who came over here and spilled his guts and gave everything he had, wants! For our country to love us as much as we love it! That’s what I want!
We’ve built a culture in which it is gospel to tell people the military represents the best of America. Leave no one behind. So, why does “all-for one and one-for-all” represent Americans’ highest virtue, a code of honor, inside the base perimeter fence, but set one foot outside and the American ethos is dog-eat-dog, every man for himself, and “fuck you, I’ve got mine”? What kind of country is that? Who wants to live there?
People may boast that they want nothing from the government and for it to stay out of their lives, but that is a conceit born of cynicism and libertarian propaganda. People want to live in an America that has their back.
Maybe give them one. Don’t just promise them.
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