Kash Patel Despises You And Your U.S., Plus

Some photos I like and some music I like

Feb 22, 2025

Distorted Hawaiian and U.S. flags reflected in a pond — It ain’t your flag (credit Weldon Berger)

Kash Patel despises you and your U.S.

Susan Collins is to be congratulated for taking yet another bold stand where it doesn’t count, by voting against obvious serial killer Kash Patel to head the FBI. The senator from Maine joined Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski as the only two Republicans to vote in the negative. You can bet that Collins, at least, knew exactly what the whip count was before she cast her vote.

Anyway, that happened, and we got this guy.

US Senate confirms Kash Patel for a 10-year term to lead the FBI - NewsclickNG — credit FBI

I mean, you know . . . “Heeeeeere’s Kash!”

The FBI has always, always been an enemy of dissent and, often enough, civil liberties. Agents and leaders have been hostile toward Black people, LGBQT+ people, hippies, all manner of minorities, leftists, writers, reporters and publishers—pretty much anybody who doesn’t toe the ‘Murcan line to the satisfaction of the overwhelmingly white, conservative leadership and personnel.

Under Robert Mueller and James Comey, two directors who were once beloved of Democrats, the agency became known for running terrorism stings against homeless, mentally ill and otherwise hapless subjects who were guided by informants into planning horrible and often unattainable crimes against the U.S.

Mueller in particular was also known for the monumental abuse of national security letters on his watch, while Comey brought his puffed-up authoritarian style to the Hoover Building from the Bush fils justice department, where he, along with his FBI predecessor Mueller, had done exactly one good thing, which was enough for Barack Obama to make the epic mistake of appointing Comey to head the agency.

All of this after the years of post-Hoover attempts to rein the agency in on the civil liberties, constitution-shredding front.

And now we get Kash Patel, a bitter, vindictive, paranoid, conspiracy-addled Trump lickspittle with a massive chip on his shoulder. But . . .

The fear from progressives and Democrats is that Patel will radicalize the agency, purge it of its dedicated public servants, and replace them with MAGA lackeys who will weaponize their powers to target Trump’s enemies. But while former FBI officials and civil libertarians who study the agency share that fear, they say it glosses over an important reality: Many at the agency are already on board with Trump.
“The uncomfortable truth here is that Patel wouldn’t have to purge that many people,” says Mike German, a former FBI agent and current senior fellow with the Brennan Center. (German emphasized that he and the Brennan Center take no official position on Patel’s nomination.) “I think an unnervingly large percentage of the agency will be sympathetic to what Patel wants to do. And I think they’d be pretty open about that.”

So yeah, Patel will purge the agency of insufficiently fanatical agents and management—indeed, he started before he even got the job—and target enemies of the state, which is to say enemies of Musk and Trump and Patel, and it’ll be . . . not that much worse than it already is?

That’s certainly understating the case. In conjunction with justice department appointees, the FBI will stop focusing on the few arenas where they’ve been really successful, including the sorts of crimes committed by our assistant president, and by his most vehement supporters. The agency has long recognized right-wing extremists as a leading domestic threat, and has infiltrated all of the major extremist organizations. One can expect that to stop, along with public corruption investigations involving allies and fellow travelers, and both Patel and his boss, the blatantly corrupt Pam Bondi, have flatly stated they’re going after the regime’s mainstream opponents.

All of your ballots are belong to us

The far right has two beefs with the USPS: it successfully competes with companies like UPS and FedEx, and it delivers ballots by mail. I was talking the other day about sorting this <gestures expansively> mess into categories; the fourth category was “all your democracy are belong to us.”

Sorting The Horrors Into Boxes; Plus

Weldon Berger

Feb 19

Sorting The Horrors Into Boxes

Read full story

Well, this is that. Democrats keep talking about the regime getting its comeuppance in the midterms, when we have at this point 619 days between now and then, when millions of ballots will be cast by mail. Trump and minions intend to both privatize the service and use it to steal elections. To think otherwise requires believing that the regime will be satisfied with two years of wrecking the government and will then say, well, we had a good run, let the Democrats start cock-blocking our shit.

Some photos I like

I’ve been waxing nostalgic for both Japan and the general concept of producing photos that are creatively rewarding. Here are a few I’ve been revisiting recently. If you follow me on BlueSky (@weldonberger), you may have seen some of them. You can, I believe, click to enlarge.

Early morning smartphone picture of escalators and storefront at a Japanese food court in a deserted Waikiki

Monochrome photo of Yanaka cemetery in Yanaka, Tokyo, showing two rows of large monuments, some in the shape of people, separated by a paving stone pathway, against a cloud-and-sky background. — A parade of monuments at Yanaka Cemetery in Tokyo, burial place of Tokugawa Yoshinobu, Japan’s last Shogun.

A monochrome winter photo of Yanaka cemetery in Yanaka, Tokyo, the burial place of Japan's last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu. In the foreground are two large monuments, one in the shape of a helmeted man's head and torso on a sturdy pedestal, the other a large, triangular polished stone slab mounted on a pedestal with a small bench in front of it, and engraved in kanji. In the mid background are several bare trees, and in the far background is a large office block. The sky is cloudy and gray. — More large monuments at Yanaka Cemetery

Monochrome image of a street in Higashi-Kanamachi, Tokyo, in winter. To the left foreground is a produce store with an open roll-up door. In the center foreground are a bicyclist, a pedestrian with a shopping bag, and a stooped old man. As the street recedes, we see power lines overhead, store signs and storefronts, and more pedestrians toward the end of the street. — Street scene with pedestrians and an open-air produce market on a winter’s day in Higashi-Kanamachi, Tokyo

Monochrome photo of a crow perched on an old wall in a cemetery, with the crow foregrounded and a number of cemetery monuments blurred in the background. — Also from Yanaka Cemetery, a crow perched on a stone wall with several monuments in the background

I’d kinda rather be in Japan right now.

Music, Sweet Music

North Mississippi All Stars & Anders Osborne, Freedom & Dreams, “Back Together;”

Orchestra Baobab, Mouhamadou Bamba, “Yen Saay;”

Patti Smith, Banga, “April Fool;”

Sarah Vaughn, The Divine Sarah Vaughn, “Imagination”

If you like

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Be well; take care.