Uncle Ben’s exhortation that “With great power comes great responsibility” seems a quaint notion these days. The idea that power somehow obliges the wielder to serve others, or some ‘greater good’, is a foreign concept in modern politics.
Many of us have suspected as much for a while, and a few examples here and there have seemed to demonstrate the fact, but now it’s official, straight from the FBI. Hillary Clinton’s gross negligence with her classified emails would be an offence if anyone else did it, but not her. The FBI were kind enough to spell it out for us in no uncertain terms:
But it’s not just at the top that power brings immunity. There are a minority of police officers in every western country including Australia who are getting away with violent assault. Click that link and watch the video. An arrest may well have been warranted, but repeated punches to the head of a man lying on the pavement being held by four other cops? Ask yourself how long your gaol sentence would be if you did that to someone…
Often the whistle blowers are punished far more severely than the criminals. And this phenomena of abuse of power, or abuse via ‘process’, extends to every area of government.
Power has long been known to corrupt people, or perhaps if Frank Herbert’s take on the subject is more to your liking, it is
Magnetic to the Corruptible.
In any case, power is one of the stupidest things you can give to someone who wants it.
Once someone has it, they usually get used to it… and want more of it. It could be said to be one of the most addictive things in the world. Even worse, once someone has some power they usually have ample opportunities to misuse their power in order to keep it, and of course to avoid the consequences of that misuse.
The FBI have said what Hillary wouldn’t admit, that she did indeed send and receive classified emails via her home server. They’ve acknowledged that this breaks the law and aught to be punished, but for reasons which cannot be defended legally they’ve decided to give her a free pass, whilst warning that others will not enjoy the same luxury. If this isn’t corruption of the highest order, what is? If this isn’t an abuse of power, what is?
The word ‘Tyranny’ is loaded, and is today usually associated with crackpot conspiracy theories, but in its simplest form a Tyranny is any power that isn’t subject to the laws it imposes on others. With that basic definition in mind, is there any other way to view the FBI’s decision regarding Hillary? Is there any other way to view the way police officers get away with violently assaulting people? Would you or I get away with any of the above?
Let me illustrate this point using the FBI’s own words. Read what they said, and ask if you or I would walk free after this:
Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.
None of these e-mails should have been on any kind of unclassified system, but their presence is especially concerning because all of these e-mails were housed on unclassified personal servers not even supported by full-time security staff, like those found at Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government—or even with a commercial service like Gmail.
With respect to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked. But, given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.
And those are direct quotes from the FBI statement.
But here’s the crux of it:
To be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences. To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions. But that is not what we are deciding now.
As a result, although the Department of Justice makes final decisions on matters like this, we are expressing to Justice our view that no charges are appropriate in this case.
Again, direct quote. The only justification offered by the FBI for not recommending prosecution is that it wasn’t ‘intentional’, even though they say in their own words in that same statement that:
There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those government employees with whom she was corresponding about these matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.
Let me paraphrase this mess for you. The FBI in their own words have said: She should have known better, she’s a grown adult holding a senior government position and handling information that is crucial to national security and to the lives of agents around the world, her server was probably hacked but we wouldn’t know for sure, or by whom, or what secrets were compromised, and if it was anyone else we’d probably recommend prosecution, but it’s Hillary, and she didn’t mean it, so we’ll do nothing about it.
Got that?
It must be good to be a Clinton.
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