The Banality Of Bill Barr

Authored by Thomas J. Farnan via The National Pulse

In June, Attorney General Bill Barr sat for an interview in CNN’s Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and predicted widespread fraud with mail in voting.

He said: “People trying to change the rules to this, to this methodology – which, as a matter of logic, is very open to fraud and coercion – is reckless and dangerous and people are playing with fire.” 

At the time, Barr was the nation’s top law enforcement officer with an obligation to prevent election fraud under a bevy of federal statutes. 

What Barr Could’ve Done.

Maybe an investigation of Silicon Valley billionaires ballot harvesting in black neighborhoods, for starters, and then a warrant for surveillance cameras at counting facilities in Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Atlanta and Detroit, with federal agents on hand to double check the chain of custody of boxes coming through the back door.

Instead, election integrity was preserved with federal investigations to prevent nonexistent seditious activity emanating from dubious white militias. The “reckless and dangerous” mail-in ballot operation the Attorney General warned about was ignored. 

Trump’s political rise is because our institutions no longer work for the common good and instead serve the idiosyncratic preferences of the sclerotic establishment. Picking a bombastic outsider is the only way that 75-million Americans know to tell them to cut it out.

Barr, A Typical Washingtonian Creature.

In private practice, Barr was a highly compensated conduit to power, because being the former Attorney General, or ex-FBI Director, or alum of any office that confers a vendable credential pays big bucks in DC. 

He is sufficiently deluded by beltway noise that he does not realize his pandering to shallow political interests as George H.W. Bush’s Attorney General – for instance by authoring in 1992 The Case for More Incarceration – was simply grist for the outrage mill that perpetuates the swindle.

Based on the musings of General Barr, Senator Joe Biden spearheaded a crime bill in 1993. He sold the bill as a way to take “predators” who were “beyond the pale” off the streets.

Because that’s how Washington works.

Insiders on both sides help one another perform their Kabuki dance as public servants for the next election even as they pocket a Delaware mansion’s worth of foreign money.

H.L. Mencken observed that, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

The Shill Continues.

Barr was appointed AG the second time because he penned a 20-page memo proposing that when the president protests against a ridiculous investigation into whether he colluded with Vladimir Putin to steal an election, he is not obstructing justice.  

You know, like how nobody is suggesting that Joe Biden’s protests against election fraud investigations means he should get indicted for obstruction under 18 U.S. Code CHAPTER 73.

Any first year law student could tell you that. If you were a warm body willing to help Trump escape a frivolous criminal charge, though, you got a promotion from the practice squad straight into the starting lineup.

As Trump’s Attorney General, Barr served the same cadre of Washington insiders as he did the first time, many of whom were still there because the game works so flawlessly.

The Hard Drive From Hell.

Weeks before the 2020 election, a concerned citizen turned over to federal authorities a laptop that had irrefutable evidence of a Biden family operation to sell influence in China, with 10 percent of the take going to “the big guy” – who happened to be the democratic candidate then running for president.

The nation’s intelligence agencies mobilized on behalf of the Biden family to call the concerned citizen a Russian stooge, and the contents of the laptop Russian disinformation.

At the time – we didn’t know it – the Justice Department had been investigating the very activities confirmed in the laptop.

Barr knew, obviously, that the slander against the concerned citizen was just deep state tripe to protect the Bidens.

Yet Barr sat on his hands, kept his mouth shut, and let the whistleblower suffer vicious public attack, because Washington insiders put the establishment first even against the heroic decency of the little guy.

The Russia Lie.

For two years Barr had investigated the greatest political scandal in American history.  

The Washington establishment, along with the FBI, the CIA, and foreign intelligence services, ran protection for the democratic candidate in 2016 by calling embarrassing disclosures about her Russian disinformation – and, when that dirty trick somehow did not get her elected, carrying the hoax into the Trump presidency to cause maximum political damage.

For more on that, please do yourself a favor and read about the sordid scandal in my short ebook, The Russia Lie. I propose in the book that the scam was a political operation to vilify Donald Trump by falsely claiming Russian election interference.

A week after publication, the DNI released notes John Brennan took of a meeting with Barack Obama that confirmed my controversial take. 

Brennan wrote that Hillary Clinton was planning to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.” 

Yeah, but I said it better. 

If someone like me sitting at a desk in Pittsburgh can figure this out, then the Attorney General’s head-in-the-sand failure to expose the lie amounts to an intentional cover-up sourced in deliberate indifference. 

As with the Biden laptop, Barr’s first impulse investigating the investigators was to protect his friends and neighbors in Washington, the Republic be damned.  Some minor flunky at the FBI will go to jail, and everyone else is going to escape to their lucrative cable television deals.  

Because the fix, as always, was in. 

Now What?

The 75-million who voted for Trump feel cheated but they’re not going anywhere. Their ranks will increase as Washington’s Rube Goldberg-ian governance wreaks havoc and the dissatisfied look for an alternative.

Our side should win the next few election cycles. That would be a “will definitely win” except Republican officials in various key states passed permanent mail-in voting laws ostensibly to address the short-term contingencies of a temporary pandemic. 

Yes, the Republican Party is staffed with a bunch of “bilbars” (inventing a word here) at the highest levels.

The “reckless and dangerous playing with fire” will continue, with Republican hopes pinned on electing conscientious candidates even though state elections will be fixed by vote harvesting and back door shenanigans into the foreseeable future.

It is dire but hopeful. Popular movements are best when they overcome even official corruption.    

When Trump wins in 2024, he must avoid hiring swamp dwellers to drain the swamp. Of all the things I’ve written about Trumpism in the last four or so years, my favorite is this – nailed the problem a few months into the presidency.

There’s got to be a law professor in Ohio who actually voted for Trump who can be tapped for the position of Attorney General next time. 

No more bilbars, please. As Hannah Arendt knew, beholden insiders who prefer prestige to principle is the banality of evil.

Oh, and whoever came up with the idea of landing Air Force One and Marine One at small airports to hold rallies, give that person whatever job he or she wants.

It contributed to one of the greatest landslides in American presidential history.