My wife’s sister’s husband has spent a few years as a corporate lawyer for various companies, most recently for some insurance company working to screw other companies out of their coverage. So he tells me “you know, I just don’t like my job, I’m making a ton of money, but I’m not happy, I want to do something meaningful, I want to help people” etc. I’m thinking “oh, okay, right on.” But then my BIL loses me completely when he tells me “so I applied to become and FBI agent and I have already made it pretty far in the process. So an agent might contact you when they do my background check.”
(First of all, I’m not speaking to a fucking FBI pig for nothing. Fuck that. And I told my BIL so: “I will not be speaking to the FBI. If an agent contacts me, that is exactly the entirety of what I will say to them before I hang up the phone or shut the door.” But I bit my tongue when it came to why I felt that way)
The topic didn’t come up again, but I’ll probably see him again in a couple of weeks. And I feel like I need to say something to him, but what? He claims being an FBI agent has been his dream since he was 15. He apparently thinks joining the FBI is a way to help people. He’s tired of looking after rich people’s money and rich corporations’ money (bro what do you think you’ll be doing with the FBI???) I also feel like a big reason he is doing this is to seem cool and masculine and interesting, not out of a genuine desire to help.
What do you guys think? How should I approach it? What specifically should I bring up to demonstrate that the FBI is not the best way to help people? Should I go all out that the FBI is demonstrably evil? Or should I take the approach that it is lame as hell? What alternative path would you suggest to someone with a law degree who says they want to help people?
I’m not trying to attack him or anything. It is lame and has made me lose respect for him, but I’m not trying to lead with that.
Show him this doc on Cointelpro - at one point 25% of the KKK was FBI agents. At a certain point they are in charge of the KKK. https://youtu.be/xAz3JlMK714
Generally speaking tell him that if the FBI is so great at their job why is shit falling to pieces in the country. not to get too conspiratorial, but if they wanted to stop school shootings they would, they actually seem to be grooming them. There is way too much catch and release of people who have a history of targeting poc. When someone targets white people they go to jail immediately.
I am a former lawyer. who wanted to be in the military as a kid. Tell him to take time off of work to DO SOME ACTUAL DUE DILIGENCE. Watching propaganda movies is not how anyone should choose their career… I would know.
I feel for him wrt wanting to contribute and help society. but ask him to reflect on “who is society actually helping at this stage?”
Here are some articles:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/07/fbi-terrorist-informants/
https://news.yahoo.com/fbi-informants-had-bigger-role-213400243.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/19/michigan-governor-kidnap-case-terrorists-fbi-dupes-gretchen-whitmer
https://www.rt.com/usa/fbi-terror-report-plot-365-899/ - If you can get him to read this, it literally has quotes from a Georgetown law professor saying the FBI is entrapping and leading people into escalating most plots they get caught doing.
NYT -https://archive.ph/zJR9V
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/16/fbi-entrapment-fake-terror-plots
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/fbi-entrapment
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-fbi-hatched-some-crazy-terror-plots-2013-3?op=1
Again, not to be overly conspiratorial but I think people underestimate the way in which a strategy of tension is being used in the US.
The entrapment stuff is so fucked up. They aren’t stopping actual terrorist plots, so they are basically faking them and then patting themselves on the back.
Exactly. And it is very easy to imagine that sometimes they are unable to stop the plots they put into motion… or choose not to. There is a real industry around the school shooting stuff. The analytic software alone attracts companies like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silversmith_Capital_Partners (a bain spinoff which invested in the software being used at Uvalde that didn’t prevent the shooting)