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.
Two things to watch out for if you go down the route of listing the FBI’s bad history:
There’s s playbook of defences for the worst aspects of capitalism and capitalist institutions. If the idea of the good cop has come from media (where else can it have come from? reality certainly didn’t paint the police or secret services in a good light) the idea may also be coupled with the idea that the negatives are rogue actions. It may be hard to argue that the problems are institutional.
Given this, as others have said, it may be better to keep chill relations and talk to your BIL over a drink. No accusations, no antagonism. Just a friendly talk.
One thing that might work is looking at what happens to FBI whistleblowers. This would give you something to say if he thinks he could do something about any bad things if he sees them happen.
Ultimately, you may not be able to persuade him. If that happens and you go in too hard, you might cause a rift in any of the relationships between you and your BIL.
As he is a corporate lawyer, you may want to recommend Grietje Baars, The Corporation, Law, and Capitalism: A Radical Perspective on the Role of Law in the Global Political Economy. There is a PDF floating around the internet. Baars is a commercial lawyer turned Marxist legal academic. This book could be the way in to radicalising your BIL.
Edit: formatting
I have a relative who’s an intellectual property lawyer. His JD thesis was about how Google couldn’t possibly be anything other than evil. When he was in college he said his goal was to help inventors. Now he has a successful firm defending silicon valley patents. I just don’t get some people. I mean he makes loads of money but he’s never been a greedy person.
Thank you. The idea that the FBI has changed from the Bad Old Days is something I have been thinking about. But Hoover’s name is still on the building. And since 9/11, everything that was done to rein in Hoover’s FBI has been rolled back. So many abuses in the name of anti-terrorism