15-10-2020, 08:01 PM
<p><h1 class="entry-title">Not Just the Same Old Reasons to Hold Your Nose and Vote for Biden</h1>
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<div class="td-post-author-name"><div class="td-author-by">By</div> <a href="https://covertactionmagazine.com/author/stephenmbrown/">Steve Brown</a><div class="td-author-line"> - </div> </div> <span class="td-post-date"><time class="entry-date updated td-module-date" datetime="2020-10-15T12:58:59-04:00">October 15, 2020</time></span> </div>
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<figure class="wp-block-image alignfull size-large"><img data-attachment-id="8992" data-permalink="https://covertactionmagazine.com/2020/10/15/not-just-the-same-old-reasons-to-hold-your-nose-and-vote-for-biden/image-3/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/image.png?fit=936%2C592&ssl=1" data-orig-size="936,592" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="image" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/image.png?fit=300%2C190&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/image.png?fit=696%2C440&ssl=1" src="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/image.png?resize=696%2C440&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-8992 td-animation-stack-type0-2" data-recalc-dims="1" width="696" height="440"><figcaption>[Source: Steve Brown]</figcaption></figure>
<p class="has-drop-cap">By now you have probably been told innumerable
times by friends, colleagues and progressive commentators why holding
your nose and voting for Joe Biden is absolutely necessary to save
America from four more destructive years of Donald Trump.</p>
<p>I agree with all those voices. And I endorse all their reasons—which I
will not repeat here, because you are no doubt more than familiar with
them.</p>
<p>But here are some reasons you may not be familiar with—which I offer
in accordance with CovertAction Magazine’s mission to expose and condemn
illicit covert action by governments and corporate interests that
subvert democracy and destroy civil liberties.</p>
<p>I am under no illusion that a Biden administration would rein in the
dangerous and destructive power of America’s 17 (acknowledged)
government intelligence agencies, or discourage those agencies from
colluding with the many other secret intelligence agencies run by
corporate interests and/or foreign governments.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, no matter how dangerous our intelligence agencies would
continue to be under Biden—as they were under Obama and Clinton—they
would be far more so under Trump. This may seem counter-intuitive, since
Trump has famously been at war with the intelligence community—and with
good reason, since, for its own unsavory reasons, the intelligence
community has been trying to discredit and undermine Trump ever since he
took office.</p>
<p>However, it is important to understand that Trump’s public war with the intelligence community is not a war against the <em>existence</em> of an intelligence community, <em>per se</em>, but only with an intelligence community <em>that Trump cannot control and which has not sworn unswerving fealty to him personally</em>.</p>
<p>Therefore, if re-elected, Trump will move swiftly to rectify that
situation by purging all 17 intelligence agencies and re-staffing them
with cronies and collaborators who will be loyal—not to America or to
the Constitution—but to him personally.</p>
<p>Trump has already done this, brazenly and ruthlessly, at every other
government agency under his legal control (and at some that are not). If
his past actions are any indication (and why should they not be?),
Trump will do the same at the intelligence agencies. He will then
proceed to use them for his own purposes (or whims) even more
extensively, more brutally, more illegally than anything we have ever
experienced in this country. He has already increased the use of covert
military mercenaries, and has escalated the drone war at the very same
time he has reduced Congressional oversight and public transparency
surrounding those strikes.</p>
<p>Ironically, Trump might not even have to bother reconstructing the
intelligence agencies in his image. His “shadow advisor,” Erik Prince
(CEO of Blackwater, the “mercenaries-for-hire” corporation whose
security guards murdered 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007), has a better idea.
According to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/11/05/erik-prince-trump-ukraine-china/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Intercept</a>,
Prince offered to build Trump a private covert action army—his own
personal CIA—trained, armed, totally loyal, and more than willing to
execute (in both senses of the word) any and all orders from their
supreme commander-in-chief.</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Could one conjure up a more chilling prospect than a private army of Trump Sturmtruppen?</p></blockquote>
<figure class="wp-block-image alignfull size-large"><img data-attachment-id="8995" data-permalink="https://covertactionmagazine.com/2020/10/15/not-just-the-same-old-reasons-to-hold-your-nose-and-vote-for-biden/image-2-2/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/image-2.png?fit=936%2C528&ssl=1" data-orig-size="936,528" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="image-2" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/image-2.png?fit=300%2C169&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/image-2.png?fit=696%2C393&ssl=1" src="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/image-2.png?resize=696%2C393&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-8995 td-animation-stack-type0-2" data-recalc-dims="1" width="696" height="393"><figcaption>The drone war has been expanded under Trump, [Source: <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/trump-war-terror-drones/567218/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">theatlantic.com</a>]</figcaption></figure>
<p>With Trump in control of the White House and possibly Congress as
well—and backed by a judiciary that is now majorly filled with judges
vetted by the right-wing Federalist Society, from the lowest state and
federal courts all the way up to SCOTUS—we can expect an onslaught
against democratic norms and civil liberties that may approach those of
Savak, Stasi, or the KGB. This may seem inconceivable to many Americans,
who fervently believe that “It Can’t Happen Here”—except that, in a
Trump second term, <em>it can</em>.</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>As abusive, as undemocratic—and as
illegal—as covert activities have been under every Democratic president
from Truman, Kennedy and Johnson to Carter, Clinton and (arguably the
most abusive) Obama, those abuses would be even worse under a second
Trump administration.</p></blockquote>
<p>At least, under a Biden administration, we will be able to anticipate
(albeit rarely) the one feature that has been totally absent during
Trump’s first term, and which will certainly not miraculously emerge
during his second. That feature—however embarrassingly feeble a reed it
may be to clutch at in a supposedly democratic society—is the barely
vestigial capacity of some Democratic politicians … <em>to be</em> <em>shamed. </em>Not necessarily shamed into doing something Totally Good—but perhaps, sometimes, into doing what might not be Totally Horrible.</p>
<p>Not a rousing endorsement of Biden, to be sure. But imagine, if you
will, how much more feared the CIA might be under a second Trump
administration if, as he will surely do, he appointed directors who
embodied—not merely the amorality of its current director, Gina
Haspel—but directors who also nurse a ferocious personal loyalty to
Trump, as well as a total willingness to lie, cheat, and implement
without question any and all of his directives, no matter how base or
illegal they might be. Imagine, that is, our 17 intelligence agencies
staffed and led by Trump zealots in the mold of Rudy Giuliani, Stephen
Miller, Kellyanne Conway, John Bolton, Steve Bannon, Michael Cohen,
Roger Stone, Mike Pompeo, Steven Mnuchin, Paul Manafort, Louis DeJoy,
and (<em>pessimus pessimus</em>) Bill Barr.</p>
<p>I emphasize that I am under no illusions about Joe Biden and the crew
of war hawks and Wall Street predators he has already assembled to
advise him, should he win in November. This is a strictly practical, and
shamelessly naked, plea to vote for the lesser of two evils, despite
the commonly repeated protest that “the lesser of two evils is still
evil.” For as Princeton University Professor of Bioethics, Peter Singer,
puts it,</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote is-style-default"></figure><blockquote style=""><p>if
the only way to prevent something very bad from happening is to do
something which would itself be bad—but not as bad as the very bad thing
that you’re trying to prevent from happening—then you’re justified in
doing the lesser evil rather than allowing the greater evil to occur.</p></blockquote><figure class="wp-block-pullquote is-style-default"></figure>
<p>So I repeat, however reluctantly: <strong><em>Please hold your nose and vote for Joe Biden</em></strong>.
Doing so need not cripple us, nor stop us immediately after the
election from renewing our efforts to educate and organize against
everything that Joe Biden and his administration stand for. </p><br><span id="sceditor-end-marker" style="line-height: 0; display: none;" class="sceditor-selection sceditor-ignore"> </span><span id="sceditor-start-marker" style="line-height: 0; display: none;" class="sceditor-selection sceditor-ignore"> </span><br></p><br>
<div class="td-module-meta-info">
<div class="td-post-author-name"><div class="td-author-by">By</div> <a href="https://covertactionmagazine.com/author/stephenmbrown/">Steve Brown</a><div class="td-author-line"> - </div> </div> <span class="td-post-date"><time class="entry-date updated td-module-date" datetime="2020-10-15T12:58:59-04:00">October 15, 2020</time></span> </div>
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<figure class="wp-block-image alignfull size-large"><img data-attachment-id="8992" data-permalink="https://covertactionmagazine.com/2020/10/15/not-just-the-same-old-reasons-to-hold-your-nose-and-vote-for-biden/image-3/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/image.png?fit=936%2C592&ssl=1" data-orig-size="936,592" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="image" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/image.png?fit=300%2C190&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/image.png?fit=696%2C440&ssl=1" src="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/image.png?resize=696%2C440&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-8992 td-animation-stack-type0-2" data-recalc-dims="1" width="696" height="440"><figcaption>[Source: Steve Brown]</figcaption></figure>
<p class="has-drop-cap">By now you have probably been told innumerable
times by friends, colleagues and progressive commentators why holding
your nose and voting for Joe Biden is absolutely necessary to save
America from four more destructive years of Donald Trump.</p>
<p>I agree with all those voices. And I endorse all their reasons—which I
will not repeat here, because you are no doubt more than familiar with
them.</p>
<p>But here are some reasons you may not be familiar with—which I offer
in accordance with CovertAction Magazine’s mission to expose and condemn
illicit covert action by governments and corporate interests that
subvert democracy and destroy civil liberties.</p>
<p>I am under no illusion that a Biden administration would rein in the
dangerous and destructive power of America’s 17 (acknowledged)
government intelligence agencies, or discourage those agencies from
colluding with the many other secret intelligence agencies run by
corporate interests and/or foreign governments.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, no matter how dangerous our intelligence agencies would
continue to be under Biden—as they were under Obama and Clinton—they
would be far more so under Trump. This may seem counter-intuitive, since
Trump has famously been at war with the intelligence community—and with
good reason, since, for its own unsavory reasons, the intelligence
community has been trying to discredit and undermine Trump ever since he
took office.</p>
<p>However, it is important to understand that Trump’s public war with the intelligence community is not a war against the <em>existence</em> of an intelligence community, <em>per se</em>, but only with an intelligence community <em>that Trump cannot control and which has not sworn unswerving fealty to him personally</em>.</p>
<p>Therefore, if re-elected, Trump will move swiftly to rectify that
situation by purging all 17 intelligence agencies and re-staffing them
with cronies and collaborators who will be loyal—not to America or to
the Constitution—but to him personally.</p>
<p>Trump has already done this, brazenly and ruthlessly, at every other
government agency under his legal control (and at some that are not). If
his past actions are any indication (and why should they not be?),
Trump will do the same at the intelligence agencies. He will then
proceed to use them for his own purposes (or whims) even more
extensively, more brutally, more illegally than anything we have ever
experienced in this country. He has already increased the use of covert
military mercenaries, and has escalated the drone war at the very same
time he has reduced Congressional oversight and public transparency
surrounding those strikes.</p>
<p>Ironically, Trump might not even have to bother reconstructing the
intelligence agencies in his image. His “shadow advisor,” Erik Prince
(CEO of Blackwater, the “mercenaries-for-hire” corporation whose
security guards murdered 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007), has a better idea.
According to <a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/11/05/erik-prince-trump-ukraine-china/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Intercept</a>,
Prince offered to build Trump a private covert action army—his own
personal CIA—trained, armed, totally loyal, and more than willing to
execute (in both senses of the word) any and all orders from their
supreme commander-in-chief.</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>Could one conjure up a more chilling prospect than a private army of Trump Sturmtruppen?</p></blockquote>
<figure class="wp-block-image alignfull size-large"><img data-attachment-id="8995" data-permalink="https://covertactionmagazine.com/2020/10/15/not-just-the-same-old-reasons-to-hold-your-nose-and-vote-for-biden/image-2-2/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/image-2.png?fit=936%2C528&ssl=1" data-orig-size="936,528" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{"aperture":"0","credit":"","camera":"","caption":"","created_timestamp":"0","copyright":"","focal_length":"0","iso":"0","shutter_speed":"0","title":"","orientation":"0"}" data-image-title="image-2" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/image-2.png?fit=300%2C169&ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/image-2.png?fit=696%2C393&ssl=1" src="https://i0.wp.com/covertactionmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/image-2.png?resize=696%2C393&ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-8995 td-animation-stack-type0-2" data-recalc-dims="1" width="696" height="393"><figcaption>The drone war has been expanded under Trump, [Source: <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/trump-war-terror-drones/567218/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">theatlantic.com</a>]</figcaption></figure>
<p>With Trump in control of the White House and possibly Congress as
well—and backed by a judiciary that is now majorly filled with judges
vetted by the right-wing Federalist Society, from the lowest state and
federal courts all the way up to SCOTUS—we can expect an onslaught
against democratic norms and civil liberties that may approach those of
Savak, Stasi, or the KGB. This may seem inconceivable to many Americans,
who fervently believe that “It Can’t Happen Here”—except that, in a
Trump second term, <em>it can</em>.</p>
<blockquote class="wp-block-quote"><p>As abusive, as undemocratic—and as
illegal—as covert activities have been under every Democratic president
from Truman, Kennedy and Johnson to Carter, Clinton and (arguably the
most abusive) Obama, those abuses would be even worse under a second
Trump administration.</p></blockquote>
<p>At least, under a Biden administration, we will be able to anticipate
(albeit rarely) the one feature that has been totally absent during
Trump’s first term, and which will certainly not miraculously emerge
during his second. That feature—however embarrassingly feeble a reed it
may be to clutch at in a supposedly democratic society—is the barely
vestigial capacity of some Democratic politicians … <em>to be</em> <em>shamed. </em>Not necessarily shamed into doing something Totally Good—but perhaps, sometimes, into doing what might not be Totally Horrible.</p>
<p>Not a rousing endorsement of Biden, to be sure. But imagine, if you
will, how much more feared the CIA might be under a second Trump
administration if, as he will surely do, he appointed directors who
embodied—not merely the amorality of its current director, Gina
Haspel—but directors who also nurse a ferocious personal loyalty to
Trump, as well as a total willingness to lie, cheat, and implement
without question any and all of his directives, no matter how base or
illegal they might be. Imagine, that is, our 17 intelligence agencies
staffed and led by Trump zealots in the mold of Rudy Giuliani, Stephen
Miller, Kellyanne Conway, John Bolton, Steve Bannon, Michael Cohen,
Roger Stone, Mike Pompeo, Steven Mnuchin, Paul Manafort, Louis DeJoy,
and (<em>pessimus pessimus</em>) Bill Barr.</p>
<p>I emphasize that I am under no illusions about Joe Biden and the crew
of war hawks and Wall Street predators he has already assembled to
advise him, should he win in November. This is a strictly practical, and
shamelessly naked, plea to vote for the lesser of two evils, despite
the commonly repeated protest that “the lesser of two evils is still
evil.” For as Princeton University Professor of Bioethics, Peter Singer,
puts it,</p>
<figure class="wp-block-pullquote is-style-default"></figure><blockquote style=""><p>if
the only way to prevent something very bad from happening is to do
something which would itself be bad—but not as bad as the very bad thing
that you’re trying to prevent from happening—then you’re justified in
doing the lesser evil rather than allowing the greater evil to occur.</p></blockquote><figure class="wp-block-pullquote is-style-default"></figure>
<p>So I repeat, however reluctantly: <strong><em>Please hold your nose and vote for Joe Biden</em></strong>.
Doing so need not cripple us, nor stop us immediately after the
election from renewing our efforts to educate and organize against
everything that Joe Biden and his administration stand for. </p><br><span id="sceditor-end-marker" style="line-height: 0; display: none;" class="sceditor-selection sceditor-ignore"> </span><span id="sceditor-start-marker" style="line-height: 0; display: none;" class="sceditor-selection sceditor-ignore"> </span><br></p><br>