signalmankenneth
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Like Ko-Ko, Lord High Executioner in The Mikado, Kash Patel has a little list and has threatened to come after those people who bear the misfortune of being on it. “We will go out and find the conspirators,” Patel said last year on Steve Bannon’s podcast, “not just in government, but in the media.… Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.”
Who are these conspirators? In his 2022 book, Government Gangsters, Patel names them; they number 60. President Donald Trump has nominated for FBI director someone who compiled and publicized his very own enemies list. As a public service, I append Patel’s entire list to the end of this article.
Patel doesn’t literally call his list, which appears as an appendix in Government Gangsters, an enemies list; more blandly, he calls it “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State.” But “deep state,” in the context of Trumpworld grievance, is no neutral term. In the book, Patel calls the deep state “a cabal of unelected tyrants” and “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.” Consider also the book’s title, and that in introducing the list Patel apologizes for omitting “other corrupt actors of the first order.” It’s an enemies list.
What kind of person keeps a list of enemies? A person with more than the usual share. Most of us have at most two or three enemies—not so many that you have to write all their names down to keep track. Patel is different, and it is not unreasonable to question his mental stability on these grounds alone. The most famous enemies list, you’ll recall, was President Richard Nixon’s, and not even Nixon’s allies considered it a sign of robust mental health.
You can’t fault Patel for partisanship, though. Counting conservatively, 17 percent of his list consists of people that Trump himself either appointed or nominated during his previous term. That doesn’t speak particularly well of our president-elect. How exactly did Trump happen to elevate at least 10 people to higher office who turned out to be enemies of the state?
Or maybe they’re just enemies of Patel. Patel includes on his list former Trump Attorney General William Barr, and the only serious offense Patel accuses Barr of committing was threatening to resign if Trump installed Patel as his deputy. Characteristically, Patel complains not that Barr turned him down for the job but that Barr “undermined President Trump” by turning him down for the job. In addition to that would-be boss, Patel includes in his enemies list two actual bosses, National Security Council Chairman John Bolton (an “arrogant control freak” who also resisted hiring Patel but finally did so reluctantly) and Mark Esper (who tried unsuccessfully to fire Patel).
More conventionally, Patel includes on his enemies list the last three Democratic nominees for president: Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. Former President Barack Obama, for some reason, is left off the list, even though Obama’s chief of staff John Podesta is on i
The term “deep state” is most often used to disparage the civil service, which Patel more or less wishes to eliminate. In addition to reinstituting Schedule F, which would strip many civil service protections from government workers, Patel favors legislation that allows the president to fire civil servants directly. But almost all the people on Patel’s enemies list are political appointees, who by definition come and go with new administrations and are therefore more properly categorized as the Shallow State.
Maybe Patel hesitated to punch down (though such considerations didn’t keep him from including 27-year-old Cassidy Hutchinson, the former assistant to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows who gave testimony damaging to Trump before the January 6 committee). More likely, Patel is just as clueless as most Trump loyalists about what it is government employees do all day and why they do it (topics dear to my heart that I wrote about here and here; see also The Washington Post’s recent series profiling individual civil servants).
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kash-patel-crazy-enemies-list-110000717.html
Who are these conspirators? In his 2022 book, Government Gangsters, Patel names them; they number 60. President Donald Trump has nominated for FBI director someone who compiled and publicized his very own enemies list. As a public service, I append Patel’s entire list to the end of this article.
Patel doesn’t literally call his list, which appears as an appendix in Government Gangsters, an enemies list; more blandly, he calls it “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State.” But “deep state,” in the context of Trumpworld grievance, is no neutral term. In the book, Patel calls the deep state “a cabal of unelected tyrants” and “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.” Consider also the book’s title, and that in introducing the list Patel apologizes for omitting “other corrupt actors of the first order.” It’s an enemies list.
What kind of person keeps a list of enemies? A person with more than the usual share. Most of us have at most two or three enemies—not so many that you have to write all their names down to keep track. Patel is different, and it is not unreasonable to question his mental stability on these grounds alone. The most famous enemies list, you’ll recall, was President Richard Nixon’s, and not even Nixon’s allies considered it a sign of robust mental health.
You can’t fault Patel for partisanship, though. Counting conservatively, 17 percent of his list consists of people that Trump himself either appointed or nominated during his previous term. That doesn’t speak particularly well of our president-elect. How exactly did Trump happen to elevate at least 10 people to higher office who turned out to be enemies of the state?
Or maybe they’re just enemies of Patel. Patel includes on his list former Trump Attorney General William Barr, and the only serious offense Patel accuses Barr of committing was threatening to resign if Trump installed Patel as his deputy. Characteristically, Patel complains not that Barr turned him down for the job but that Barr “undermined President Trump” by turning him down for the job. In addition to that would-be boss, Patel includes in his enemies list two actual bosses, National Security Council Chairman John Bolton (an “arrogant control freak” who also resisted hiring Patel but finally did so reluctantly) and Mark Esper (who tried unsuccessfully to fire Patel).
More conventionally, Patel includes on his enemies list the last three Democratic nominees for president: Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton. Former President Barack Obama, for some reason, is left off the list, even though Obama’s chief of staff John Podesta is on i
The term “deep state” is most often used to disparage the civil service, which Patel more or less wishes to eliminate. In addition to reinstituting Schedule F, which would strip many civil service protections from government workers, Patel favors legislation that allows the president to fire civil servants directly. But almost all the people on Patel’s enemies list are political appointees, who by definition come and go with new administrations and are therefore more properly categorized as the Shallow State.
Maybe Patel hesitated to punch down (though such considerations didn’t keep him from including 27-year-old Cassidy Hutchinson, the former assistant to Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows who gave testimony damaging to Trump before the January 6 committee). More likely, Patel is just as clueless as most Trump loyalists about what it is government employees do all day and why they do it (topics dear to my heart that I wrote about here and here; see also The Washington Post’s recent series profiling individual civil servants).
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kash-patel-crazy-enemies-list-110000717.html
