Mitch berates bureaucrats, but J. Edgar Hoover was the definitive USA bully

“Bureaucracy is that dreadful state of when more emphasis is placed on the process than the actual resolution of a problem.”  William Powell

Mitch wrote an excellent piece on why the USA is so very screwed up, at:

http://apocalypsecometh.com/bureaucracy-everything/

… but he failed to connect one dot, one very large cross-dressing dot named J. Edgar Hoover.

Mitch wrote:

“The bureaucracy takes itself to be the ultimate purpose of the state.”  Karl Marx

“The ten most dangerous words in the English language are “Hi, I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”  Ronald Reagan

…
The real power of the government is with the petty bureaucrat, the one you might see from time to time. Think the DMV clerk, the IRS auditor, the tax collector – any one of these individuals has the power, backed by government, to ruin your life at the point of a gun if they so decide.

“It is the invariable habit of bureaucracies, at all times and everywhere, to assume…that every citizen is a criminal. Their one apparent purpose, pursued with a relentless and furious diligence, is to convert the assumption into a fact. They hunt endlessly for proofs, and, when proofs are lacking, for mere suspicions. The moment they become aware of a definite citizen, John Doe, seeking what is his right under the law, they begin searching feverishly for an excuse for withholding it from him.”  H. L. Mencken

…

“A bureaucrat is the most despicable of men, though he is needed as vultures are needed, but one hardly admires vultures whom bureaucrats so strangely resemble. I have yet to meet a bureaucrat who was not petty, dull, almost witless, crafty or stupid, an oppressor or a thief, a holder of little authority in which he delights, as a boy delights in possessing a vicious dog. Who can trust such creatures?”  Marcus Tullius Cicero

…The people who are attracted to bureaucratic or government jobs know that they got crap degrees in college, are unsuited for any social success or productive work and it infuriates them, so they want payback. What better way to get payback than to fuck with people who they know are their betters? They relish their jobs because every time they can make someone wait, audit their tax returns, place a lien on their property or in extreme cases cause someone to die, they feel that their revenge is taken.

Mitch is entirely correct so far as he goes, but there is an even more insidious effect of bureaucracy. Bureaucracies have a way of recruiting talented, skilled workers and slowly corrupting their minds with complacent stagnation. These once-independent thinkers forget how to question authority and become hollow shadows of their former selves. If you ever wonder how national governments find scientists to build their surveillance states, compare Snowden with the career bureaucrats howling for his blood. Snowden got out before the decay of bureaucracy managed to corrupt his entire brain.

Mitch wrote:

“Hell hath no fury like a bureaucrat scorned.”  Milton Friedman
No truer statement was ever uttered and if you don’t believe me on this, just fuck with one of these dickheads. They will ensure that, to all extent of their government bestowed powers, they will do anything they can to make your life as hellish as possible and make you pay even more of your hard earned money than you do presently. Fuck with them enough, or just be in the wrong situation at the wrong time and they’ll ruin your life…or get you killed.

“The threat of people acting in their own enlightened and rational self-interest strikes bureaucrats, politicians and social workers as ominous and dangerous.”  W. G. Hill

…“The purpose of bureaucracy is to demolish face-to-face social groups, to break instinctive and emotional social ties and obligations, and to subordinate people to the power of the state. It is cruel, it is wasteful, and it is unjust.”  Christopher Chantrill

So now we get to the true purpose of the bureaucracy that surrounds us today. The bureaucracy is impersonal, attracting to its ranks people who have no interpersonal relationships, no social aptitude and inferior abilities. It is intended to splinter free associations among free individuals. It promotes subservience to the state through obstinance, humiliation, propaganda, obfuscation, outright lies and examples of individuals exposed for the most minor of infractions in its medias.

It relies on destroying reputations, besmirching integrity, turning social networks away from individuals under its scrutiny, and separating families.

…

That last sentence can be boiled down to one imperative verb: DEHUMANIZE.

National-security spooks and police-state torturers love to dehumanize their targets, and police states come to regard dehumanization as a goal to be pursued for its own sake.

Since the 20th century, blackmail has come to dominate USA bullying, and this may be largely due to the efforts of a single bully, J. Edgar Hoover.

According to President Harry S. Truman, Hoover transformed the FBI into his private secret police force; Truman stated that “we want no Gestapo or secret police. FBI is tending in that direction. They are dabbling in sex-life scandals and plain blackmail. J. Edgar Hoover would give his right eye to take over, and all congressmen and senators are afraid of him”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover

In the book Official and Confidential, author Anthony Summers presents evidence that Hoover had the tables turned on him and was subjected to blackmail by both the Mafia and the CIA.

http://edgar-hoover.tripod.com/

In 1993, Anthony Summers, in his book Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, also claimed that Hoover did not pursue organized crime because the Mafia had blackmail material on him. In support of that, Summers quoted Susan L. Rosenstiel, a former wife of Lewis S. Rosenstiel, chairman of Schenley Industries Inc., as saying that in 1958, she was at a party at the Plaza Hotel where Hoover engaged in cross-dressing in front of her then-husband and Roy Cohn, former counsel to Senator Joe McCarthy.

… Susan claimed Cohn introduced Hoover to her as “Mary.” Hoover allegedly responded, “Good evening.” She said she saw Hoover go into a bedroom and take off his skirt. There, “young blond boys” worked on him in bed. Later, as Hoover and Cohn watched, Lewis Rosenstiel had sex with the young boys.
A year later, Susan claimed, she again saw Hoover at the Plaza. This time, the director was wearing a red dress. Around his neck was a black feather boa. He was holding a Bible, and he asked one of the blond boys to read a passage as another boy played with him. It was episodes such as these, Summers declared, that the Mafia held over Hoover’s head. “Mafia bosses obtained information about Hoover’s sex life and used it for decades to keep the FBI at bay,” the jacket of the book says. “Without this, the Mafia as we know it might never have gained its hold on America.”

…[sources allege that] from the mid-1930s onward, Hoover would require selected agents to take on special undercover assignments, often lasting for years, as women or drag queens in high heels and skirts. Sources speculate that Hoover, unable to dress openly as a woman, forced some of his underlings to take up his freakish habit so he’d feel more normal. He reportedly enjoyed training these agents himself, selecting their outfits, applying makeup and fixing hairdos. Most men hated these assignments and many were threatened with firing or even jail time for their cooperation.
The diary recounts at least one case in the 1950s in which Hoover had the mother of an agent jailed on trumped-up charges to keep him on duty as a red-headed, high-heeled gun moll. Perhaps the weirdest case is that of 24-year-old Bert Horgson, a six-foot Swede who left his family and girlfriend in Minnesota in 1935 to fight Nazi spies with the FBI. Once Hoover caught sight of him, however, the slim, blue-eyed Horgson was instead given a different assignment — and spent the remainder of his career in dresses and high-heeled pumps as Hoover’s “special agent.”

The diary recounts how Hoover kept Horgson from quitting by alternating promises of reassignment with intimidation of both Horgson and his family. Hoover even went so far as to have Horgson’s legal identity changed from male to female — making it illegal for him to dress as a man for most of the 30s, 40s and 50s — and had agents make sure he complied. Even Hoover’s death in 1972 brought Horgson no reprieve. In a final bizarre ploy from beyond the grave, Hoover left orders that the 60-year-old FBI man was to be confined to a special high-security nursing home as a national security risk.
Horgson found himself forced to remain “Bettina Horgson” until his death 29 years later. Horgson died in 2001 at the age of 89 in a government nursing home in Washington, D.C. One government source says, “this is one of the strangest, and most flagrant abuses of power I’ve ever heard of.”

http://nstarzone.com/HOOVER.html

Not every petty bureaucrat has the power to destroy lives as J. Edgar Hoover did. As the USA declines, the bureaucrats are making increasingly rabid attempts to extend their dominance. Common USA farmers are harassed if they try to raise hens or collect rainwater, for example. But the bureaucrats are often corrupted by the secrecy and boot-licking of bureaucratic office politics. Consider the case of “Flushy McFlushershon”:

DOJ Says Company That Vetted Snowden Faked 665,000 Background Checks

… The DOJ is now accusing USIS of faking background checks on 665,000 federal employees.

…USIS management devised and executed a scheme to deliberately circumvent contractually required quality reviews of completed background investigations in order to increase the company’s revenues and profits. Specifically, USIS devised a practice referred to internally as “dumping” or “flushing,” which involved releasing cases to OPM and representing them as complete when, in fact, not all ROIs comprising those cases had received a quality review as required by the Fieldwork Contracts.

…Initially, USIS would dump cases manually. Soon after the dumping started, however, USIS began using a software program called Blue Zone to assist in the dumping practices. Through Blue Zone, USIS was able to identify a large number of background investigations, quickly make an electronic “Review Complete” notation indicating that the ROIs at issue had gone through the review process even if they had not, and then automatically release all of those ROIs to OPM with the “Review Complete” notation attached. By using Blue Zone, USIS was able to substantially increase the number of background investigations that could be dumped in a short time period.
…
In fact, it appears this became a key part of how USIS worked. Originally, it would only “dump” unfinished cases at the end of each day if it was behind schedule. But, later it realized it could get paid more by dumping these cases repeatedly during the day. No need to build up a queue, just dump… and get paid.

The DOJ also has emails showing that senior management was well aware this was going on and even participated or encouraged the activity.
Internal USIS documents confirm that USIS Senior Management was aware of and directed the dumping practices. …

Another email chain dated September 16 and 17, 2010 involving USIS’s Vice President of Field Operations and its President of Investigative Service Division, among others, discussed the need to dump cases to meet revenue goals. The Vice President of Field Operations referenced USIS’s revenue situation as “[w]e all own this baby, and right now we are holding one ugly baby.” The USIS Workload Leader in Western Pennsylvania forwarded that email to the Director of National Quality Assurance and the Quality Control Manager in Western Pennsylvania and responded: “The only two things we can do in review to get them out faster is to (a) hire or (b) dump…. I don’t know if there’s any other levers left to flip other than dumping everything we know is bad. Just a side note, the more MSPC [Master Scheduling Production Control] rams through, the more the field will transmit sub-standards, and the more [the number of cases needing secondary review] will go up. Come EOM [End of Month], if they’re going to tell us to just dump all those cases anyways without a proper review, which [sic] will only make that ugly baby even uglier…”
There’s also an email in which a “Workload Leader” tells the top “quality” assurance execs:
“Shelves are as clean as they could get. Flushed everything like a dead goldfish.”
Oh, and another:
“t’is Flushy McFlushershon at his merry hijinks again!! **leprechaun dance**…I’m not tired…”

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140124/12433225982/doj-says-company-that-vetted-snowden-faked-665000-background-checks.shtml

I believe that these workers started out as intelligent, diligent, conscientious Yanks, but that they were corrupted by the vile atmosphere of bureaucracy.

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However, you can rest assured that while the USA’s teachers cannot spell the word “litter” correctly, they can remind their students to obey:

http://www.blacklistednews.com/3rd_Grade_Government_Homework%3A_%27Good_Citizens_Do_Not_Argue%27/32405/0/38/38/Y/M.html