I Could Work for the FBI!

This admission is going to slaughter my extreme-left-wing creds, but.... I wanted to become an FBI agent at one point in my life. I didn't pursue it for a variety of reasons: their physical training program is guaranteed to murder an underweight, asthmatic chainsmoker, it's usually a day job, I'd need an expensive degree to make it as a behavioral profiler, long work weeks would kill free time to write, the political bullshit one has to swallow is astounding, etc. But I still have a soft spot, something in me that goes squishy with pride when I read about the FBI catching the bad guys and Doing the Right Thing.

And they do some awesome good things.

But it's a schizophrenic bureaucracy, and whilst one Division is doing awesomely good things, another Division is acting the part of laughable fuckwits with too much power and really stupid ideas. It's too bad that's the Division I could actually work for:

Carroll, who requested that his real name not be used, showed up early and waited anxiously for Swanson’s arrival. Ten minutes later, he says, a casually dressed Swanson showed up, flanked by a woman whom he introduced as FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola. For the next 20 minutes, Mazzola would do most of the talking.

“She told me that I had the perfect ‘look,’” recalls Carroll. “And that I had the perfect personality—they kept saying I was friendly and personable—for what they were looking for.”

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”

The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force wants to investigate vegan fucking potlucks.

What tells me they've gone right round the bend and straight into George W. Bush land, where the terrorahrists are everywhere, spying on leftist Americans is an essential part of the War on Terrorah, and there's ponies in Iraq?

Carroll got offered the job by virture of his hippie good looks and having gotten busted spray-painting a campus elevator, but he's an amateur compared to me. All I'm missing from my resume is some criminal mischief. Vegan potlucks? Oh, this animal muncher does a killer vegan stirfry. I can talk the talk, walk the walk, and cook the tofu, my darlings, oh, yes. I even owned a copy of the Compassionate Cook.

That's what I get for living with a vegan for three years. All I need to do now is engage in some unauthorized interior decorating, and I could live my dream.

By infiltrating vegan fucking potlucks. Because we all know how dangerous those veggie killers are.

Unfortunately, this isn't even a sign of how pervasive the Bush Administration's police state has become, because the FBI has always had a penchant for doing boneheaded shit like this. What else can you expect from an agency stamped with the personality of a paranoid psychopath who looked pretty in pink? They've always had a problem comprehending the fine line between constitutionally protected political dissent and groups that pose a serious threat to American civilization as we know it. Most of the Bureau knows and loves the Constitution, but there are some divisions that don't seem to have ever read a copy. They seem to dump all the paranoid wingnuts into one section and let them amuse themselves trying to stir hippies into doing something slightly more criminal than dressing badly and chanting peace slogans at government officials.

Pathetic fixation they have, really. And that's why this is making me laugh rather than scream. The FBI is too fucking inept at domestic political intimidation to really pose a serious threat. They always let slip what they're doing, end up spectacularly embarrassed, and get their hands slapped by their Justice Department masters... awshit.

Oh, fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck.

The Justice Department's still in the hands of Bush's assclown brigade, isn't it?

Vegans: be afraid. Be very afraid.