The Blue Pill.

[Ninurta]

Thank you both Mr. G & Ninurta for your respective views on this complicated subject.
I appreciate the delicate nature of the topic and the willingness of putting biased opinions
to one side for a more fair and 'open' answer.
That's why it seems universally-agreed that Clapper is a prick.

That does seem to be the consensus - there are al least 3 votes in this very thread to indicate such.

And it's that -that has always intrigued me.
Can an organisation that is constructed for a particular reason, morph into a entirely different
set-up because of the complicated maze of global sea-changes it dabbles in?

The short answer is "yes". It doesn't get much shorter than that. It's the old "boiling frog" syndrome. A little change here, unchallenged, and a little change there, unchallenged, if repeated often enough can cause anything to morph out of the form it originally had an into one somewhat more... menacing.

The confused machinations of individual factions that Ninurta commented on, is something my
personal make-up struggles with because of the sheer selfishness to gain, occasionally seems to
outweigh the original goal of national/international security and the accountability gets lost in
the lofty discussions of general governing.

It is just that convoluted, and as bureaucracy moves forward, it only gets more and more complicated. The solution lies in the beginning, which always happens before anyone realizes there is a problem. As time goes on, and more and more redundant "agencies" and "bureaus" are created, it takes too long for John Q. Public to figure out that that many chefs are not only unnecessary in the kitchen, but they also crowd it beyond usefulness. They get in each other's way, argue and gripe, sometimes one chef stabs another either through malice or incompetence, but in any event dinner is never served.

That was my gripe with the inception of "Homeland Security" in the US. It was unnecessary, redundant, we already HAD enough agencies (and maybe too many) to provide what it was allegedly created for. It was (and is) useless and too expensive for what it delivers. Of course, some of the other agencies also looked askance at the formation of DHS - they were wondering "what are those guys for? The US already has us!" and suspicion led to another round of infighting that could have been avoided by the simple expedient of not creating a useless-eater agency to begin with, simply not growing government another notch beyond it's boundaries.

If one believes that many of the agencies (not the silly seventeen that the MSM proclaimed)...
conduct themselves without concerns for that original goal and brings collateral problems to the
country they're alleged to serve and those problems are judged as to be acceptable by that
agency alone, then is it possible to 'switch off' that agency by the system most of us deems
in control?

Probably not without bloodshed. There are times that even the controlling system cannot re-cage the monsters it created, and one thing leading to another results in the feeding hand getting bitten.

Without belabouring Kennedy's 'break the CIA into a thousand pieces' quote, can such an act
take place this late in the game...? Or have the guard dogs become more powerful than their
masters up to the point that they know it?

Perhaps more powerful, perhaps not. It depends on who one thinks the "Masters" are, and how one defines power. Who is more powerful? The man who can buy and sell gun-hands to keep another group in check, or the man who doesn't give a shit if he DOES get shot, and is willing to do what it takes? You see, I believe "power" lies in control, and anything or anyone that another cannot control, that other has no real "power" over.

The 'little' things like 'would an official security arm of a Government blow-up an entire
building to eliminate one person or gang-rape a child to force it's parent to disclose certain
information' is disturbing. But again, these acts go on in order to preserve a way of life that
the comfortably-sitting public have the luxury of not dwelling on in their old age.

Touchy subject, because those "official security arms" are, each and every one, made up of individuals, with all of the foibles, unruliness, and unpredictability that the constituent individuals bring with them. Those individuals, some of them pretty psychopathic, can them hide their unspeakable deeds under the umbrella of a nebulous agency, and no one is then really accountable for their misdeeds. The public blames "the agency", and of course as an arm of government, it can do no harm. Few, if any, ever go after the actual responsible individual(s). That is also the reason that other "collectives", such as communism, are so dangerous. As the individuals and their misdeeds subsume themselves and get lost within the collective, the collective is forced to assume the blame, and of course that collective includes you and I, and WE are not going to accept that blame, so the responsible parties get to skate free to do even worse deeds under the guise of "us".


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