The Witch Trials of Whistleblowers
Destroy the messenger
The Free Press, which can be found right here on Substack, recently launched the podcast series, The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling. Hosted by Megan Phelps-Roper, the series “examines some of the most contentious conflicts of our time through the life and career of the world’s most successful author.” If you are unaware, Rowling is the author of the Harry Potter book series and is currently in the middle of cancel culture debate for her stance on woman’s/trans rights.
Rowling’s own D-Day started on June 6, 2020 when she posted this tweet:
The response by the woke, anti-truth, pro “whatever the current thing is” crowd, which in this case happened to be trans rights > women’s rights, was swift and emphatic: Rowling obviously hates trans people and therefore it is ok to spew vitriolic hate her way since she has views that aren’t accepted by the mob. To her credit, Rowling wouldn’t relent, tweeting numerous other replies on the topic including, “I respect every trans person’s right to live any way that feels authentic and comfortable to them. I’d march with you if you were discriminated against on the basis of being trans. At the same time, my life has been shaped by being female. I do not believe it’s hateful to say so.” Nevertheless, the cancel Rowling mob was enraged and screaming from all of the proverbial rooftops as loud as they could.
In the ensuing days, Rowling penned a long form essay on the topic. She continued to receive all the cancel culture had to throw at her. Two and a half years later, the mob has now called for people to refuse to play the newest Harry Potter video game. Even though Rowling wasn’t involved with the game’s creation, she will garner a profit from it and that is just a bridge too far for the mob.
In episode 2 of the podcast series, titled “Burn the Witch,” this exchange near the end of the episode stood out.
Phelps-Roper: “When you would see these people burning your books, literally burning them and trying to get them banned and removed from schools and libraries, how did you understand what was going on inside of them?
Rowling: “Well I think that this is something I explore in the Potter books. A sense of righteousness is not incompatible with doing terrible things. You know, most of the people in movements that we consider hugely abhorrent, many, many, many of the people involved in those movements understood themselves to be on the side of righteousness, believed they were doing the right thing, felt themselves justified in what they were doing. I suppose for me, book burners by definition, predictably, to me have placed themselves across a line. Across a line of rational debate. I’m simply going to destroy the idea that I don’t like. I can’t destroy it, so I will destroy its representation. I will burn this book. There’s no book on this planet that I would burn. No book. Including books that I do think are damaging. Burning, to me, is the last resort of people who cannot argue.”
Phelps-Roper: “One theme that really jumps out right at the start of the books, is how people like Harry’s aunt and uncle keep saying to him, “don’t ask questions,” and I just wonder like, what’s the significance in having this whole seven book journey start with that theme?”
Rowling: “Well there you are, you see, we’ve just returned immediately to the book burners. They are completely certain that they are doing the right thing, and that justifies cruelty, unmerited punishment, telling him he’s things he’s not, you know, he’s bad, he’s wrong, and hiding information, and the don’t ask questions and the burning of the letters, there you are you have it right at the start. You are not allowed to look beyond what we say is normal, what we say is the world.”
Phelps-Roper: “There are plenty of stories you know, especially children’s stories, where the heroes are the heroes and the villains are the villains. The only real question in the stories is whether the heroes can defeat the villains. But that’s not the Harry Potter story at all. You know, the heroes are flawed. Some people we think of as villains turn out to be the ones who save the day, and there’s so many characters that we, at first glance think are bad or scary are actually just misunderstood. One of the early themes of the books is that if you want to figure out the truth, you shouldn't jump to conclusions. That your prejudices can betray you and that your first judgement might not be accurate. You know, you really seem to have this deep awareness of this type of human behavior that the temptation to fall into this very simplistic black and white kind of morality. But there is also a clear presence in the books of the reality that there is such a thing as good and there is such a thing as evil. And even though it’s not always easy to tell, you ultimately have to. How do you discern when a behavior falls on one side of that line or the other?”
Rowling: “You know that’s such a deep question and it goes to the heart of Potter and it goes to the heart of much of my worldview. The irredeemably evil character in Potter has dehumanized himself. So Voldemort has consciously and deliberately made himself less than human and we see the natural conclusion of what he’s done to himself through very powerful magic. What he’s left with is something less than human, and he’s done that deliberately. He sees humane behavior as weakness. He has reduced himself to something that cannot feel the full range of human emotion. There’s a huge appeal, and I try to show this in the Potter books, to black and white thinking. It’s the easiest place to be and in many ways, it’s the safest place to be. If you take an all or nothing position on anything, you will definitely find comrades, you will easily find a community, ‘i’ve sworn allegiance to this one simple idea.’
“What I tried to show in the Potter books and what I feel very strongly myself, we should mistrust ourselves most when we are certain and we should question ourselves most when we receive a rush of adrenaline by doing or saying something. Many people mistake that rush of adrenaline for the voice of conscious. ‘I’ve got a rush from saying that. I’m right.’ In my worldview, conscious speaks in a very small and inconvenient voice and its normally saying to you, ‘think again, look more deeply, consider this,’ and I was struck early on actually in the Potter phenomenon by how the two characters that caused the most furious debate, and I’m actually using the word furious quite literally there at times, were Dumbledore and Snape. People wanted Dumbledore to be perfect. He’s deeply flawed. To me, he is an exemplar of goodness. He did wrong, he learned, he grew wise, but he has to make the difficult decisions that people in the real world have to make. Very difficult decisions.
“Meanwhile you have Snape. Incontrovertibly a bully, he can be mean, he can be sadistic, he’s bitter, but, he is courageous, he is determined to make good what he did terribly wrong and without him, disaster would have occurred. And I have had fans really angry at me for not categorizing Snape in particular, just wanting clarity and simplicity. Let’s just agree this is a really bad guy, and I’m thinking well I can’t agree with you because I know him, but also I can’t agree with you full stop because people can be deeply flawed, people can make mistakes, people can do bad things, in fact show me the human being who hasn’t, and they all can also be capable of greatness; and I mean greatness in a moral sense, not in a fame and achievement sense.”
By now, you’re probably wondering what any of this has to do with whistleblowers. This exchange stood out because there are multiple themes that are the same, or very similar in what this experience has entailed so far. Like Rowling says of those who’ve burned her books, or burned books throughout history, many of the people involved in those movements believed they were on the side of righteousness. That is the same right now. The issues I made protected disclosures on to Congress, I did because I believed the FBI was doing things that were wrong. If more of those protected disclosures are made public, you will have to decide what is right. I already have, otherwise I wouldn’t have disclosed the information to Congress. To me, Rowlings book burners seem analogous to the FBI executives and employees who played a role in my suspension and Democrats who leaked my name and limited excerpts to those who simply do the regime’s bidding in the media. They simply seek to destroy the idea that they don’t like. They can’t destroy the idea, so they will destroy its representation; me. I’m not the only one either. There are numerous whistleblowers who have found themselves indefinitely suspended without pay.
Another facet of this exchange from The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling that struck a chord of similarity is that of Harry’s aunt and uncle. Again, the FBI and Democrats involved with leaking my name and testimony likely believe the are doing the right thing, so they believe they are justified in cruelty, unmerited punishment and not seeking to get to the heart of the issues whistleblowers have raised. Instead, they attack the messengers. Toe the line, do what you are told, you are not allowed to look beyond what those in control say is normal. Is that how you want the FBI and the government to operate? Perhaps it is. They certainly have figured out how to operate that way, if what they have done to those who attempt to shine a light in their darkness is any estimate.
In total, I was in law enforcement for about 8 years. Four each as a local beat cop and FBI agent. The longer I worked in those roles, the more poignant Phelps-Roper’s statement of, “if you want to figure out the truth, you shouldn’t jump to conclusions. That your prejudices can betray you and that your first judgement might not be accurate” was. Not every law enforcement officer has the “truth” as their goal though, unfortunately. Other things like promotion come first for too many. Every single law enforcement officer, just like every single person, has prejudices or biases. The LEOs in this nation bring them to work every shift. It is incumbent on them to keep those biases in the forefront of their mind so they can do their utmost to limit the affect such biases will have on their pursuit of the truth.
Getting as close to the truth should be the goal. A lot of other things get in the way of the truth though. The FBI has a crowded list of “metrics” that they try to meet each year. For instance, for fiscal year 2022, the FBI set out to make 600 terrorism “disruptions.” They only made 397. Why did the FBI pick 600 as the number of terrorism disruptions, and if about 400 were made, why don’t we ever hear about all the terrorism that the FBI is stopping? Also, doesn’t that seem an awful lot like Minority Report to decide in the beginning of the year that the largest federal law enforcement agency picks a number for how much terrorism they are going to stop? Also, these metrics are divided out to the 56 field offices. There is a spreadsheet tracker for the metrics being sought in any division. If the metrics are met, the Special Agent in Charge of that field office gets a monetary bonus at the end of the year. Certainly there is nothing foul about that.
That was just an aside. Back to the Harry Potter analogies. As Rowling discussed Dumbledore and Snape, I thought of myself, other whistleblowers I know and the likes of FBI director Chris Wray. None of us are perfect humans, certainly. We live in a fallen world and therefore it’s impossible for us to be perfect. As much as I’d like to say in black and white terms that Wray and the other executives in the FBI, along with those who participate in the banality of evil simply because they refuse to think past their bi-monthly direct deposit, are pure evil, I can’t. Have they done evil things by canceling whistleblowers? I believe so, but then again, the lying Leaking Leakers would disagree with me; and guess what, I’m guilty of evil things too. I sin every day. I’m sure if I thought about the worst, meanest, cruelest things I’ve ever done, I’d be completely ashamed. It really just shows my need for Christ.
But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus -Romans 3:21-24
If you’ve been keeping up with the Substack, you’ll remember that the Twitter Files have been a topic on occasion in FBI, Christmas Lie, “Federal Belly-button of the Industry” and Gaslighting Grifters. They may have been mentioned here and there in some of the other posts too, but those are the main ones where they were discussed. They were also the topic of the weaponization subcommittee’s hearing last week. Both Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified publicly to the committee. Shellenberger and Taibbi both write on Substack as well. Shellenberger heads up Public and Taibbi runs Racket News.
Back in November, shortly before Taibbi jumped headfirst into the Twitter Files, he interviewed FBI whistleblower Steve Friend. Earlier this week Taibbi led an article briefly discussing his interview with Steve and then comparing his own experience, along with Shellenberger, before the subcommittee to that of Steve, myself and retired FBI analyst George Hill:
“The Democratic Party response to Steve and his colleagues was eerily similar to tactics pulled out against myself and Mike Shellenberger:
— Mike and I were not real journalists, they said, but “so-called journalists.” Steve and his fellow agents “are not, in fact, whistleblowers,” according to the minority report, and “do not meet the definition of a whistle-blower,” according to the New York Times.
— I was told by Florida’s Debbie Wasserman-Schultz that “being a Republican witness certainly casts a cloud over your objectivity”; Democratic Party sources told the Times that Steve and fellow agents Garret O’Boyle and George Hill “have engaged in partisan conduct that calls into question their credibility.”
Later on in the article Taibbi writes, “But the most outrageous portion of the Democratic Party’s report came in a section claiming that, because the agents were not really whistleblowers, and therefore really just expressing their opinion, they were not covered. “No law,” they wrote, “protects witnesses who speak to congress under these circumstances.”
“The Whistleblower Protection Act specifically and the First Amendment generally come to mind, but not to this Committee office.
“The style of the new anti-speech Democrat is clear: define all government critics as lacking standing to criticize, impugn their prior opinions and associations, imply that all their beliefs are conspiracy theory, define their lack of faith in the FBI’s judgment as treasonous, and declare their motivation to be financial. Lastly, when they invoke common constitutional rights, make a note that their activities exist in an uncovered carve-out.”
What makes this witch hunt for whistleblowers more intriguing, is that Taibbi has been a lifelong liberal Democrat, by his own admission. Yet he gets accused of all sorts of nonsense by the Democrats on the subcommittee and has a false narrative painted about him, just as Steve, George and I have. The “anti-speech Democrat” doesn’t care about the truth. They only care about the party line and silencing any and all dissenters; even if those dissenters are one of their own party like Taibbi. Democrat or Republican, or any other party, or no party at all, everyone should be interested in the truth. There is about half of the population out there who gets their “news” from places like CNN, New York Times and Rolling Stone who believe that the only false narratives being painted are here, on Substack. As usual, you will have to decide which is closest to the truth.
Postscript
Here’s a portion of last week’s hearing. It’s as pathetic and aggravating as it is sadly humorous. Ms. Garcia is a clueless hack who didn’t bother to prepare, instead choosing to read her comments drafted for her by staff. She admits she doesn’t even know what Substack is and continually tries to get Taibbi to reveal his sources. She also talks about Bari Weiss who runs The Free Press and has been involved with the Twitter Files, yet seemingly has no clue about who she is either. A republic, if you can keep it.