What Is Wrong With This Picture? I Got Nothing Except Everything

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/8/9/former_dhs_analyst_daryl_johnson_on

I heard this article on Democracy Now yesterday and knew right away this was a good candidate for a WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?.  If you look at this the way I did, you will not see much wrong, except the glaringly obvious fact that the government failed to act on information given to them, AND the fact that history has shown this to be true.  This is a prime example of the upper levels of the government failing to heed the warnings of lower level information, and frankly history.  So again I ask WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE PICTURE? and say I got nothing except everything.

From a historical context, the idea that hate groups and radical organizations that seek out the destruction of central fibers in our way of life springing up during times of economic hardship is not new.  Many Depression historians will note that groups like the The American Communist Party and the Klu Klux Klan had a ground swell of membership at the height of the Great Depression.  An astonishing number of people who could barely put food on the table, found a way to pay dues for groups that sought to press down economically competing groups of people or sought alternatives to the then broken system.  If the increase in numbers to such groups during the Great Depression is not evidence enough, perhaps the origins of these groups during American Reconstruction is. One does not need to think hard to make the connection between the fears of new economic participants (former slaves) being introduced to a struggling economy (The South) as an impudence for the formation of an organizations like the KKK.  The group's goals at the time (and to this day) was to chase away groups that posed a economic threat to their already struggling class of poor whites.  If race is not your flavor, economics might be.  The American Communist Party dates back to the late 1800's when Communism was a new political theory out of Europe.  Americans who looked for a reconfiguring of the American system as a way to increase their own economic standing flocked to the party in droves.

Fastforward to today, and the ideas are still here.  Neo-Nazis and Communist type groups (OWS) are still dominate in the news, more especially in the light of the tragic shooting in Wisconsin.  The fact that those in the media are treating this increase in groups like this during our very own Great Recession as a new occurrence (or even denying it) is a bit disheartening.  As a quasi- historian, I can see this as an extension of the growth during the Great Recession.  Times are hard, and people are (to use a term from the Depression) "looking for answers." Some seek out groups that wrongly target people that they deem are the cause of the depression like gays, immigrants, and black.  Other look to groups like the TEA Party and OWS that try to change the very nature of the American economic system. Is this right?  I would argue for the groups that seek change over those that target and use hate.  Is it new? Not in the least.

What I have the biggest problem with is the Bush administration's failure to heed the warnings from the Department of Homeland Security about radical groups in the United States.  What is even more troubling is that the DHS was Bush's baby.  Here is a cabinet department born at the hands of George himself, and he is not listening to serious threats being brought to him from his child.  Information (brought to Bush from the department's cabinet member) was present that warned of an increase of hate groups, but that information was ignored almost wholesale.  This represents a failure of our government to protect citizens, when the opportunity arose. The presidential cabinet is designed to advise the President, and in this case that system failed.

By no means am I saying hate groups are a good thing, but they are not new.  Neither is the idea that the government does not heed even the most blatant information designed to protect its citizens.  One can find examples of both in our history.  What is new is the media's failure to recognize that history does tend to repeat itself in similar if not exact ways.  Also new is the idea that an administration failing to heed warnings brought to it by it's very own poster child.  Even Kennedy listened to NASA when it said it needed money and manpower.  From my point of view, there is very little wrong with this picture..except everything.