Pam Bondi Says She Will 'Go After You If You Are Targeting Anyone With Hate'
The authoritarians may be revealing themselves but we don't need to be afraid of them.
One of the principles I've come to cherish in recent years is “crisis reveals character.”
When terrible events happen that jangle the emotions, then people reveal their true natures. When horrors strike you then you will see who truly loves you.
Do your parents and siblings really love you? You're about to find out and the answer may leave you shocked.
You will see who your true friends are. And you will see which forgotten acquaintances, old co-workers, and outright strangers with hearts of gold will step in to fill the void with their light.
That time for me came in fall of 2021 when I experienced violence and trauma that made me fear for my life, leaving me with severe PTSD that has taken years to treat to a manageable level.
Sally Shideler Swindle, an old acquaintance from a job a decade ago, emerged then and my life has transformed ever since.
In war, crime, violence, crisis, then transformation emerges.
In The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, one aphorism in the collection states the principle another way:
"The character of the genuine monk only appears when he is tempted."
And so now we see this concept in action in real time following the murder of Charlie Kirk, the Christian nationalist celebrity.
Maybe this sounds familiar.
A customer at an Office Depot wants fliers printed to publicize a Charlie Kirk event. The employee refuses on moral grounds, objecting to Kirk's views.
Office Depot then fires them.
Sounds a bit like the multi-year controversy over the Evangelical Christian baker who refused to make cakes for gay weddings, provoking lawsuits and endless media defenses from right-wing and Christian nationalist commentators.
Only now, President Donald Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi is out on Katie Miller’s podcast threatening to potentially prosecute this fired Office Depot worker and insisting her office will do so with others who use "hate speech" in response to the right-wing podcaster's death:
OK, my goodness.
This is quite the quick reversal from decades of Republican priorities now isn't it?
Some, like commentator Erick Erickson, picked up on this immedately, with others noting that Kirk himself had said the opposite just the previous week.
Daily Wire podcaster Matt Walsh wrote of Bondi “Get rid of her. Today. This is insane.”
Walsh stated what should be obvious: “Conservatives have fought for decades for the right to refuse service to anyone. We won that fight. Now Pam Bondi wants to roll it all back for no reason. The employee who didn’t print the flyer was already fired by his employer. This stuff is being handled successfully through free speech and free markets. This is totally gratuitous and pointless. We need the AG focused on bringing down the left wing terror cells, not prosecuting Office Depot for God’s sake.”
This is how far this administaration has gone at this point—they’re making Matt Walsh sound reasonable and forcing us to agree with him! The cruelty they’re inflicting on us here!
Bondi later tried to “clarify” her remarks, attempting to suggest that she only referred to threats of violence rather than speech, but the damage was already done, the administration’s true intent was already more than revealed. Her original comments were clear. There’s no fucking “walking this back.”
We all know full well that Trump doesn’t care about the first amendment and wants to punish anyone who tells the truth about him. If he can’t sic the Justice Department on an enemy he’ll fire off a bogus lawsuit for billions of dollars instead, the sort that no sane, moral lawyer would ever file knowing full well that they could never win. But sane, moral lawyers don’t work for Trump at this point—if one lawyer doesn’t tell him what he wants to hear then he’ll find one who will and at this point he’s got plenty in his back pocket to pull out and flick out like a matchstick to burn and discard.
So, using this “crisis" of the murder of a key political ally, the Trump administration and its chief supporters have now reversed on what were until a few days ago core principles. Now, the new dictums of the MAGA movement, what it means to make this country “great”:
The government should compel speech. Leftists should be forced at threat of prosecution to print fliers in support of Kirk.
Government and private businesses should fire or otherwise punish—to “cancel” people to employ the parlance—for social media posts that express hatred toward Kirk.
The Department of Justice will “go after” people for "hate speech" against Kirk and in theory, whatever else the administration deems as such.
A movement which built itself on condemning the “canceling” of careers for hateful speech has now fully embraced the practice itself, as soon as a crisis offered the opportunity to do so.
So add these—free speech itself, really—to the list of values one must now abandon to remain in good standing as a loyal MAGA foot soldier.
Should we be afraid?
Should those of us who practice the first amendment every day professionally fear Bondi's (actually Trump's) threat?
Certainly not.
This kind of over-the-top threat is textbook Trump, straight out of the guidance of his mentor, the infamous McCarthyite criminal Roy Cohn.
Erickson and Walsh are right to object to Bondi but totally wrong in assessing that stupidity—or at least her own—is the source of her statement.
No, Bondi is and always has been Trump's hired gun. She is doing and saying what he wants, performing for “the audience of one” as her ally Kirk did too. Recall him pivoting on the Epstein files at Trump’s request? Urging others to just stop caring about the quest to unveil the hidden sex offenders among America’s elite? Is it too impolite to remind people right now how malleable this man's “principles” actually were? Will this mere rescitation of facts result in imprisonment now?
And thus, at some point, she will need to provide a skull to sacrifice to the president. Some poor fool will need to endure prosecution for Kirk-related speech to appease the presidential appetite for blood and Big Macs. We're going to see it happen at some point and it will be awesome. Bring on the entertainment.
Stephen Miller is so reckless that he'll certainly give the order—if he hasn’t already— and Bondi is so spineless and craven that she will follow it. If she’s willing to cover up the Epstein files then just what will she not do? Where is the line for her? Maybe eventually we’ll find out but the answer will no doubt churn stomachs.
We are in the strangest and most paradoxical moments of American history.
On the one hand, openly authoritarian nationalists have seized control of the executive branch and have begun all sorts of illegal experiments in extra-constitutional crime.
On the other, these people are incompetent and clownish. They lack the skills to accomplish a tenth of their goals.
These two traits principally manifest in the architect of all this, Stephen Miller. He is the one driving all of the authoritarian ends to obliterate the Constitution.
And I am not fucking impressed at this point.
So often nowadays that scene comes to mind from “Hook” of Dustin Hoffman disgusted as he surveys the captured adult Peter Pan, now living as a pudgy Robin Williams wielding a checkbook rather than a sword:
"Is it you? My great and worthy opponent? But it can’t be…”
Stephen Miller is the best that the authoritarian Right has to offer to implement its agenda?
Actually, no, he is not.
Because as people are starting to see clearly with FBI Director Kash Patel's incompetence, the foundational structural flaw of authoritarianism that dooms it is that people rise up into the party and government not due to competence and merit but out of absolute "loyalty," what is more accurately characterized as toadyism.
The result of this is the people who rise up to the top and then get saddled with implementing the grand plans just totally lack the skills to do so.
Such people— Stephen Miller, Bondi, Patel, Dan Bongino, J.D. Vance, go down the line and serve yourself up a helping—chose not to rise through talent and real work but by picking a Big Man and attaching themselves to him barnacle-on-barge-style.
Only now the ship is starting to take on water and they will go down with it, remaining stuck to the bitter end. (Despite my elegant arguments to him in two open letters, Bongino remains loyal to the regime, unaware that his moment had passed to escape with any soul in tact.):
There will still be many fights to resist Trumpist authoritarianism, many people will still suffer, particularly Latino people swept up in Miller's ICE raids. There will be years of courtroom battles to fight in response to one illegal action after another.
But ultimately, this is a house that will collapse in on itself. These people are all so in over their heads.
So as I concluded Sunday's essay on the reality of life after death, the immortality of the soul, and the infinite love of a transcendent God:
Be not afraid.
Be not afraid.
Be not afraid.
Be not afraid.
Be not afraid.
Be not afraid.
Be not afraid.
That seems the right mantra for us all to keep in mind at this moment of history in which our Constitution receives its ultimate stress test, one which now I've come develop some strange store of confidence it can survive.
Thank you for this! I needed this today. Doomerish takes really ratchet up my anxiety so it’s nice to see someone look at it all from a different angle.
Thanks for the light.