Well, the spirit of FBI director J Edgar Hoover lives on in the recent actions of current director Comey. For those who are too young to recall, or who have forgotten in the pileup of history since Hoover's death, J Edgar and his notorious underlings did their best to discredit Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and infiltrate militant anti-war and civil rights organizations. He was the secret engine behind the McCarthy hearings and the many destroyed lives with which the Senator and his cohorts are given sole credit. Lynchings and Klan activities went unpunished and ignored by the FBI under Hoover, as he hunted down headlines about flashy gangsters for himself and the bureau. He set a high mark for low behavior for any future director to match, and Comey - purportedly a moderate Republican - has yet to meet it although he appears to be trying hard.
Comey's use of ambiguity, the politicization of a high non-partisan office, colloquially called "a smear" - and the timing of a partisan letter made to look oh so innocent - all this would be applauded by J. Edgar- for yesterday's action of Comey releasing his alleged information about HRC's emails that was no information at all - was made to suggest that she had committed "something" -unrevealed crimes or misdemeanors. Pure J. Edgar Hoover. Even the timing had the Hoover stamp - eleven days before the election.
I don't believe those savants who keep writing that Trump has created a great new force of bigotry and fascist thinking in this country - all he did was provide a leader for whatever was there - and allow it to emerge for awhile. The strain of fascist thinking in this country - better call it totalitarian - never dies. It rests for awhile during periods of prosperity or in a post war world - but it remains dormant in the body politic - waiting the next Huey Long, Senator McCarthy, or Donald Trump to call it forth like Dracula calling forth his disciples. I believe that it can go back to its hiding place, but we must be ever vigilant and watch as the sleeping demon rises. It is happening again in Europe - in small but poisonous doses - and if Trump is elected it will happen here.