Ambush on the High Road

No, it is not necessarily, though it might be, bias against immigrants, Somalis, people of color and combative social justice lobbyists, to want to get to the bottom of allegations, wherever they lead, regarding the apocryphal giant fraud in Minnesota. Surmising ample cause of suspicion does not constitute prejudice, but the merits of the charges should be neither outright assumed nor dismissed.

The federal government, which has gathered and perhaps commissioned a mountain of potential evidence, has itself a penchant for constructing mountains out of mirages.

And people shouldn't be pegged as fascists, racists or nationalists, for seeking a definitive, evidence-rich answer, whether some states are allowing people ineligible under law to vote. And they are not aspirational tyrants for being piqued that some states refuse to remove long-deceased folks from the current voting rolls.

Skeletons lose their privileges, whether from blue, red or purple states.

The U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service are prosecuting various tax-exempt charities and other entities, for alleged money laundering and fraudulent reception of federal funds for sham childcare, nutrition programs, autism services, housing and spurious Medicaid claims.

If true, Minnesota's entire social services structure is rotten to its core, and a towering edifice for bilking. Some of the state's elected leadership may be not only complicit partners in the swindling, but its masterminds.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is offering cash rewards to whistleblowers.

The former leader of Feeding Our Future, a Minnesota non-profit, was sentenced in May to almost 42 years of imprisonment, for having falsely claimed that the $250 million funds she was awarded had gone to feeding millions of needy children during the Covid pandemic. She was targeted for her culpability, not because she is Somali or an immigrant, as she is neither.

U.S. Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald vowed to "claw back every dollar... stolen from the American people." Claws and fangs are hot items on Government Prime.

Some people who may be genuinely outraged by the Minnesota chicanery, are secretly titillated by it. They always wanted to believe the worst about these people, and now, their jaundiced snap-judgments seem to have been justified.  

Open-minded people of goodwill are rationally alarmed even by rumors of evidence and can go into psychotic denial when proved.

Dare we allow ourselves to be convinced by persuasive manifestation of guilt, without baring our soft underbellies to the swords of the anti-MAGA inquisition? If we cling with clean conscience to our trust in their innocence, will our reputations by disemboweled by MAGA's charges that we are Marxists and globalists?

If guilt has been established beyond even an unreasonable doubt, we should all be morally bound and driven to condemn and harshly punish the wrongdoers, no matter who they are.

Charities throw fundraisers, and small kids go to shopping centers, hats in hand, to collect nickels for legitimate medical research into cancers, heart disease and many other horrific diseases. The alleged fraud in Minnesota is greater than all the funding from all sources that is currently invested in the pursuit of improved treatments and cures.

We all have loved ones who might have been saved by timely remedies, had there been sufficient assets to invest in them.

Even apart from the Minnesota shame, most people believe what they want to believe, because it suits the ideological framework that they bought into or were purchased by. When confronted with the evidence presented by people who feel differently from them, they say it's "cherry-picked," out of context, corrupted or manufactured.

Both reactionaries and progressives have many aliases and dubious synonyms. But they are all prone to "intentional, willing avoidance of critical thinking and logic." It's called "suspension of disbelief," a phrase coined by an eighteenth-century English poet who composed "Kubla Khan" during an opium-induced hallucination.

A mechanism embedded in us compels our resistance to being disillusioned by the objects of our trust.

Say it ain't so!

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is one of the country's longest established, reputable and effective civil rights organizations. Its enemies will stop at nothing to taint it. But have they done it to themselves?

The U.S. Department of Justice, after a probe by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the criminal division of the Internal Revenue Service, alleges that the Southern Poverty Law Center is guilty of multiple counts of wire fraud, false statements and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

In late April, a grand jury in Montgomery, Alabama, returned an indictment, and the United States Attorney's Office has since filed forfeiture actions to recover allegedly ill-gotten gains from the SPLC. According to a DOJ press release, the SPLC "secretly funneled... donated funds to individuals who were associated with various violent extremist groups," including the Klu Klux Klan, Aryan Nation, American Front, the Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club and others.

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche accused the SPLC of "manufacturing racism to justify its existence." Some observers note that our government is itself a nonpareil old hand at the manufacture of contraband truths.

FBI Director Kash Patel claims the SPLC used funds to "facilitate the commission of state and federal crimes," while "stoking racial hatred" and operating covert networks of infiltrators. He calls the SPLC a "partisan smear machine."

Some of the FBI's innocent targets aver that this description sticks like Gorilla Glue to the FBI itself. The occupation and orientation of the FBI are not spotless.

Leopards and law enforcement agencies don't change their spots.

On its face, which is what the government's cases often fall upon, its charges against the SPLC defy what we want, have need and probably sound cause to believe. We must hold fast to our faith, while allowing the process to run its course.

I have surveyed hundreds of websites with every polar and middle ground perspective on the political landscape, and they all have something in common: their editors and contributors refuse and seem incapable of acknowledging that their original opinions could ever be upended by contrary revelation.

In other words, "my truth, right or wrong."

The Feds are a bit fickle in dispensing the "quality of mercy." Though Shakespeare, or the 17th Earl of Oxford, might have said, "Flay not for a peccadillo."

The government will not go easy on Minnesota or the SPLC.

May truth be delivered from the shadows.

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