Kash Patel's "problem" isn't that he's "brown"--it's that his own prejudices allowed him to become Trump's willing tool in unlawful doings

 

Sen. Lindsey Graham threatening there will be “riots in the streets” if his Fuehrer is charged with any crime. Actor Jon Voight reprising his far-right psycho role by threatening "World War III." A Trump-appointed judge wants to appoint a “special master” to examine the documents seized by the FBI. John Durham is continuing his farce of an investigation because he’s hasn’t found anything yet to justify its time, taxpayer cost or results (or lack thereof). Republican voters continue to be blind to the fact that it isn’t just Democratic voters whose rights on being impinged on, but their rights as well. And, oh yes, The Guardian is reporting that according to a poll, half of Americans think a “civil war” will occur in the next two years—although it is Republicans who want to see “blood” and  throw out the Constitution more than Democrats.

But in the meantime it’s “Brown Lives Matter.” No, we are not talking about Hispanics, but people like former Trump administration official Kash Patel, who is upset that his name was not redacted in the FBI warrant used in the Mar-a-Lago raid. Now, why would he say such a thing? He seems to be a key figure in illegally removing highly classified documents from the White House, and one ex-FBI official has advised him to hire a lawyer like right now. In fact Patel has quite a questionable history in the Trump administration that has gone largely under the radar, according to a Washington Post story last year.

But before I get into all of that, it could help to understand some “background” into Patel’s mindset; after all, the name “Patel” identifies him in the bottom half of the Indian caste system,  yet we see another of his caste, the UK’s Home Secretary Priti Patel, having a reputation as a racist; she was knee-deep in the Windrush scandal—which sought to deport immigrants and their descendants who were British citizens before 1973, mainly black immigrants from Britain’s Caribbean colonies if they didn’t have the proper “papers” to prove they were “legal.” Patel was also the subject of anger regarding her attitude toward allowing Afghan and Ukrainian refugees into the country.

This kind of attitude maybe isn’t all that strange when it comes to one group of immigrants (or minorities) pitting themselves against another, which is clearly with the intent to curry favor with the dominant group. The majority of Indian immigrants in this country supposedly lean Democrat, and one Seattle City Council member, Kshama Sawant, is a “socialist” activist despite her surname indicating that her ancestors belonged to a higher “caste” than those with the Patel surname. While a Christian Science Monitor story in 2015 noted that “The Patels are a farmer caste that has risen to become synonymous with entrepreneurship and trade,” and in this country are prominent in the motel and convenience store businesses, it goes on to say some interesting things that suggest that at least some in Patel community have a sense of being “discriminated” against, at least for their kin back in India:

Now they are seeking affirmative action in the form of inclusion in a category of “backward” class designation that would give them government benefits. And that demand is playing out as a challenge to how modern India has adjudicated its still-existing caste system.

“Either free the country from reservation,” Mr. Patel (referring to  a local activist) declared, using the Indian term for affirmative action, “or make everybody the slave of reservation.” The phrase has been widely repeated on India media, with various interest groups taking very different readings on it…Affirmative action or reservations in colleges and government jobs were first introduced to help “untouchables,” or Dalits, and tribal groups. Such quotas were later expanded to include a range of other marginalized or disadvantaged castes and classes. 

Now the Patels want to be included in the category of “Other Backward Class.” In Gujarat this already includes 147 communities – some of whom this week opposed the Patels' demands. And while Patels have historically ignored college education for trade, that is changing. Affirmative action in education is suddenly important to the community, as sons and daughters wish for advanced schooling. There has always been a contradictory attitude to affirmative action, Mr. Vishvanathan says. “If it works for us we want it, if it doesn’t, then we don’t want it."

Ironically, it was the Patels that spearheaded anti-affirmative action protests in the 1980s in Gujarat. The issue even contributed to the community switching loyalties from the Congress Party to the Bharatiya Janata Party, which has since dominated the state and today controls the federal government. 

I put that line in boldface because that is also the attitude of most white women in this country who have long been the principle beneficiary of affirmative action (and still are via Title IX), yet once they have become the largest share of students in college classrooms, they oppose affirmative action and have often been the “face” of anti-affirmative action lawsuits. But now we see Asian immigrants (especially Chinese) being the “face” of anti-affirmative action lawsuits despite the fact that they are vastly over-represented; white people who tried to overturn affirmative action for under-represented minorities now find that they themselves are the victims of their own claims of what constitutes “merit.”

So we can see why someone like Kash Patel may have some personal self-pity about his “place” in American society because many of his caste still in India (over 4 million) feel the same way. He has chosen—like those in India—to abandon the “liberal” party and join the right-wing one, in this country of course the Republican Party which feeds into the idea of both “privilege” and the belief of many that they are being kept “down” by an “association” with other non-white groups who are “inferior,” and in order to counteract this perception they must become more bigoted than a typical white supremacist; of course we could look at someone like Clarence Thomas as an example of a black man with similarly radical reactionary beliefs.

Patel’s belief that he is being “targeted” because he is “brown” can now be understood as a defense mechanism against the legal trouble he may be facing now. To get back to the Washington Post story last year by David Ignatius, Patel worked for Rep. Devin Nunes and was an outspoken critic of the Mueller investigation. Patel then, like many in the Trump administration, found his way to prominent positions due solely for his “loyalty” rather than having any “expertise”—which was particularly true once Trump became “comfortable” as “president” and felt he didn’t need any “advice,” and just wanted sycophants to carry out even what were technically illegal or unethical actions.

According to Ignatius, “Patel then joined Trump’s National Security Council staff as senior director for counterterrorism. In 2020, he was a senior adviser to acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell and his successor, John Ratcliffe, helping lead their efforts to remove senior career intelligence officers”—especially those who warned of Russian cyber-attacks and election interference.

So desperate was Trump in his final months to stay in office he sought to install fanatics in positions he thought would help him: “Patel’s most prominent role was his final job, as chief of staff for acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller in the administration’s last two months. In that position, according to sources close to events, he challenged the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, and very nearly became acting director of the CIA himself.”

Ignatius notes that many in the administration were “confused” about what exactly Patel’s purpose was, and perhaps was even a dangerous character: “One top Pentagon official saw Patel as a direct threat to lawful government and says he advised him of potential legal risks. But several others described him as an ambitious but clumsy bumbler. ‘Was this a Machiavellian master plan, or the Three Stooges?’ asked one.”

So it is possible to understand why Patel may be feeling a bit under “attack.” Unfortunately he doesn’t have his “brown” skin to blame for this, but the fact that he committed an unlawful act to please a man for whom legal niceties was just a minor distraction.  In speaking to Fox News, Patel made this completely outrageous claim:

On the way out of the White House he (Trump) issued further declassification orders declassifying whole sets of documents. And this is a key fact that most Americans are missing. President Trump, as a sitting president, has the unilateral authority for declassification…He can literally stand over a set of documents and say these are now declassified and that is done with definitive action immediately.

No, that is not the correct procedure; there is a “process” that can bar declassification of certain documents, and why would Trump want to keep classified information that his successor in office might need to see for national security reasons? It is simply irresponsible (and possibly treasonous) at the very least. This is why it is so dangerous to have someone like Trump as president, and to give stooges like Patel authority to help him do illegal things without any accountability. Besides the probable violation of the Espionage Act, there is also suspicion that Trump removed damaging documents relating to the Russia investigation.  As the former FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi quoted in Newsweek asserted, it is simply incomprehensible what Trump and Patel are accused of doing:

Can you explain two things to people? One is, can Trump just say these are declassified, and that makes them declassified? And secondly, can you just declassify a document, but what's still in it, like What's in it? Like where are all our spy locations, information, could that still be classified? So I tell you what, why don't you and I, when we're done with our talk here today, let's go offline, and both of us will file a Freedom of Information Act request to the U.S. government and we'll say, 'Hey, we hear that all those pages of classified documents that were at Mar-a-Lago are declassified and we'd love to get a copy, since now they're unclassified.' And let's see what the answer is. You know what the answer is going to be? Screw you, Dean and Frank. Because they're not declassified. They're not!

It makes perfect sense—unless of course the law just gets in the way of a civilization based on laws. No, being “brown” doesn’t have anything to do Patel’s troubles at the moment. His trouble was playing the fool for Trump, as so many have, and are continuing to do so. Some of them, especially some members of Congress, could even be said to be guilty of conspiracy in his crimes by the act of defending his clearly unlawful acts.