From Ron Flipkowski's Politics Bulletin on Meidas+:
… Agent Michael Feinberg’s resigned from the FBI: “The newly installed Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Norfolk Field Office, Dominique Evans, made clear to me that, at the direction of Dan Bongino, my career with the organization had—for all intents and purposes—come to an end. It would be an understatement to say that I had not expected this. In fact, I was in the midst of preparing for a potential move to DC to take on a new position at FBI headquarters.”
… “But, it turned out, I had made a terrible mistake: I had remained friends with someone who had appeared on Kash Patel’s enemies list. How did Bongino find out about this private friendship? I honestly don’t know. What business was it of his? None at all. Was I accused of any sort of misconduct? No. It didn’t matter. Under Patel and Bongino, subject matter expertise and operational competence are readily sacrificed for ideological purity and the ceaseless politicization of the workforce.”
… He said Patel and Bongino were going after him because he was friends with Peter Strzok: “Our own friendship began with a discovery that we liked the same bands and shared an interest in trying new restaurants. Most of our conversations since he left the Bureau have involved debating the relative merits of New Order versus Joy Division.”
Joy Division An Ideal for Living (1978): Maybe not Ian Curtis's best moments ("She's Lost Control"? "Love Will Tear Us Apart"? "Dead Souls"?) but JD's gothic riff rock power is right there on their debut 7". Manchester's Declaration of Independence from the '77 punk rock pack.
New Order "Blue Monday" (1983): Best selling 12" single of all time. Dylan's "How does it feel?" recontextualized with epic bass bounce and a minor-key goth melody. The electro-disco bass sound they picked up in NYC not long after The Clash did the same in the making of "The Magnificent Seven." After the understandably tentative feel of Movement, this single and their second album, Power, Corruption, and Lies, signal a great leap forward in terms of the rhythmic use of synths and electronics. Still elegiac but less claustrophobic and more seductively danceable.
Not the final word on the either/or question but I'm more a why-not-both kind of guy anyway. No say where Strzok and Feinberg are on this question but I'm more interested in what they think than Patel or Bongino, for sure.
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