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Three years ago (on September 1) at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Joe Biden delivered a speech his handlers called “the continued battle for the soul of the nation.” The battle, as it turned out, was against Americans who want the nation to be great. “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” said Biden adding:

But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.

MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.

MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.

MAGA Republicans have made their choice. They embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies.

We must be stronger, more determined, and more committed to saving American democracy than MAGA Republicans are to — to destroying American democracy.

And so on, with the Delaware Democrat, backdropped in red and accompanied by Marines, punching up “MAGA Republicans” a full 13 times. The obvious projection is easy to spot but three years later the long back story has come to the fore.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is investigating the “intelligence community” types who deployed covert operations against candidate and President Donald Trump. Long before the 2016 election, the mindset for such operations was firmly in place.

“The CIA’s liberal American culture” and “their disdain for American conservatives is not cerebral but visceral the kind that Brahmins have for lower castes,” wrote Angelo Codevilla in Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a New Century.  The 1992 book should have been titled Why the CIA is a Threat to the Nation.

Codevilla gained his first security clearance at age 23, and became one of the few people to have seen everything the CIA wanted money for. The typical CIA officer, he noted, never performed manual labor and was “never close to anybody who has lived by it.” The typical CIA officer has never served in the armed forces, never known danger, and is not an expert in any field, which translated into performance.

The CIA basically recycled East German propaganda and failed to see the revolt against Communism in the late 1980s. In similar style in the new century, the massive attack of September 11, 2001 took the CIA completely by surprise, and there’s a reason that is so.

Difficulties in the CIA’s relationship with Israel began after the CIA fired counterintelligence expert James Angleton in 1974. The agency’s pro-Arab sentiment was such that, as Codevilla recalls, Israel refused to turn over pieces of Soviet armaments gained during the invasion of Lebanon. Gus Hall voter John Brennan never should have got in the door but in 1980 the CIA hired him. Brennan rose through the ranks at lightning speed and in 2013, composite character president Obama made him CIA director.

Brennan believes that jihad “is a holy struggle in pursuit of a moral goal” and has nothing to do with violence. The enemy wasn’t militant Islam but Obama’s domestic opposition, those conservative types who value their constitutional rights. By law the CIA is tasked to operate only abroad. Brennan’s hubris is such that he titled his book Undaunted: My Fight Against America’s Enemies, at Home and Abroad. Brennan directs a sulfuric hatred toward Trump, noted by former CIA man John Gentry in Neutering the CIA: Why US Intelligence Versus Trump has Consequences.

Brennan signed the letter charging that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation, which all 51 signatories knew was false. Consider signatory Mike Morell, two-time “acting” director of the CIA. His Great War of Our Time is freighted with CIA ad copy, including this classic, about the alleged dedication of CIA officers in the counterterrorism center:

That dedication, I think, was captured simply and beautifully in the written answer to a question on a job application by the son of one of the finest scientist in the history of the CIA. The question was “if I had the opportunity to meet someone from the past or present, who would it be and why?” His answer: “If I had the opportunity to meet anyone, past or present, I would elect to meet the man my dad becomes when he goes to work every day at CIA. I love my dad because he is the very definition of fatherhood: stoic, strong, capable. His career at CIA has always been out of my view, save for the awards and promotions he has brought home. My father is one of the countless unsung heroes of the clandestine service. I would love nothing more than to meet my dad at work, because as far as I am concerned, I would be meeting Superman.”

The CIA officers are not just elitist liberals, partisan Democrats, or Brahmins with a visceral loathing of the people. They are self-certified Supermen, the ubermenschen of the deep state, with the same hatred of the people Joe Biden expressed three years ago. The president is the only official elected by all the people and last year the people opted for Trump. Even so, Morell, Brennan, Clapper, Comey et al, remain in triumphal mode.

If the Russia hoaxers avoid prison, that will confirm that they are indeed the deep-state supermen, permanently above the law and off limits to prosecution. Should that immunity prevail, the deep state wins and covert operations against the people will continue down the line. Prosecution of these “supermen” should be job one for Tulsi Gabbard and Pam Bondi, but there’s more to it.

As Codevilla explains, the deep-state types represent “the most immediate threat to representative government,” so Congress should eliminate FISA, reform the FBI, and above all break up the CIA. In the meantime, let Biden’s speech serve as a reminder of deep-state hatred for the people. In 2025 moving forward, it will always be about memory against forgetting.