Bill Barr is inserting himself into politics again.  And he's doing it in the best way to get fawning media coverage — sniping at his former boss, President Donald J. Trump.  Barr issued a statement about Trump:

He does not have the ability for strategic thinking and linear thinking or setting priorities or how to get things done in the system. He will deliver chaos, and if anything lead to a backlash that will set his policies much further back than they otherwise would be.

The doctor's diagnosis is that Trump lacks the temperament or wisdom to deliver on his promises.  Okay, fine.  But before we accept his advice, let's assess his expertise on the subject.

Is Barr saying that another Trump presidency would somehow be different from the last?  In his last term in office, Trump provided

• Middle East peace progress via the Abraham Accords,
• energy independence,
• secure borders,
• economic prosperity,
• enhanced national security — confronting threats and strengthening NATO, and
• exposing that the D.C. swamp was working against the wishes of the self-governed — perhaps his greatest accomplishment.

Is Barr saying Trump doesn't have the discipline to deliver any of that — again?  Or is Barr simply in dread of the "chaos" that he perceived during the first Trump administration?

But what Bill Barr mistakes for "chaos" was actually "disruption" — something entirely different.

"Chaos" is disorder and confusion.  It is allowing anarchy to rule.  As applied to America, chaos would be the breakdown of our social order — allowing everyone to operate outside any legal boundaries.  It would be government functionaries each pursuing his personal agenda rather than the mission assigned them by the citizenry.

"Disruption" is something quite different.  It is the imposition of turmoil to arrest the advancement of something.  It can be used for destruction or correction.  Turmoil could be used to disrupt progress toward racial harmony, or to disrupt the corruption of a self-serving administrative state.

To someone without strategic vision, "disruption" may look like "chaos."  Patients in cancer treatment appear to be suffering from biological chaos.  The nausea, loss of hair, loss of weight, and susceptibility to infection make it appear that the body is losing to the natural ravages of entropy.  But that's not what's happening at all.  The patient's body is in turmoil while the advancement of the cancer is disrupted.  The patient is trading short-term hardship for long-term health.

Donald Trump is a disruptor.  He inflamed tempers more than any president in modern history, because he didn't adhere to the D.C. swamp orthodoxy.  He made progress internationally, economically, and constitutionally by doing things differently.  He is the George Patton of presidents.  His methods are aggressive, and sometimes harsh.  But he made progress on all of the fronts noted above.

However, while he successfully exposed the corruption, he failed to cure it because he was surrounded by "experts" who didn't understand that they had sick patients.  They pushed for order over disruption.  Bill Barr was one such "seasoned pro" who contributed to that failure.

Barr inherited a very afflicted Department of Justice, in which the cancer had metastasized throughout all of its organs.  Prior to Barr taking responsibility, the patient had

• destroyed evidence of criminal activity during the Mid-Year Exam investigation — Hillary Clinton's exposure of classified documents with an illegal email server,
• created an insurance plan called the Crossfire Hurricane investigation — to keep the people's choice from becoming president,
• falsified evidence and misled a FISA court to surveil a political party,
• charged Michael Flynn with felony lying to the FBI — even though no crime had been committed and the investigating agents noted no deception, and
• fully embraced the Lavrentiy Beria method of criminal justice — when Robert Mueller (whom Barr fawns over in his book) was shown the man and sent to find the crime.

If Dr. Barr didn't see the tumors in his department, he was not the diagnostician that he now claims to be.

When Barr was charged with caring for his patient, he chose a few years of relative comfort over long-term survival.  He chose order when disruption was called for.

Under his leadership, lawbreakers within the DOJ have remained relatively unpunished.  Andrew McCabe was never charged for committing the crime that he had charged Michael Flynn for.  Kevin Clinesmith violated the civil rights of Carter Page when he falsified evidence against him.  But he was charged for a lesser crime and can still practice law.

Warrantless surveillance of Americans continued under Bill Barr.  The inspector general reports that illegal violations by the DOJ are now down to 130,000 in 2022.  That's an improvement from the millions of violations just a few years earlier.  That is 356 constitutional violations per day, from the department charged with "justice" — that didn't acquire any ethical guardrails under Bill Barr.

The FBI actively worked to violate the 1st Amendment rights of Americans by seeking to censor unwelcome speech.  Those 80 agents assigned to Twitter to shut down "disinformation" were in place during Barr's tenure.

His department worked to influence an election by hiding or discrediting evidence of Biden family corruption.  A whistleblower in Barr's own department offered evidence of Biden bribery and was ignored.  When news of the Hunter Biden laptop became public, officials in the DOJ attempted to hide it, and when that failed, they attempted to discredit it.  That's the "justice" that Bill Barr's Department of Justice delivered.

Leadership like Bill Barr's is why a disruptor like Donald Trump is necessary.  Barr could have excised the cancer from the DOJ, with a president who would have helped him, but chose instead to ignore the tumor and let it metastasize.  His DOJ needed disruption, but he allowed it to continue unimpeded on its path of two-tiered justice and violation of the Constitution.

Now Bill Barr ignores his own contribution to what will surely be actual chaos — if left undisrupted.  When the public has lost complete confidence in our criminal justice system, there will be actual chaos.  I hope Barr likes the Purge that he will have helped to create.  And yet he has the temerity to claim that the rot after the body dies is the fault of the guy who wanted to give treatment.

Existing government officials with a Barr-like mindset of see nothing and do nothing are why a disruptor like Trump was necessary in 2016 — and remains necessary today.  Barr chose "business as usual" rather than corrective action for the DOJ.  Rather that treat the tumor, he just touched up the x-ray, looked the other way, and enjoyed a couple of years of blissful ignorance in lieu of painful recovery.  The current state of DOJ corruption is the direct result of Barr choosing to let the corruption grow — undisrupted.  The abuses of the Merrick Garland DOJ are Bill Barr's legacy.

John Green is a political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho.  He has written for American Thinker and American Free News Network.  He can be followed on Facebook or reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.

Image via Flickr, public domain.