Conservatives are onto government repression (but only of conservatives)

Comment published on New York Times blog in response to news article, “House approves GOP inquiry into ‘weaponization’ of government,” January 10, 2023:

This bit sounds marvelous:

"The subcommittee will have open-ended jurisdiction to scrutinize any issue related to civil liberties or to examine how any agency of the federal government has collected, analyzed and used information about Americans."

They are welcome to contact me; I will be happy to testify. In 2015 I was targeted by the NYPD (and, I assume, the FBI) for harassment, with bizarre insinuations about terrorism. All I was guilty of was having chosen to be a writer, and recently studied abroad, with an interest in political philosophy and --- I am on the left. Oops.

For the house committee is only interested in the government's targeting or harassment of conservatives. I don't qualify -- unless, as some of my readers think, I am a conservative, which would only be peculiar because I think the (unusually and much increased) repressive character of our police state is caused not be oversized government or welfare agencies so much as capitalism.

People close to me were engaged, along with an obvious undercover cop. I was gaslighted, declared "mentally ill" and hospitalized on false psychiatric pretenses. Of doubtful relevance, it happened under the Obama administration. The police had arranged it, I was told, and advised to keep silent.

If "conservatism" means thinking parts of our government (like the police and the mental health system) are oppressive partly because they are too big and too powerful, I agree. Ask me; there's more.