Maybe this "Me Too" thing was worth doing after all, just to make clear the scale of this problem. It's starting to look like this bad behavior is rampant in places of power -- now Al Gore is being accused by multiple women. I suppose finding out that both halves of the Clinton administration are guilty is unsurprising, given that the boss sets the tone for the workplace. Nor are Republicans well placed to say much, I guess, with Trump at the head of the party.
Do you suppose that the worst people seek power, or that the power makes them worse?
Yes to both, of course.
ReplyDeleteI've sometimes wondered what kind of person I would become in an environment populated with sycophants and people looking to get an edge on the rest any way they can. I figured that after a while I'd start to feel 1) entitled and 2) cynical about the morals of everyone else.
RE: "Do you suppose that the worst people seek power, or that the power makes them worse?"
ReplyDeleteFrank Herbert (of the Dune series), and I paraphrase: "Its not that power corrupts, but that power is a magnet for the corrupted."
I try to re-read the whole (original) series every few years, but lately have just been re-reading the last one, Chapterhouse: Dune. The guy had some great insights on people, power, and institutions.
I fully support a lottery system for top tier government positions. We simply cannot do worse than career politicians.
One thing that's lost in the hoo-rah is the band wagon scale of the piling on. And that so much of the accusations and piling on are from the Left in Hollywood.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing that's lost in the hoo-rah: what are the accusees guilty of--what have they actually done? Accusations certainly want investigation, but where's the evidence? Where's the proof at trial?
And: all we have so far are what a mendacious NLMSM has chosen to publish. There's no public record of actual evidence (see above).
Eric Hines
This does have merits, but also may have downside.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure someone is already figuring out how to weaponize this for political or corporate gain.
RE: "Do you suppose that the worst people seek power, or that the power makes them worse?"
I believe the answer to that is 'Yes'.
My father was a CPA. When he was young, he got a job at one of the largest, most famous firms in the country. He stayed for a few years, and left because, as he put it, 'he didn't like the office politics and rat race'. He ended up working at the archdiocese for thirty years and was very happy with his decision. I suspect I'm getting a much better sense of what it was he was working to avoid.
Before the concept of Honor was pissed away, there were consequences to bad behavior. Not always, to be sure, nevertheless one could be shunned, or challenged, or hung (if it was a matter of national duty.)
ReplyDeleteDon't you remember Tipper dumping his sorry arse because he was finding other women to release his chakras, unlike Hillary who stayed married for political purposes?
ReplyDeleteI don't suppose there has ever been a time in history when many people in a position to indulge their passions didn't prove unequal to the temptation. Some of these, when their power eroded, found that the society around them suddenly woke to the ugliness of their habits, as if noticing them for the first time.
ReplyDeleteA man like Weinstein, or Clinton, doesn't troll for all his own victims. He has to be surrounded by pimps, and cops who look the other way.
Don't you remember Tipper dumping...?
ReplyDeleteHe hasn't occupied a lot of my attention, honestly. He was only Vice President, and that nearly twenty years ago. Since then he's mostly famous as a maker of bad movies. Harvey Weinstein at least made good movies, at least some of the time.
A man like Weinstein, or Clinton, doesn't troll for all his own victims. He has to be surrounded by pimps, and cops who look the other way.
I remember that some of Clinton's State Police came forward and reported some corroboration of early reports about him. I suspect few took them seriously. If they were lying, perforce they were liars; and if they weren't lying, then they were admitting to having been corrupt policement. Either way, why put much weight on their word?
This is Americans seeing the Obamanation of Desolation. Demoncrats basically. Nothing all that unusual over the centuries.
ReplyDeleteThe culture is corrupt. The System is corrupt and if it doesn't fall or be shortened, nothing much will survive the collapse.
There no longer any more time. Or at least, Trum is probably the least merciful delay right up before the start of the end.
Good government never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders.
ReplyDeleteWhat you of the CHOAM directorate seem unable to understand is that you seldom find real loyalties in commerce. When did you last hear of a clerk giving his life for the company? Perhaps your deficiency rests in the false assumption that you can order men to think and cooperate. This has been a failure of everything from religions to general staffs throughout history. General staffs have a long record of destroying their own nations. As to religions, I recommend a rereading of Thomas Aquinas. As to you of CHOAM, what nonsense you believe! Men must want to do things out of their own innermost drives. People, not commercial organizations or chains of command, are what make great civilizations work. Every civilization depends upon the quality of the individuals it produces. If you over-organize humans, over-legalize them, suppress their urge to greatness -- they cannot work and their civilization collapses.
-A letter to CHOAM, Attributed to The Preacher
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
Y'all got on this boat for different reasons, but y'all come to the same place. So now I'm asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything, I know this - they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They'll swing back to the belief that they can make people... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin'. I aim to misbehave.
Captain Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) Serenity
One can think of it as Joss Whedon giving you a hint via artistic channeling. The villain is not always the "Other guy" but the one next to you. Washington thought Benedict was an honorable soul after all. Refused to believe the spy reports.