Steve Sailer writes: “Have you ever noticed the sex scandals that tend to befall Republican Speakers of the House and would-be Speakers ever since the House impeached Bill Clinton in 1998? First Newt, then Bob Livingston, recently Denny Hastert, and now Kevin McCarthy. Just sayin’ …”
Comments to Sailer:
* My conjecture is that the most such affairs would be known in a matter-of-factly way by the congressmen and staffers on the Hill. How could it be otherwise, really, in such a cloistered, competitive, back-stabbing environment? Affairs are merely “secret” to the public–and kept that way by a “balance of terror” among the congressional aparatchniks, who essentially blackmail each other by threat of mutual public exposure.
In a more speculative vein: When one of these things does come out into the light of day, there is usually a “coincidental” purpose behind it–that is, the revelation is rarely gratuitous, but serves a larger political end to disqualify a given person at a vulnerable time (e.g., during an attempted ascent in the hierarchy) or to bring discredit on the party overall (e.g., the revelations about that Florida Republican congressman in 2006, in the run-up to a midterm election).
I imagine there must be a lot of backroom consultation going on just before one of these sacrificial lambs is exposed, to make sure any thoughts of retaliation are contained. With few exceptions, the “lambs” seem to do pretty well for themselves afterwards, so perhaps that’s part of the deal, too.
* When I was teenage I dismissed “Conspiracy theories” but today with the Internet and knowing how the Elites actually think and act being paranoid and suspicious is a obligation.
* I think a great app or program would be one which makes random searches while the owner is not using it. It would create so much information and disparate information that it would render any analysis (marketing or intelligence) useless. It would have restrictive search parameters, e.g., no searches for anything illegal or red flagging.
Look, you’re never too old to learn from the wisdom of James Michael Curley, the four-time mayor of Boston and later governor of Massachusetts. Curley won his first political victory in 1904 while in prison for fraud (his campaign slogan was, “He did it for a friend”). Curley taught his protégés that the first rule of politics is, “Never write if you can speak; never speak if you can nod; never nod if you can wink.”
Assume everything is being read and everything is being recorded and you’ll only have to worry about the stuff that will be fabricated against you.
* My go-to proof of this is the whole Petraeus affair.
The official story: a local FBI agent is tasked to track down some kind of harassment/prestige abuse between civilian socialites at the local military base. In the process, he gets clearance to read the email of the HEAD OF THE CIA -unquestionably one of the 5 most classified individuals on the planet, and stumbles onto evidence of an affair.
This is so preposterous it is simply unbelievable that it was even proposed as the official explanation. But the affair actually happened, so there was no interest in exploring how or why it was discovered in the first place.
* I wonder how our post-privacy world will affect the careers of future politicians that are growing up in it? Will the search histories, comments, facebook statuses, etc. prove to be goldmines for oppo research or will the ubiquity of it force candidates into a reciprocal respect/indifference for each others’ past? Of course, it will also likely be a goldmine for blackmailing special interest puppeteers…
* If the picture Snowden portrays of the access to information and lax controls that NSA analysts have, it is inevitable that private information is being collected and used routinely by private actors–given the number of people with access, it couldn’t be any other way. Lots of this is probably personal stuff, like getting dirt on an ex-wife to use in a custody hearing. Some is probably insider trading stuff, or checking up on people you want to do business with. Some is probably leaking embarrassing information about people whose politics you don’t like.
I strongly suspect it is also being used to influence policy related to the war on terror and domestic spying. Blackmail wouldn’t work well for that–once three prominent politicians said they were being blackmailed on TV, there would be a big public scandal. But simply giving leads to opposition research types or reporters to knock out potentially problematic congressmen would work pretty well. And the unspoken threat of blackmail is probably pretty powerful–if you’re on the oversight committee, every time you want to ask a hard question of the NSA director, you think about what happened last month in the hotel with the hot 19-year old campaign volunteer, and decide that maybe civil liberties are just less important than keeping us safe from terrorists.
* Wouldn’t it be amusing if this site was simply a baited trap to capture the identity of dissidents from the conventional wisdom to make it easier to round them up when the proper time arrives?
Could “Steve Sailer” be a fictional character?
* I assume the FBI and NSA are keeping close tabs on the people on this site just in case. Of course, as a result, they’re not watching ISIS-cells, but hey, what harm could that cause, right, Pam Geller?
* I, too, once discounted conspiracy theories. Then the LIBOR-fix story came out. Literally hundreds to maybe a thousand people knew an index utilized to price countless trillions of dollars in assets is being regularly was regularly and systematically rigged. In 2007 if you posited that, you would have been labeled as a tin-foiler.
I believe in conspiracy theories now.
* Sydney Biddle Barrows told her girls, “Never say anything over the phone that you wouldn’t want your mother to hear in court.”
Timeless advice.
