Recompromise Them All: The National Security Risk of The Closet For Gays and Straights
Yes, we do need to know about the personal lives of our politicians.
The word of the day is “recompromise” and what a word it is. Recompromise, I think, suggests that there might be a politics of mercy, a way forward in our fractious, often mean-spirited politics. Can we forgive one another?
I think it explains much of the politics we are seeing today. How else to account for Marjorie Taylor Greene’s or Kevin McCarthy’s sudden statesmanship in the debt limit negotiations?
Could it be that the reason Greene “bought” McCarthy’s used chapstick for $100,000 was because she had a foreign money problem? Ditto for Congressman Matt Gaetz who recently sponsored legislation — “Put Zombie Donors to Rest Act” — to clean up that dirty money. Greene has suddenly decided that she doesn’t need to see the footage from January 6th after all.
The truth is that it’s far easier to get into political power if you go up through a political machine. It’s easier still if you have a foreign intelligence operation raising money for you and backing you every step of the way. That is, in fact, precisely what seems to be the case with Senator Robert Menendez who is once again under investigation by the Department of Justice.
Sometime ago we reviewed gay neocon Jamie Kirchick’s book, Secret City, about homosexuality and the nation’s Capital. Not a bad book but terribly incomplete. Which nation was blackmailing people Jamie?
What does it say about the modern GOP that one of its most effective speakers was a foreign-compromised pedophile?
It’s often suggested that compromised people should be thrown away, that they should resign, or that they should be discarded. Such a gross way of being.
That, I think, is a question for the voters.
Who among us hasn’t fibbed to get a better job? Or to be liked? Or to be loved?
I agree with Milton Friedman. Politics isn’t about getting good men to do good things but about getting bad men to do great things.
I think there’s another way of going about this process. We should salute the gay men and women who come out and refuse to allow their genetically-induced behavior hold them prisoner for whatever service they might offer our country.
Just as homosexuality is genetic, so too is promiscuity. So too is being diabetic. (We know that foreign intelligence likes to recruit desperate people and that’s a big reason why capping expenses for drug prices is so essential.)
In this way, Pride Month isn’t just about the gays. It’s about allowing people to live their freeselves so long as they aren’t hurting anyone, least of all their country.
Hurt people hurt people. This we know.
So it’s all the more impressive when people rise above.
Yes, I write today to salute a great American — Governor Jim McGreevey of New Jersey who stood up to the Kushners.
The appropriate response to kompromat is to publish it.
By publishing the video of Senator John McCain betraying his country we freed him to vote his conscience in his final days. And what a cinematic period it was! Country First!
By making known to all the mistress of Attorney Ken Paxton and how he got leveraged by a foreign-connected donor some brave staffers changed the future of the state of Texas.
By exposing the affairs of Kevin McCarthy (and weird financial dealings) we enabled President Joe Biden to play hardball with McCarthy and to get us a good debt deal. And yes that’s almost exactly what happened.
By detailing Bill Clinton’s penchant for women Jeffrey Epstein helped British intelligence make the womanizing president a great one. He purportedly refused to be blackmailed by Bibi and Monica—and pardoned Marc Rich.
By making known CEO Francis deSouza’s extramarital affair we can make it so that no nation can continue to leverage it over him. (He should still depart Illumina, of course! But that’s for a lack of vision and ties to the Chinese not because he dated a subordinate.)
By exposing the drug-addled lifestyle of Hunter Biden (which itself is genetically inclined) we can go beyond the kind of moralistic, unrealistic politics which has no space for those of us who are a bit odd, a bit off. Vive la difference. Isn’t our motto e pluribus unum?
The trick is to identify the things to which we are all inclined first and to spend a life avoiding those triggers. And helping others avoid their triggers.
Some time ago I thought that Gawker needed to be destroyed for outing Peter Thiel. As if anyone was surprised that Thiel was gay.
In fact Nick Denton did Thiel a favor. He freed him to say, without shame, in an audience filled with Republicans. “I’m proud to be gay, I’m proud to be a Republican bust most of all I’m proud to be an American.”
And you know what? These Republicans gave him a standing ovation.
Have faith in the people and they’ll have faith in you.
Of course maybe don’t go collecting citizenships if you want people to trust you.