Thursday, November 18, 2010

Power corrupts

Via Instapundit, this piece on what certain incoming congressmen should expect is full of ....  well, just WRONGness.

The effect this place has, especially [on] men who come to Washington who are away from their families and the behavior you see at night is the behavior you often saw from our friends in college. Especially unattractive members of the Congress who have not had women show attention to them maybe since college. They come here. Power is an aphrodisiac. Suddenly they have women who are interested in them. It’s a temptation some can’t withstand.”
As I'm reading this, I've got ten thousand thoughts all jumping out of my head.  Here's a few that I managed to grab before they flew away.

1 - This is about as negative a connotation on the female gender as you can really write, because the bottom line that comes bursting through is that women only care about power and money.  Yes, yes, I know that only a small percentage of women are out there chasing congressmen, but still, it reinforces the perception.

2 - THIS IS WHY ETHICS AND MORALS MATTER.  Well, it's one of the many reasons why.  There will be a ton of temptations thrown at new members of congress in every direction.  "Vote the way I want and your wife won't see these pictures, mkay?"  "Vote the way I want and these photos of you and your mistress won't show up during your re-election campaign, got it?"  A man who cheats on his wife probably can't be trusted in smaller matters.  You can call that harsh, but if he'll break his oath to his spouse, he'll break his oath to you and anyone else.

There's only two or three paragraphs in that article, and in my mind they manage to encompass a huge amount of wrongness about D.C.

1 comment:

Rivrdog said...

Way back in 1967, when I went to USAF OTS (90-day wonder school), they told us that the reason we had to keep our minds and bodies pure was exactly for the reason you listed: the Sovs had agents all over the place dropping dollars at brothels, etc, and if we got dirty, they would find out and blackmail us.

You hit a rusty old nail on the head.

BTW, my OTS instructor was forward-thinking enough to include homosexuality in the list of no-nos, even though in society then, being queer was a no-no except in North Beach, SFO.