A powerful senator from the most powerful nation in the world walks into a public restroom in an airport and proceeds to get himself arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer. The bathroom is notorious for casual gay sex and mounting complaints were the basis for the officer to be in that restroom. There’s no reason to disbelieve the scenario. Consonant with that we have the senator pleading guilty to a misdemeanor as a result of his being arrested.
The senator showed none of the outrage that he might have shown if this had been some sort of a set-up other than the sort of set-up that it was. He seems to say it was just a matter of mistaken signals; that he didn’t intend what the police officer surmised from the foot-tapping and the hand sliding along the partition and the senator’s foot touching the officer’s foot under the partition.
According to the officer, the senator actually stared into the officer’s stall through the doorjamb for what, in terms of ordinary bathroom etiquette, seems like a really long time before the rest of the activity occurred.
What are we to make of this? A powerful, Republican senator throws his career and his reputation; everything his life had culminated in, into the toilet and flushes it away because of the desire for anonymous sex with anyone who might be available in a public bathroom. It looks like a case of temporary insanity. It defies logic and it defies a powerful survival instinct. We can only imagine how powerful a survival instinct an American senator would have.
Lately a selection of Nietzsche’s quotes has been coming up in my mind because of things I have read in the news. There is one that perfectly fits this occasion; “Those whom the God’s would destroy they first drive mad.”
Over the last several years we have seen an epidemic of powerful individuals sacrificing everything they worked for on the altar of strange appetite. In most cases these individuals have been outspoken critics of the behavior they were compromised by. They have been exposed as classic hypocrites. Most of them have been Republicans.
It can be assumed that Larry Craig could have satisfied his desire for casual sex in a number of less dangerous ways. He could have had a remote cabin in Idaho. They have plenty of those and he could have rented someone for the times he needed someone. I imagine that he has plenty of money and there are thousands of websites where he could have ordered up just what he was looking for. Instead, he took pot luck in a public toilet with scant amenities and a serious degree of difficulty in the performance of his objective. Is he an adrenaline junkie?
Most of us are not powerful senators. We don’t talk to the president of the United States on the phone and interact with the movers and shakers in the world. We might be excused for a lack of judgment such as Senator Craig displayed. If we got arrested probably no one would have paid attention. We’d have soon been on our way to do whatever it was we did or wanted to do somewhere else.
We know that members of the Reagan-Bush White House were involved in a rent boy pedophile ring we know there was something strange going on in the Bush-Cheney White House with James Gannon we’ve heard a lot of strange things about Karl Rove and Dennis Hastert and Mitch McConnell that can make a guy wonder. Are the rumors true? I don’t know and I don’t care enough to stockpile evidence. I’m not curious about a person’s sexual inclinations. Others might be, especially when these people are such massive hypocrites; especially when these people deal death on a daily basis in pursuit of their twisted agendas.
Most people don’t want to know about the international pedophile rings that count among their members some of the richest, best connected and most important people on the planet. It’s too scary to think about. Thousands of children go missing every day and no one hears from most of them again. In France, a few years ago, hundreds of young girls disappeared and we never heard what that was about either. Everywhere you went in France there were posters up with the faces of these young girls.
The Franklin cover-up of the boy prostitutes in the Reagan Bush White House is a fact but... so much for the importance of facts and the rule of law. The hundreds of entries of Jim Gannon visiting the White House and then not signing out and signing out but not having signed in are a fact. There’s a lot of not so funny stuff going on in the cesspits of power but we don’t get any clarification and it all just slips away.
The Bush Crime Family is unrivaled in American history and it’s no great reach to assume that no matter what we think we know; the truth is far more terrible than our speculations.
Why would a powerful Republican senator self destruct in such an improbable way? How many other representatives and senators and sundry are up to the same thing right now? From what we’ve seen it is probably a lot. How much blackmail is operational right now? Probably a lot.
I feel sorry for Senator Craig. Whenever I hear about things like this I think, “There but for fortune go I.” Anyone of us could find ourselves in similar straights over the course of a lifetime. Now people laugh at the senator and make fun of him. He’s an international joke. It didn’t help for him to have been so predatory about Bill Clinton. It never helps to be self righteous and Senator Craig was that.
I think of all the ruined lives that our dysfunctional plumbing has caused. When you break it down it’s just the simple desire to be touched, to touch someone. If may be socially unacceptable in some cases but it’s really something to do with wanting love; wanting to feel close and have some kind of release with another human being.
Life can really be tragic. I don’t know what to think some times. I feel bad about Senator Craig. I can’t join in the joking and mocking and playground behavior of the bully boys scouting for the next victim of their scorn. Part of me says that he got what he deserved but I’m not sure that’s for me to say. I’d rather not pass judgment. I am keenly aware of human weakness; no stranger to it in my life or in the lives that I observe.
One thing I know, whatever Senator Craig is guilty of is small potatoes compared to some of the things going on. The press had no trouble getting into detail about Larry Craig. They seem to have real difficulty addressing what was happening in the Reagan-Bush White House and in the Bush-Cheney White House. They don’t seem very sanguine about the international pedophile activity that includes so many powerful individuals. Maybe they remember about Danny Casolaro and others who went looking into things they shouldn’t have.
Well, I guess we’ll just soldier on. The media and the government and most of the world’s market forces are all in the hands of people who get up to much stranger things than Larry Craig did. Whatever you might imagine it is probably worse than that. Nobody has much to say about these things. We know they happen. That’s just the way it is.
'Sing it Loud' is track no. 6 of 10 on Visible's eponymous
'Les Visible' Music Album
Lyrics (pops up)
16 comments:
I agree with you, entirely, Les.
My first thought on hearing of Craig's arrest was 'how curious that he just so happened to hit on an undercover policeman'. Hmm.
I suspect this story boils down to political shenanigans.
Meanwhile it has provided a timely change-of-focus from such topics as Gonzalez, Rove, and the pending report on Iraq.
I am not 100% sure there is a link between power and sexual abberation. It can be the case, I reckon, that those in power when they happen to be a pervert are more likely to get away with it than if they were just a regular run-of-the-mill person.
I strongly object to the words temporary insanity! Wait no it is just the one word "temporary" that I object to!
A powerful, Republican senator throws his career and his reputation; everything his life had culminated in, into the toilet and flushes it away because of the desire for anonymous sex with anyone who might be available in a public bathroom.
The above is simply not true, in my estimation.
Please consider the probability that Craig was set up.
Link
Morals are dependent on the society involved. However, the old adage ‘Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely’ is a truth.
Having said that I do feel this item was ready for plucking.
Tony
Good golly man, how many blogs have you got?
I like Mike riveros oft-used quote " Power attracts exactly the kind of people that shouldnt have it" Even if he was set-up, why was he taking such a "wide stance"? LOL, i cant help but giggle thinking about how outrageously comedic this is.....
Good piece.
Irrelevant if Senator Larry Craig was set up or whether John De Lorean for that matter. This is the way this game is played in the US. One may only ask, who was it that wanted his ouster and why?
I must say that I find it hard to believe Craig was set up since he seemed to know the little two-steps required to signal his intentions. I just think a typical Police Bog Block afficianado entrapment sting netted a really big fish on this occasion. It all begs that bigger question of why this seems so commonplace on the Conservative side of US politics.
Anon 3:40 I'm with you. If you look at the list of sexual predators and deviants, its nearly ALL men who identify as republican. I say this as a criminal justice professional. It is something I only noticed myself about 6 months ago. But it is very real.
Craig is a deviant simply because he is in deep denial about his sexuality. If he's gay, that's fine. But don't drag your whole family into it, the way he did.
Remember as well, frequent cocaine use promotes impotence, raising the need for higher adrenaline rushes to maintain an erection which can only be done by stronger stimuli, such as children. The people who worked the Franklin operation are not just randomly casting fishhooks into the water. Good read.
Well, we don't only have the Bush crime family, but we have as well,the Clinton crime family, the Sarkozy crime family,the Blair/Brown crime families,ect..ect..
A set up? It's quite possible, considering a sudden change of heart concerning that immigration bill.
new post here-
http://smokingmirrors.blogspot.com/
I'm going on the road for around ten days so I don't think I'll be putting up anymore posts until then. I also won't be able to list any comments although someone here at the house may well take care of that so send them in.
See you when I get back
Your post brings up more than JUST the point on Larry Craig; it brings up pedophilia and the harvesting of young souls who are to be martyred to continue the POWER system. Unfortunately this has hit me personally with the abuse of my two sons.
A c'est la vie attitude doesn't help young people who are used, abused and thrown away. Their lives nearly always end up in shreds and tatters, even with the very best of help.
Truly, as WE are the adults we must stand up for them, and to say "We WILL protect you and not look the other way." (See Alice Miller's powerful books, part. Thou Shalt Not Be Aware)
The whole system of protecting children that was being built up in the 1970s has been perverted and PROFESSIONALIZED and lost so many real advocates. It's going to take real work to build it up again. I like Dr. Phil but he does perpetuate this professionalization racket and imho should be getting aware individuals actively involved in taking political and social action THEMSELVES. This is so like what what you are talking about in the post about America. The things they could do - they simply do NOT do. Partly it was due to counterintel pro's vastly successful False Memory Syndrome movement.
I am an exAmerican who got tossed out for DOING something constructive about addiction and trauma ... and marrying the "wrong" person who worked with me after he recovered and cared enough to pass on what he learned after his abuse.
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