My oldest daughter thought I was kidding when I wrote on Facebook that Anthony Wiener should resign his seat in the U.S House of Representatives. I was absolutely serious. This is not simply a case of mistakenly sending a picture of his junk to one person, or six people, or 40,000.
It was a pattern of narcissism-driven risk-taking with several different women over three years, and during his new marriage as well. Then he lied with impunity to his wife, his friends, his constituents, and to millions of us who thought of him as our champion and wanted to believe his lies. I reserve the use of “oops, I did it again,” as an excuse made by a much lower class of individual and certainly not conduct becoming a U.S. Representative.
The political/religious right will now be able to use this totally disabled mess-of-a-man as an example, an easy talking point about a progressive hypocrite. Wiener’s credibility is in the toilet. He was Obama's point man. Now Wiener is nothing more than a liability for progressives, while other jerk-offs like Andrew Breitbart gain credibility as actual journalists. Anthony Wiener's job was to fight for us, and now he can no longer do that job in the arena of Washington politics. He should resign.
Someone else reacted in surprise to my earlier comments and lamented that they typified a culture of Puritanism. I was in college in 1974. Anyone else who shared that experience with me would “lol” at the very idea of me and Puritanism being mentioned in the same sentence. Since I am neither a convicted felon nor a religious convert, my moral certitude has not changed, but is still as firmly entrenched as ever, thank you very much.
It is, (I’ll apologize in advance for offending anyone out there in cyberspace) my belief that the younger generation is so much more socially and sexually uptight, image-obsessed, and puritanical than my generation ever was or is today. It is not my culture (or better put, my generation) that is becoming more puritanical, I am afraid it is theirs.
Big business has inundated and inculcated the youth culture with a mind-numbingly staggering number of rules denoting everything that is cool, edgy, yesterday; all designed to get them to feel insecure and to assuage that insecurity by going out and buying more stuff. It seems that younger folks are conditioned to follow anything and everything that they are told that promises to improve their self esteem or general social cred.
How, you ask, do the notions of Puritanism and Consumerism relate to my present diatribe about Anthony Wiener? So sorry that it takes more than a five-second sound byte to explain; please be patient.
You see, the middle class is currently losing a protracted battle with a group of very powerful theocrats and oligarchs who have combined forces and have no problem reducing our nation’s population to little more than that of indentured servants who simply do as they are told. The middle class may cease to exist within a generation.
Younger folks may have nothing to take over from us but bills, electronics, and a plethora of rules for or against everything we formerly thought was our own business behind closed doors. That eventuality, my fellow Americans, would fulfill the prime prerequisite for a theocracy and is the essence of Puritanism.
As only one example, a man running against Sen. Amy Klobuchar in Minnesota named Dan Severson is running on a platform that there is no such thing as the separation of church and state. Below is his direct quote:
"Quite often you hear people say, 'What about separation of church and state? There is no such thing. I mean it just does not exist, and it does not exist in America for a purpose, because we are a Christian nation. We are a nation based on Christian principles and ideals, and those are the things that guarantee our liberties. It is one of those things that is so fundamental to the freedoms that we have that when you begin to restrict our belief and our attestation to our Christian values you begin to restrict our liberties. You simply cannot continue a nation as America without that Christian base of liberty."
There is no historical basis for his views. In fact, our Founding Fathers, like James Madison and Thomas Jefferson, were staunch advocates for the complete separation of church and state, as they did not believe that there were any officially Christian nations that provided actual religious liberty to their people. I agree with them.
Thomas Jefferson once said: "Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites."
Theocrats like Dan Severson, Michelle Bachman, Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee, and basically the whole Tea/GOP would be tickled pink to shove their own brand of religious liberties (i.e. rules and regulations) down our throats. Big business is financing their crusade because they both believe that an enslaved populace is a compliant populace who buy everything and question nothing.
It is not simply another election cycle, my friends. We are looking at a slow but inexorable movement toward a theocracy, powered by the Koch Brothers, enforced by Haliburton and Blackwater.
When selfish idiots like Wiener champion our cause and then sully it with behavior more in keeping with the coming-of-age movie, American Pie...and then repeatedly lie about it, the news cycles all but ignore how Sara Palin said that Paul Revere, on his famous midnight ride, was actually trying to warn the BRITISH and ignore that her followers tried to flood Wikipedia to change the actual historical record, so that Palin would not look like the imbecile that she is. But now everyone is talking about Wiener’s wiener or that psychopath who killed her child in Florida. And folks like me are left feeling as if we are in the middle of a Kurt Vonnegut novel.
Anthony Wiener was one of my personal heroes and he should resign.
Please excuse the phantom limb syndrome.
J. Brandeis Sperandeo
Before I go on my forthcoming diatribe, I want to make sure you know I really enjoyed your essay. It was well written and reasoned - I mostly just disagree with the level of political backlash you anticipate.
ReplyDeleteI can agree that the right will use Wienergate to persuade folks into voting for the GOP. So what? They lie, cheat, and make up history to get people to vote for them. I'm not worried.
For this reason if I'm faced with either voting for Wiener or for some typical DFLer, I'll choose Wiener every time. Frankly, every single one of us would lie about these types of embarrassing issues when pressed about them - especially in public. Virtually every person I know if asked in public would lie about the last time they ... ahh ... umm ... touched themselves. This is no surprise. This is just a lingering effect from the history of an America washed with puritanical fury.
To be clear, this isn't the situation of most politicians on the right who find themselves faced with lying about some secret, sexual incident(s). With few exceptions, those in the GOP who find themselves lying about their behaviors have spent a lifetime of condemning such behaviors and claiming moral superiority to all others. Such hypocrisy is far more disqualifying and damning (to me) than someone who makes a bad decision to briefly lie because he was embarrassed by a private (and irrelevant) decision he made.
There is NOTHING (I repeat NOTHING!) that causes me concern about Anthony Wiener faithfully and properly representing his constituents in Congress. I unequivocally believe his ability to lead and support legislation that will move this country in a proper direction has not been compromised - unless the rest of us let it get in the way. In fact, I can think of few others who are equally qualified to battle the hyperbole of the GOP than Anthony Wiener.
Bottom line: his decision to lie about an embarrassing, personal situation does not give me any pause to believe he will not always politically act in the best interest of this country.
For this reason, I will continue to support him and would vote for him any day of the week.
I agree with every single thing that you said, except the part about his continuing ability to do his job in Washington. He has not just been deserted, he has been turned on by the fickle Beltway politicians in his own party. He is damaged goods.
ReplyDeleteHuma would have to pull a Hilary to save him and I don't see her doing that. I am afraid about what is still out there and I suspect that is why Huma is hanging out with the Sec. of State right now.
On his worst day (and his days will get worse before they get better) he is a finer, more moral, decent, dedicated human being than the whole Tea/GOP and 1/2 of the Dems combined. But right now, his continued presence in Washington politics is hurting the progressive cause instead of helping it. It kills me to have to say this.
Brandeis