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Wholly Schiff!
In a comment the other day, I linked to a post by John Solomon which thanked Adam Schiff for providing supporting evidence for several articles that Solomon had written. I think we should be grateful to Schiff for a much wider range of things: he has taken us on a guided tour of the “deep state.”
It is like reading a book by Margaret Meade about Pacific Islanders and their unique beliefs and behavior. The people we have met have all been more arrogant than their intelligence/experience/knowledge support. We hear over and over about their “portfolio.” As near as I can figure, that is French for “My turf and no one, not even the President can encroach on it.” They totally resent being left out of any conversation that they think is something they should be in on. They despise Trump for having policies that are not supported by their “inter-agency policy.”
These denizens of the deep State Department (a subset) seem to live in a world of subtlety, nuance, and indirection. It is clear that those who speak their mind – like Trump and Giuliani – who speak forcefully and clearly and don’t have a bone of nuance in their body, would be treated like foreign invaders.
At the same time, they seem to be woefully ignorant of many significant and relevant points of information.* As an example, this morning, Amb. Fiona Hill said that there was no connection at all between the Bidens and Burisma. She also said that there was no evidence at all that Ukraine had interfered in the US elections and anyone who said so was a pawn of Russian propaganda. I have heard others saying that there was no evidence of Biden’s interference in investigations, seemingly not having seen the video of his bragging about threatening to hold back on military funding to have a prosecutor fired.
Now, I am just a retired engineer living in a log-home (with limited internet bandwidth), but I seem to be following these things better than our “experts.” I am thinking about setting up a consulting group to advise these experts on what is really happening in the real world.
* or willing to lie under oath.
Published in Foreign Policy
Great idea, but they’d never believe you.
Thanks for the interesting but insufficiently cynical post.🙂
Nooooo. . .did she really say that?
They aren’t selling me on their “brilliance” by constantly admitting to not knowing about some of these things. You are supposed to be convincing me that you are the smartest person in the room and certainly smarter than the Orange Man in the Whitehouse. You can’t have it both ways at the same time. All y’all have done is convince me we need to drain the swamp now more than ever! Out with the whole lot of ya!
One thing we learned is that the State Department is full of gossipy, opinionated, insufficiently self-aware and overpaid bureaucrats.
Much more succinct than my post!
This!! I have had about all I can stomach of the self important types “serving” our country. When new management takes over a private sector corporation the middle management and employees either buy into the new top management or find other employment. See exhibit: deadspin…i might have enjoyed a read or two over there but i could hardly contain my schadenfreude when the employees threw a massive tantrum and left. That was their prerogative though and “don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split ya” came to mind. Meanwhile these insufferable and apparently unfireable public service leaches just wont leave but instead stay and undermine the elected leaders. I wish that were the story instead of all the fuss over the President’s lack of decorum.
Even our own pundits cant see the forest for the trees in this regard. I love Jonah but I almost cant listen to him anymore unless it’s GLOP.
Here is what I wrote Democrat relative who said “
What Trump supporters have to deal with is he did what he is accused of and they have to decide if that is Ok for a President or anyone in public office.”
I said
“Not if it’s ok, but was it an impeachable offense. They can’t show that he did it, but it’s fairly likely that he put it in motion on purpose toward a partisan end. Was it unwise, unusual, partisan or was it illegal and can it be shown to be? If demonstrably illegal did it rise to an impeachable offense? I think if it were clearly impeachable they’d have had normal hearings, with both sides offering witnesses including the partisan Democrat they’ve not let folks interview. They knew they didn’t have enough to get the Senate to join them and get it done but they think they can use it to help their reelection and they probably could maybe even without an impressive candidate So far they have a five foot tall gay mayor of a small town. We shouldn’t take these folks seriously but the whole exercise is instructive and should tell us just how deeply harmed our country has been, not by Trump, but by the destruction of the constitutional system we had until the 20th century. The US and other Anglo Saxon countries stumbled into ground up systems, embraced them and created modernity and wealth. The question is whether we can continue them. The impressive bunch of senior bureaucrats show us that it isn’t likely.”
Am I seeing things or:
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