Quote of the Day: Treason from Within

 

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.” ― Marcus Tullius Cicero

I have never been a big fan of Cicero. That is probably because my view of him was colored by Colleen McCollough’s Masters of Rome series. I always viewed him as self-important and full of himself. Regardless, even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then. Certainly this quote seems apropos today, especially after the Red Balloon incident.

Seriously, how difficult is it to decide to take down a spy device by a hostile power? The first duty of a government is to protect its citizens from criminals, both individual and national. Yet this administration is letting both do what they will.

China is not ten feet tall and bulletproof. It has serious structural problems and is set for demographic collapse sometime within the next 20 years. (Forty years of One-Child Policy will do that for you.) And yet the administration refused to take immediate action against a reconnaissance balloon in a sparsely-inhabited portion of this country. [It was finally taken out Saturday.]

Similarly, the Democrats as a party side with criminals against honest citizens, prosecuting those defending themselves from thugs while releasing those committing crimes. They are preferring perverts to parents, and sheltering violent fascists calling themselves Antifa, while expending great effort to hunt down nonexistent “white supremacists.”

It is almost as if they are on the other side.

I have always been a big believer in the aphorism, “never attribute to malice what could adequately be attributed to stupidity.” Now? I knew Biden and many of his cronies are stupid, as are many Democrats on the state and municipal level.  Can they be that stupid, though? Or are they Cicero’s traitors from within?

I do not know.  My needle is moving towards Cicero, though.

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  1. Gossamer Cat Coolidge
    Gossamer Cat
    @GossamerCat

    Seawriter: It exploded yesterday, but it would not surprise me if a bunch of high school kids, shouting “Wolverine” ended up behind that.

    I don’t believe it exploded, although it shows how pitiful our main stream media are in that they did not dispel the confusion.  I think it is heading to the Carolinas.

    But if we won’t shoot it down, we can at least meme the heck out of it!

    Up House Chinese Spy Balloon Twitter

    • #1
  2. Doctor Robert Member
    Doctor Robert
    @DoctorRobert

    Seawriter: My needle is moving towards Cicero, though. 

    You’re slow.  This guy’s Ciceronean tendencies have long been apparent.

    • #2
  3. Misthiocracy has never Member
    Misthiocracy has never
    @Misthiocracy

    Seawriter: It exploded yesterday, but it would not surprise me if a bunch of high school kids, shouting “Wolverine” ended up behind that.

    Wait, where the heck did you read that?  The gov’t says they shot the balloon down over the Atlantic Ocean.

    I’m tellin’ ya, there’s gonna be lots of speculation online that there were multiple balloons that the gov’t isn’t telling us about.

    • #3
  4. Al Sparks Coolidge
    Al Sparks
    @AlSparks

    Seawriter uses Cicero to describe the philosophy informing the Biden Administration as traitorous.

    I agree with @seawriter with the overall result of their philosophy, but I still consider them as cowards more than traitors.  What C.S. Lewis called men without chests.

    That explains everything they’re doing.

    • #4
  5. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    Misthiocracy has never (View Comment):
    Wait, where the heck did you read that?  The gov’t says they shot the balloon down over the Atlantic Ocean.

    Reports last night were that it went down over Montana. They had not been updated when I posted this on Saturday morning. 

    • #5
  6. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Seawriter (View Comment):

    Misthiocracy has never (View Comment):
    Wait, where the heck did you read that? The gov’t says they shot the balloon down over the Atlantic Ocean.

    Reports last night were that it went down over Montana. They had not been updated when I posted this on Saturday morning.

    It seems that balloon moved on mighty fast when somebody wanted it to move fast. 

    • #6
  7. Flicker Coolidge
    Flicker
    @Flicker

    Seawriter: I have always been a big believer in the aphorism, “never attribute to malice what could adequately be attributed to stupidity.” Now? I knew Biden and many of his cronies are stupid, as are many Democrats on the state and municipal level.  Can they be that stupid, though? Or are they Cicero’s traitors from within?

    There comes a point after which repeated incompetence must be reevaluated as malice.

    • #7
  8. drlorentz Member
    drlorentz
    @drlorentz

    Based on the post’s title, I thought it was going to be about ConInc or the Republican Party. Color me disappointed.

    • #8
  9. Basil Fawlty Member
    Basil Fawlty
    @BasilFawlty

    Seawriter: I have never been a big fan of Cicero. That is probably because my view of him was colored by Colleen McCollough’s Masters of Rome series. I always viewed him as self-important and full of himself.

    He was a man of his periods.

    • #9
  10. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    drlorentz (View Comment):

    Based on the post’s title, I thought it was going to be about ConInc or the Republican Party. Color me disappointed.

    Embrace the power of “and.” Apply it as appropriate.

    • #10
  11. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    I think ol’ Chickpea was full of himself, but he was a consequential man at key moments – something Robert Harris’ three-volume account of his life gets across rather endearingly. But the portrayal of the man in HBO’s Rome feels more accurate. 

    • #11
  12. OwnedByDogs Lincoln
    OwnedByDogs
    @JuliaBlaschke

    There have been reports that the Biden Administration knew of the balloon for a week and were hoping to keep it quiet so it wouldn’t mess up Blinken’s climate meeting with the Chinese. Also, that Biden only decided to shoot it down when he saw that the Republicans were calling him weak and using it to damage him politically. To heck with the country’s national security, it might hurt my poll numbers! Oh, and Democrats think that allowing an invasion of our air space is fine as long as they could keep it quiet. They need to get the Chinese on board with our worthless climate change measures.  As if China is ever going to do that.

    • #12
  13. Nanocelt TheContrarian Member
    Nanocelt TheContrarian
    @NanoceltTheContrarian

    Al Sparks (View Comment):

    Seawriter uses Cicero to describe the philosophy informing the Biden Administration as traitorous.

    I agree with @ seawriter with the overall result of their philosophy, but I still consider them as cowards more than traitors. What C.S. Lewis called men without chests.

    That explains everything they’re doing.

    No, it doesn’t. Sorry, but Seawriter is moving in the right direction, only too slowly as Doc Robert says. Biden and Democrats are not just hostile to America, but to humanity in general. To them, humans are an invasive species that has to be culled and controlled. Freedom makes us too dangerous to the planet. We have to be culled and controlled, and properly propagated to protect the planet and preserve its resources for the likes of Hunter. We are supposed to be that flock of prize sheep grazing on a well tended moor that so excited Francis Galton. To provide wool and mutton for our masters. America is done. You and I and all of us are no longer free and never will be again. Nor will your children or your children’s children be. Unless things change radically. Of which change there are a few faint signs. A few tiny shoots of liberty springing up. Mostly in Florida.

    • #13
  14. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Al Sparks (View Comment):

    Seawriter uses Cicero to describe the philosophy informing the Biden Administration as traitorous.

    I agree with @ seawriter with the overall result of their philosophy, but I still consider them as cowards more than traitors. What C.S. Lewis called men without chests.

    That explains everything they’re doing.

    The first Obama administration cured me of thinking they were mere cowards.  The upper structure of the Democrat edifice in the country is a dedicated Alinskyite Marxist operation, period.  Period, period, period.  That’s why the 2012 re-election of Obama just broke my heart.  I could see America doing the first one.  The second meant my country was gone and not coming back.  What a miracle it was that the fluke of Trump came along, but that’s what it was. 

     

    • #14
  15. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Misthiocracy has never (View Comment):

    Seawriter: It exploded yesterday, but it would not surprise me if a bunch of high school kids, shouting “Wolverine” ended up behind that.

    Wait, where the heck did you read that? The gov’t says they shot the balloon down over the Atlantic Ocean.

    I’m tellin’ ya, there’s gonna be lots of speculation online that there were multiple balloons that the gov’t isn’t telling us about.

    There was some ridiculously unremarkable footage of contrails going toward the sunset which smooth-brains from coast to coast interpreted as moving “down”.  One clip, no facts, and plenty of anecdotes about a massive explosion, sonic booms, and black helicopters.

    This is the next “fire has never melted steel”.

    Edited for quality.

    • #15
  16. OwnedByDogs Lincoln
    OwnedByDogs
    @JuliaBlaschke

    Nanocelt TheContrarian (View Comment):

    Al Sparks (View Comment):

    Seawriter uses Cicero to describe the philosophy informing the Biden Administration as traitorous.

    I agree with @ seawriter with the overall result of their philosophy, but I still consider them as cowards more than traitors. What C.S. Lewis called men without chests.

    That explains everything they’re doing.

    No, it doesn’t. Sorry, but Seawriter is moving in the right direction, only too slowly as Doc Robert says. Biden and Democrats are not just hostile to America, but to humanity in general. To them, humans are an invasive species that has to be culled and controlled. Freedom makes us too dangerous to the planet. We have to be culled and controlled, and properly propagated to protect the planet and preserve its resources for the likes of Hunter. We are supposed to be that flock of prize sheep grazing on a well tended moor that so excited Francis Galton. To provide wool and mutton for our masters. America is done. You and I and all of us are no longer free and never will be again. Nor will your children or your children’s children be. Unless things change radically. Of which change there are a few faint signs. A few tiny shoots of liberty springing up. Mostly in Florida.

    It all boils down to where Democrats get money. Not from the people. From very wealthy elites who believe too many sheep are killing the planet. I don’t think Biden, Schumer, Pelosi give two hoots about climate change or abortion or LGBT stuff. They only care about keeping their campaign coffers full by keeping their donors happy.

    • #16
  17. Nanocelt TheContrarian Member
    Nanocelt TheContrarian
    @NanoceltTheContrarian

    OwnedByDogs (View Comment):

    Nanocelt TheContrarian (View Comment):

    Al Sparks (View Comment):

    Seawriter uses Cicero to describe the philosophy informing the Biden Administration as traitorous.

    I agree with @ seawriter with the overall result of their philosophy, but I still consider them as cowards more than traitors. What C.S. Lewis called men without chests.

    That explains everything they’re doing.

    No, it doesn’t. Sorry, but Seawriter is moving in the right direction, only too slowly as Doc Robert says. Biden and Democrats are not just hostile to America, but to humanity in general. To them, humans are an invasive species that has to be culled and controlled. Freedom makes us too dangerous to the planet. We have to be culled and controlled, and properly propagated to protect the planet and preserve its resources for the likes of Hunter. We are supposed to be that flock of prize sheep grazing on a well tended moor that so excited Francis Galton. To provide wool and mutton for our masters. America is done. You and I and all of us are no longer free and never will be again. Nor will your children or your children’s children be. Unless things change radically. Of which change there are a few faint signs. A few tiny shoots of liberty springing up. Mostly in Florida.

    It all boils down to where Democrats get money. Not from the people. From very wealthy elites who believe too many sheep are killing the planet. I don’t think Biden, Schumer, Pelosi give two hoots about climate change or abortion or LGBT stuff. They only care about keeping their campaign coffers full by keeping their donors happy.

    I agree. But they also know that their donors don’t want us to have liberty. We’re too unruly, consume too much, and there are too many of us for the comfort of those donors. Shwab, Fink, and Kerry, et al, want to run the planet to suit themselves. That means they want ultimate control. Same interest as Xi, Putin, etc.   As they say–a confluence of interests. 

    • #17
  18. E. Kent Golding Moderator
    E. Kent Golding
    @EKentGolding

    Basil Fawlty (View Comment):
    He was a man of his periods.

    I don’t think they even conceived of trans men back then

    • #18
  19. Rodin Member
    Rodin
    @Rodin

    Two things can be equally true:

    1. Biden has been paid off (at least in the past) by the CCP, and
    2. DoD had non-treasonous reasons not to shoot down the spy balloon.

    I have read suggestions that at least part of the government wanted to “sniff” the intelligence being gathered by the balloon to better understand the Chinese technology being employed. How or whether this could be done I am unsure. But if you assume it can be done, then that strategy might have merit. OTOH was that opportunity limited to overflights of the US or could that have been done by monitoring balloons overflying other countries? If the same thing could be accomplished through monitoring overflights of other countries, why would you allow an overflight of the US and the consequent public uproar? The answer is either they didn’t have the opportunity elsewhere or they are idiots. Sadly, “idiots” is not out of the question. It could, of course, be the same kind of idiocy that led to the 9/11 attacks — siloed information and tunnel vision. Let’s hope we got something out of this debacle.

    • #19
  20. Hang On Member
    Hang On
    @HangOn

    Serious questions:

    while the balloon was over the US was it at different altitudes? 

    Was the balloon over the ocean at a lower altitudes when it was shot down?

    Did the US have the capability to shoot down the balloon while it was over the US?

    Would the US have been giving away its hand by showing how high its missiles could reach?

    Was there something the US wanted to show the Chinese in its overpass?

    I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but they seem relevant. 

    • #20
  21. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    I can’t imagine what they would have gotten from the spy balloon that they do not already have from bribing government officials and having our entire country on their Zoom and TikTok software platforms–not to mention the backdoor access they have to whatever they want to know through our dealings with other people who work with both countries—Italy, for example.

    Heck, they can just call General Milley, who has already warmly assured them that he would look out for China’s interests. Or they can get information through the 317,000 foreign national college and university students who reside here on student visas. Or the billions of Chinese-made products that include the Internet of Things components.

    That’s why no one bothered to shoot it down. The only conceivable reason for it to be there would be to, as a friend of mine suggested, test our responses. Even that doesn’t quite fit as an explanation. It was a silly thing for them to do. Was it meant to be a distraction of some sort? I have no idea.

    I read a good book about our relationship with China: ChinAmerica: The Uneasy Partnership That Will Change the World. It was published in 2010. The enmeshment between the two countries has been underway for decades and is now, I’d say, fully completed. Check out this picture of Xi and Biden (I can’t reproduce it here because it is a copyrighted Getty image on NPR). Biden’s and Xi’s body language messages speak volumes as to their relationship: Biden desires to please Xi. Xi doesn’t care what Biden thinks at all. I didn’t pick up on it when I first saw this photograph. It was only after I saw the expression Xi’s face when he purged his predecessor Hu Jintao out of the Party Congress that I realized what his expression meant in that now-famous photograph of Xi and Biden. Very creepy.

    • #21
  22. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Rodin (View Comment):

    Two things can be equally true:

    1. Biden has been paid off (at least in the past) by the CCP, and
    2. DoD had non-treasonous reasons not to shoot down the spy balloon.

    I have read suggestions that at least part of the government wanted to “sniff” the intelligence being gathered by the balloon to better understand the Chinese technology being employed. How or whether this could be done I am unsure. But if you assume it can be done, then that strategy might have merit. OTOH was that opportunity limited to overflights of the US or could that have been done by monitoring balloons overflying other countries? If the same thing could be accomplished through monitoring overflights of other countries, why would you allow an overflight of the US and the consequent public uproar? The answer is either they didn’t have the opportunity elsewhere or they are idiots. Sadly, “idiots” is not out of the question. It could, of course, be the same kind of idiocy that led to the 9/11 attacks — siloed information and tunnel vision. Let’s hope we got something out of this debacle.

    On the other hand, we know for a fact that the Biden crime family, including “the Big Guy,” is literally paid off by China.  We’re unlikely to find an exact receipt per transaction, but we also know that China isn’t about to go quid pro non.

    The farcial business deals are about as legitimate as Hillary’s publisher-to-warehouse book deals and speaking fees, and Hunter’s paintings.  It’s all selling the representation in government that Americans once fought a shooting war to gain.

    • #22
  23. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    Hang On (View Comment):

    Did the US have the capability to shoot down the balloon while it was over the US?

    Would the US have been giving away its hand by showing how high its missiles could reach?

    I don’t have hard information on your other questions,. but I can answer those two. Yes we do have a capability to knock down a large, slowly-moving target at the altitudes the balloon was reported to be flying. We have been able to do so since the 1950s. So, no, we would not have been giving away our hand. This was a test of what we would do, not what we are capable of doing.

    • #23
  24. Seawriter Contributor
    Seawriter
    @Seawriter

    MarciN (View Comment):
    I can’t imagine what they would have gotten from the spy balloon that they do not already have from bribing government officials and having our entire country on their Zoom and TikTok software platforms–not to mention the backdoor access they have to whatever they want to know through our dealings with other people who work with both countries—Italy, for example.

    That one’s easy. Physical and independent confirmation of what they learned from bribing Government officials. That’s valuable going forward. A classic counterintelligence trick is to feed an enemy espionage effort useless information (chicken feed) and lies. A smart military has anyone approached to be a spy accept the offer, and report the contact to a superior so they can run a counterintelligence sting. A really smart military lets the bogus source keep the money paid by a  foreign government for intelligence. Sort of like prize  money.

    • #24
  25. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    For all I know, perhaps this thing really was some hydrological survey thing which caught an unexpected ride to cover far more distance than intended before its decaying buoyancy should have made it drop into the Pacific.  And perhaps the butchers of Beijing were on the phone morning noon and night pleading with us to understand the damned thing was simply adrift.

    I’m sure that’s what the story from our government will be, and who knows — it might even be true.  I know I don’t like it.  This is more like catching the neighbor’s 30-year-old boomerang son outside our teenage daughter’s window than any Gustavson’s-cat-crapped-on-my-lawn analogy.

    • #25
  26. Misthiocracy has never Member
    Misthiocracy has never
    @Misthiocracy

    Hang On (View Comment):

    Serious questions:

    while the balloon was over the US was it at different altitudes?

    Was the balloon over the ocean at a lower altitudes when it was shot down?

    Did the US have the capability to shoot down the balloon while it was over the US?

    Would the US have been giving away its hand by showing how high its missiles could reach?

    Was there something the US wanted to show the Chinese in its overpass?

    I don’t know the answer to any of these questions, but they seem relevant.

    I have no answers, but those are interesting questions that I hadn’t thought of, especially the ones about altitudes.

    • #26
  27. Eugene Kriegsmann Member
    Eugene Kriegsmann
    @EugeneKriegsmann

    I don’t know when it was that Democrats went from being patriots to out and out sell-outs, but it was sometime within my lifetime. It seems that finding wealth in congress rather than using accumulated wealth to reach congress is a relatively new thing. All that has been related through the exposure of Hunter’s laptop about that Biden family business, its incredible accumulation of wealth and the involvement of Chinese and Ukrainian oligarchs in that has opened a very big can of worms. Pelosi’s stock purchases and sales apparently governed by prior knowledge of coming legislation is more than just a minor glitch. When I went to work for Merrill Lynch in 1984, in a relatively brief hiatus in my teaching career, I learned very early that insider trading was strictly against the law. I was under the mistaken impression that government officials were not allowed to trade stocks because of their special knowledge of events that could affect the rise or fall in the market. As a broker, I could not trade on any information that might come my way by virtue of my profession, and I was far less likely to come upon “insider” info than a member of congress or the senate.

    I don’t think that these people, Biden, et al., are ideological traitors. I think that they are simply corrupt seekers after personal wealth. Their accumulation of moneys far greater than they could have ever conceived of in their earlier lives has simply made such antiquated concepts as patiotism irrelevant. Their greed has shaded their eyes to consequences of their actions. They seek to maintain their offices, not for the desire to better the country, but rather to continue their accumulations of wealth. It isn’t even about power, only the ultimate power, having more money than you can even possibly use up, making you totally free of any restraints. I would imagine that in Cicero’s Rome that it wasn’t all that different.

    • #27
  28. She Member
    She
    @She

    Misthiocracy has never (View Comment):

    Seawriter: It exploded yesterday, but it would not surprise me if a bunch of high school kids, shouting “Wolverine” ended up behind that.

    Wait, where the heck did you read that? The gov’t says they shot the balloon down over the Atlantic Ocean.

    I’m tellin’ ya, there’s gonna be lots of speculation online that there were multiple balloons that the gov’t isn’t telling us about.

    I think there are “official” (whatever that means) sightings of a second balloon somewhere over “Latin America” (whatever that means).

    The Reticulator (View Comment):

    Seawriter (View Comment):

    Misthiocracy has never (View Comment):
    Wait, where the heck did you read that? The gov’t says they shot the balloon down over the Atlantic Ocean.

    Reports last night were that it went down over Montana. They had not been updated when I posted this on Saturday morning.

    It seems that balloon moved on mighty fast when somebody wanted it to move fast.

    Yes, I thought that too.  Based on contemporaneous reports, I had it in my mind’s eye somewhere over the Midwest.  Then when it was announced that it had been shot down over the Atlantic, I thought for a moment that there must be another balloon.

    I like Cicero (or “Kikero” as some have been taught to say it). 

     

    • #28
  29. OwnedByDogs Lincoln
    OwnedByDogs
    @JuliaBlaschke

    I wish Biden’s finances could be investigated. I mean he was earning $174,000 or less for most of his working life and he has all these houses and apparently is worth millions. Where did all the money come from? I think I know.

    • #29
  30. Rightfromthestart Coolidge
    Rightfromthestart
    @Rightfromthestart

    Once you accept that our government hates us and is working to destroy us everything they’re doing makes sense. Last week NewYork’s Governor unveiled a zoning plan plan apparently designed to destroy the suburbs, which the left has been aiming for for decades. 

    • #30
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