d32
Subj : Re: LOL... YES!
To   : alt.tv.star-trek.tos,alt.startrek
From : Graeme
Date : Tue Sep 13 2005 08:31:55

From Newsgroup: alt.tv.star-trek.tos

Steven L. wrote:
> Obviously you don't recall what the issue was.

Recall?  People couldn't admit it to themselves even at the time.

The problem with politics is not that the politicians are hypocrites,
but that the voters are.  In a Democracy, people get more or less the
government that they collectively deserve.  In this country, most
people in both parties really don't care if politicians are crooks.
Deep down they see it as something natural.  Sure, they pretend to care
when the other side screws up, but when their own guys do wrong, you
can see what they *really* think.  Usually not very much.



> Clinton's sex life would never have been a public matter.  Except that
> he lied about it on the witness stand during his testimony in a sexual
> harassment case.
>
> If you are called to be a witness in court, then ANY lie you tell on the
> witness stand is a crime.  Whether it's whom you slept with or what your
> favorite football team is or whether you prefer your eggs scrambled or
> sunny-side-up.

And all the rationalizations about that come from people who swear up,
down and sideways, that they care about Bush's lies, both real and
imaginary.

Most people (and it's usually obvious who they are), can be silenced
with the P.H.A.D./P.H.A.R. Principle.  If they complain about something
any politician does, you can say "Okay, Pretend He's A Democrat (or
Pretend He's A Republican, as the case may be), and now tell me why
what you're mad about is okay."  You'd think that people could just lie
about it and claim that they'd be equally offended if their own people
did the same thing, but surprisingly very few of the hard core
partisans will do this.  I guess it makes them uncomfortable to talk
even hypothetically about being genuinely mad at their own party, so
most of them will change the subject at this point, and the problem is
solved.




> The lesson I drew from all this is that sexual harassment cases are
> often bullshit.  They make legal issues out of your sex life.


Well, that's how short-sighted politics is.  The Democrats pushed this
issue hard to get rid of Bob Packwood without ever stopping to think
what would happen when one of their own guys stepped over the line.  I
guess they just assumed that it would be okaym that they'd just switch
gears when the time came, and the drones would just fall in line, and
were outraged when everyone still took their sex-in-the-workplace
rhetoric seriously after they'd abandoned it.

Problem is the laws they'd passed against it were still on the books,
and still are.  If Clinton did what he did where I work or at any other
major company in the country, they'd be forced to take his badge and
walk him out the door that same day, just to protect themselves from
liability incurred by laws passed by Clinton's own people... people who
now swear that sex doesn't matter.  Oh, what a tangled web we weave...

Of course you can point that out till you're blue in the face and it'll
just go in one ear and out the other.  Most people (of either party)
simply don't *care* if their own people screw up.  Until they do, their
complaints about Washington are in vain.

.

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