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Staunch US Intelligence Community defender Dian Feinstein comes to her senses.
IainB:
...When a bad situation becomes so egregious that even the most wilfully blind are forced to see, you know the the danger is both real and present. :tellme
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-40hz (March 11, 2014, 01:29 PM)
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I would suggest that the more appropriate term for "wilfully blind" should be "wilfully ignorant". There is nothing wrong in being ignorant - we all are, and it's part of what's called "the human condition". The trick is to do something remedial about it, and to develop our reasoning skills so as to search out truth/knowledge. The "wrong" thing is persisting in one's ignorance.
Just because she got knocked off her ass on the road to Damascus and had an epiphany, or something, it does not abrogate her from the responsibility now, as a Senator, for reviewing her past ignorant statements/assertions and coming clean about them. Either she was wilfully ignorant due to a self-inflicted ignorance/stupidity, or because of a concealed political bias/motivation.
If she is unable to be honest and open about this, then she cannot be trusted to be honest/reliable, QED.
40hz:
^She strikes me as the sort that was raised and truly believes the old bromide: "My country, may she always be right, but my country - right or wrong." And IMHO she's a total idiot that shouldn't be in office. But that's how it works here.
Not to excuse her, but what's going on here has been such an absolute shock to most Americans, and their image of this country, that the majority of the population is still in denial and doing its best not to see the elephant in the room. Very similar to what happened during the McCarthy Era and the Red Scare. And like then, public opinion is finally starting to swing around.
Read the first third of Sinclair Lewis's story It Can't Happen Here to get a feel for how America acts whenever it discovers its institutions can't be trusted. It's a work of fiction. But that doesn't make it any less accurate or true.
8)
TaoPhoenix:
...
Not to excuse her, but what's going on here has been such an absolute shock to most Americans, and their image of this country, that the majority of the population is still in denial and doing its best not to see the elephant in the room. Very similar to what happened during the McCarthy Era and the Red Scare. And like then, public opinion is finally starting to swing around.
...
-40hz (March 11, 2014, 04:23 PM)
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I dunno if I would quite call it an "absolute shock" - I'm fishing for a slight change in nuance here. Because for example in "private spaces" for forty years people have "grumbled about it". But I think there's been an underestimating of exactly how bad it is, combined with little previous hope of cracking their armor.
I think the following snip shows that we have indeed found a crack in the armor. If only for the Legal Drama finish with the thrilling music! (Slight formatting by me.)
"Staff approached the CIA personnel at the offsite location...
- who initially denied that documents had been removed.
- CIA personnel then blamed information technology personnel, who were almost all contractors, for removing the documents themselves without direction or authority.
- And then the CIA stated that the removal of the documents was ordered by the White House.
(Coda)When the committee approached the White House, the White House denied giving the CIA any such order."
(Side show for the "Silly Jokes Thread"! Casting Calls, anyone, for the Lead Counsel for the People? )
;D
Vurbal:
Not to excuse her, but what's going on here has been such an absolute shock to most Americans, and their image of this country, that the majority of the population is still in denial and doing its best not to see the elephant in the room. Very similar to what happened during the McCarthy Era and the Red Scare. And like then, public opinion is finally starting to swing around.
-40hz (March 11, 2014, 04:23 PM)
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I think it's much simpler than that and entirely expected and predictable for anyone who operates in the kind of power bubble we've cultivated in the US over the last 3+ decades. And in fact that bubble is entirely normal within the context of a nation as powerful as the US. It's not fundamentally different than Britain in the 1700s or any number of other singular super powers at the peak of their dominance.
She's incapable of comprehending the real effects of giving the NSA unchecked surveillance power or the entertainment industry their own federal enforcement agents because she doesn't feel them directly. The unconscionable becomes trivial when you're targeting "the people" because to you they really aren't people. In the words of David Wong, we're outside her monkeysphere. I actually find his reasoning a touch too simplistic but I agree with the general principle.
IainB:
...And IMHO she's a total idiot that shouldn't be in office. ...
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-40hz (March 11, 2014, 04:23 PM)
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It's easy to say such things. I would always suggest giving people the benefit of the doubt.
In an egalitarian society, the chances would probably be roughly 50/50 that someone elected to public office would have an IQ of less than 100, or more than 100.
More doesn't necessarily mean better. Arguably many people with an apparently low IQ and holding public office would seem to have been able to demonstrate that they could function very responsibly in their roles in society and not seem to behave or think stupidly. However, many with an apparently high IQ would seem to have been able to demonstrate that they can get away with being totally misguided and acting like complete idiots - a classic example possibly being the UK PM Chamberlain in wanting to appease Hitler, but then he died of cancer six months after leaving the premiership, and in my experience people with cancer can start to exhibit muddled thinking some considerable time before their cancer is diagnosed. In other words, people's ability to think straight could be affected by their state of health, just as (say) by their level of alcohol consumption.
From experience, whenever I have seen people behave out of character or irrationally, there has generally been something apparently wrong with them, physically or psychologically. So Senator Diane Feinstein could, for example, actually be ill and unable to reason properly or even reflect on her own past actions sufficiently objectively to be able to be honest and open about this - in which event, she could not be relied upon to be honest/reliable. But this would not necessarily be because she is a bad or stupid person, but possibly because she is or has been unwell.
The other things that give rise to apparent irrationality could typically include, for example, being trapped in a belief in a particular religio-political ideology, or committed to some criminal intent, but I would presume neither of these would apply in Feinstein's case.
Of course, if, despite the above, it turns out that she has in fact always been just a complete idiot, then one would need to examine how her appointment to public office came about in the first place. "You get the government you vote for."
In any event, God spare us from a technocracy or elitist ideology ruling our lives, or an idiocracy...
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