> Imagine how much society would improve if all the dirt got aired.
Depends on the dirt. Some of it might be private and personal stuff, such as infidelity. That type of stuff, while blackmailable, doesn't really benefit the public much.
Don't believe representatives are elected because of their integrity and their willingness to serve.
They represent groups of interest. And being blackmailable is, in my opinion, a handy leash to keep them in check, for those groups which propose the candidates
The public is not concerned with corruption until they feel affected by it.
It sounds more like you're asserting that corruption has been redifined, because we expect elected officials to represent a group of interests... But this is quite circular.
It would be better for us to maintain our high expectations of our leaders, even if those expectations are not currently being met. It doesn't mean that they cannot be met. It feels so damned gamed that I cannot imagine what a genuine political candidate would look like, a member of the public deciding, yes, I will run for office, and then speaking to their friends and neighbors about it, and submitting the paperwork to make it official.
Can you imagine if that's what politics was? Wouldn't it be amazing? Sometimes I feel like there's too many smart people with way too much time on their hands, and they create these political storms as a way to generate money. I hope they all go into the gaming industry and make a tone of money without undermining a functional democracy. The problems we have don't always have money behind them. In fact, it's usually a trade-off we want someone with money to take, that they don't want to take. And the way we coerce an organization is through legislation. So it makes sense for orgs to take that control back and spend on PR campaigns and pundits to argue in their favor. Payola for sophists. But I digress...
Everyone has dirty laundry they would prefer not be aired, and if they don't then their friends, family, or partners do. I don't think we want to live in a world where absolute moral purity (as determined by the most vocal, biased critics of a given person) is required to hold public office.
>I don't think we want to live in a world where absolute moral purity (as determined by the most vocal, biased critics of a given person) is required to hold public office.
Don't worry, you live in a world where a man with a well documented decades-long laundry list of scandals and faux-pas can brag on tape about how he can get away with molesting young women because of how rich he is and still get elected President.
I'm actually wondering what you could effectively blackmail an American politician with, given how little Americans seem to care about the morality of their leaders. Maybe just the eponymous "dead girl or live boy," but then you have the Kennedys...
> I'm actually wondering what you could effectively blackmail an American politician with, given how little Americans seem to care about the morality of their leaders.
Well, in general anything that would get them prosecuted for a felony should be an effective stick. Add in a carrot and now they're on the hook for bribery too.
> I don't think we want to live in a world where absolute moral purity (as determined by the most vocal, biased critics of a given person) is required to hold public office.
Well lucky you, we have the exact 100% polar opposite of that system currently. I think it would be fine to move toward it a little.
> Well lucky you, we have the exact 100% polar opposite of that system currently. I think it would be fine to move toward it a little.
I'm skeptical of the notion that outing public officials (when the blackmail material is personal in nature as posited by the GP) would move toward that goal.
I don't even think an exception should be made for material that would expose hypocrisy in policy-making (eg. 'pro-life' lawmakers that have had or facilitated an abortion).
Straight-up crimes though (bribery, corruption, theft, insider trading, etc.), sure.
Moral purity isn’t required, just some honesty. I don’t care if politicians cheat on their spouses or even if they rail coke out of hookers’ asses on the weekend. Just don’t pretend you don’t do someone has power over you if they find out you do.
remember when the cia interfered with the congressional investigation of their torture program, by getting the FBI to investigate senators for viewing the documents that the CIA provided them, and spying on the senate investigation activities, and then nothing happened
Yes, I remember! But I just got up to 2011 on my todo list and am playing through Borderlands 2. I'll follow up on 2014 matters which will hopefully take less than 3 more years.
Congress has blocked inquiries into their split loyalty as far as them having multiple citizenship in other countries. If you were McDonald's board of directors would you allow someone to be on both the McDonald's board and Wendy's?
Congress isn't personally harmed by a surveillance state unless you consider they may all be being blackmailed but that is another conversation. In fact mass surveillance widens the barrier to new entries into politics as they can use whatever dirty they find and give it to federally funded media mouthpieces.
This week we saw articles of sexual crimes against children being swept under the rug to "protect our country" do we really think that congress would actively pursuit this line of inquiry?
I can believe there are shadow organizations that lack oversight. In fact, it seems likely.
But that these shadow organizations are maintaining power by surveiling and blackmailing congress people is a whole other ballgame and seems highly unlikely to me.
For one, it's likely that not every Congressperson has some deep dark secret that makes them blackmail-able. And pissing off the only group of people that could cut your funding and expose your shadow organization as well as bring oversight is not the group that you want to be pissing off.
I think game theory would indicate that your only chance of maintaining a shadow organization in the US gov for any length of time is going to be secrecy and maybe some heavily funded lobbying.
> For one, it's likely that not every Congressperson has some deep dark secret that makes them blackmail-able.
I'd be more than willing to bet that they do. "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." and that only covers "honest" men who wouldn't have illegal coordination with PACs, bribes with lobbyists, personal communications filled with racism, or evidence of sexual activities that might upset their base. When "6 lines" becomes a record of everything you've ever done online, all of your communications, your GPS coordinates and the data of anyone around you it's going to get easier to find a noose around your neck.
Even if there managed to exist a single person in congress who wasn't screwing over the American people somehow for personal gain, or didn't have some skeleton in their closet they didn't want exposed to voters/campaign contributors when a group is capable of compromising your system and inserting whatever offensive material they want to use against you it's incentive enough to back off.
> But that these shadow organizations are maintaining power by surveiling and blackmailing congress people is a whole other ballgame and seems highly unlikely to me.
Why is it so hard to believe that a few powerful indivisuals at the top, with common interests and agendas, are banded together?
There's no official organization but a few indivisuals that streer things their way because they can.
I think there are enough hornery (and incidentally patriotic) congresspeople that they'd be okay exposing the CIA for blackmail even at the expense of exposing the secret.
The funny thing is that the worst of it is already exposed, and no-one seems to care. money-in-politics, the most serious problem of our time, is a "meh" issue to most folks, even though money poisons discourse on literally every other issues! And we know the precise mechanism and how to stop it (a law overturning Citizens United), and yet we do nothing.
how would you cut the budget of the CIA for example, an organization that doesn't really answer to anyone but itself ? an organization that can self fund when it wants.
Eisenhower, a general called out the so called military industrial complex in a way that befits a prophet
> But that these shadow organizations are maintaining power by surveiling and blackmailing congress people is a whole other ballgame and seems highly unlikely to me.
There's a long history of illegal domestic surveillance since at least the 1940s - why would it have stopped?
> For one, it's likely that not every Congressperson has some deep dark secret that makes them blackmail-able. And pissing off the only group of people that could cut your funding and expose your shadow organization as well as bring oversight is not the group that you want to be pissing off.
Secret blackmail files worked for J. Edgar Hoover[0].
Politics is a funny business. I have spent alot of time dealing with political people ranging from staffers to actual officials.
Many are very well meaning public servants, others careerists, some are… insane on various scales. Politics is a business with uncertain outcomes where “friends” are important and personal stakes are high.
From a blackmail perspective, you have people like the bartender turned member of congress who got their GED to run who are obvious puppets with a wheelbarrow of odious behavior behind them. But even the most boring congressman has a legal escrow account with irregularities, a kid with emotional problems that caused trouble, a campaign finance violation, etc.
I don’t think there is a shadow cabal, but some executive branch entities wield tremendous power.
> From a blackmail perspective, you have people like the bartender turned member of congress who got their GED to run who are obvious puppets with a wheelbarrow of odious behavior behind them.
I'd like to visit the Museum of Counterproductivity in the area of your brain that downgraded Bobert from business owner to bartender.
it's likely that not every Congressperson has some deep dark secret that makes them blackmail-able
You don't need to control every congresscritter directly, just to control them by proxy is enough. The nomination committees have a lot of power on who stays and who goes, for example, and so do subcommittee chairs.
I'm all for sorting the problem out, but isn't the reality a little more complex given other countries? Doesn't cutting your intelligence / signals budgets give your "enemies" an advantage? By "enemies" I'm referring predominantly to foreign nation states.
Congressional oversight used to be a thing.
Snowden showed the NSA lied to congress. No heads rolled.