CIA Director Pompeo takes on the whistleblowing Swede — while Georgia illegally tries to keep people from voting — and Papa Bear O'Reilly wanders off $25 million richer after reportedly harassing women for years — Ain't America grand?

© 2017 Peter Free

 

21 April 2017

 

 

From my temporary place across the Great Sea

 

In decently governed Germany, incoming American news regularly reminds me what a colossal crap generator my homeland has become.

 

These last couple of days alone:

 

 

(1) Republican Party (arguable political hack) Mike Pompeo — whom President Trump (with his characteristic disregard for reasoned sense) appointed to head the Central Intelligence Agency — essentially announced that the United States was going to go after the head of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange.

 

WikiLeaks, Pompeo said, is a hostile non-government intelligence agency that is exclusively dedicated to bringing Haloed America down.

 

Assange is so evil, Pompeo implied, that this cleansing mission has to be undertaken — in addition to flirting with starting nuclear wars on potentially three global fronts.

 

We can infer from all this, that the CIA Director has not (perhaps understandably) brain-bulbed to the subtly accurate idea that:

 

 

(a) people exposing government lies is a social good,

 

 

(b) especially insofar as the maintenance of democratically based Liberty is concerned.

 

 

Truth sets us free, and all that.

 

 

Note

 

With regard to preserving Freedom, the CIA and everybody else would be more logically duty-bound to leave the majority of whistleblowers alone. The United States' vital national interests are not so frequently harmed as American authorities routinely like to claim. Government secrecy is more often personally self-serving than not.

 

 

(2) Meanwhile, state officials in Georgia reportedly blocked newly registered voters from voting in the upcoming Congressional runoff election. They did so, even though their action clearly appears to violate directly applicable federal election definitions.

 

So much for good faith in regional governance.

 

 

(3) This week also, we learned that Bill O'Reilly — that famously bloviating generator of White Devil spite — earned $25 million for harassing women at Fox News.

 

The loot is not directly tied to the harassment, of course. But evidently stems from a contract-satisfying termination of employment payoff.

 

 

Note

 

Influentially good or powerfully bad, Fat Cats win. Isn't that unregulated capitalism's defining characteristic?

 

 

So, you see that

 

In the United States:

 

 

crushing truth-tellers with the Nation's full autocratic weight is a valued federal function,

 

snipping democracy in the bud is a wholesomely sponsored state government activity,

 

and

 

screwing with women 's rightful dignity pays really big bucks.

 

 

Germans, I imagine, are appalled

 

But I'm an American.

 

So, I guess I should be proud.

 

 

And did you see this mildly amusing contrast?

 

The much reviled Russian Federation does something socially useful. The Land of Allegedly Violent Bears very successfully — imagine that — draws women into science, technology, engineering and math careers.

 

I suspect that Director Pompeo, the State of Georgia, and Bill O'Reilly would all frown. For one reason or another.

 

 

The moral? — Do things really look different from across the Great Water?

 

Am I partly becoming a Swede like Julian Assange, or a German like Chancellor Angela Merkel?

 

Or just an ordinary nobody with ethically founded common sense?