Grab the pitchforks, guys — a politician wasn’t honest about his previous accomplishments and ethnicity. Our previously unwavering faith in the virtue of career politicians has been shaken to the core.
The pearl-clutching over Congressman-elect George Santos — who lied about being a Ukrainian Jew whose family fled the Holocaust, working at Goldman Sachs, being openly gay for ten years, and a bunch of other stuff — is out of control.
“Have you no shame?” an exasperated, sanctimonious Tulsi Gabbard asks Santos in his first nationally televised interview since the scandal broke, recalling iconic images from Congress during the Red Scare amid McCarthyism.
The answer, minus the theatrics, is “no.” A politician has no shame or decency. Alert the press to this remarkable revelation.
Now the scandalized pillow-biters in the corporate media are calling for Santos to resign before he takes office. The argument is that he has undermined trust in the integrity of the federal political system — as if any existed before November 2022.
A lack of shame, as I recently covered vis-à-vis Nancy Pelosi’s hysterical fearmongering to scare up cash donations, is the number-one asset that successful politicians possess in spades. Number two is unchecked greed and ambition.
Research has demonstrated that politicians are significantly likelier to be psychopaths than the general population. Of course, quantitative studies aren’t necessary to make this observation, but it’s nice to have the data that backs up the obvious qualitative judgment.
Compulsive lying is one of the defining clinical manifestations of the condition.
Psychopathy isn’t the bug in lying politicians; it’s the feature. Individuals with well-formed consciences infamously don’t do super well in public office.
The real issue that we should focus on is why Santos thought it was so advantageous to lie about his identity as a gay Jewish Holocaust victim. The answer is that box-checking identity politics trumps credentials or policy stances or really anything relevant to effective public service.
Joe Biden promised to select black women for both the Supreme Court and for vice president, and look at the mediocre paydirt. Outgoing White House press secretary Jen Psaki openly admitted that her replacement Karine Jean-Pierre got the job because of her status as a gay immigrant Person of Color©. Elizabeth Warren lied about being an Indian for decades for cynical career advancement.
That’s how this works. Compulsive psychopathic lying + primacy of identity politics = politicians who brazenly lie about their identities to advance their personal ambitions.
1 + 1 = 2.
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