A post-9/11 political changer tells her story
I think the most interesting thing about it is the writer’s description of how she used to make political decisions. One might say, “frivolously.” There was also a strong family-tradition influence. Both things are not unusual, in my experience. I don’t think I was ever as frivolous as this woman, but I certainly wasn’t researching most issues in great depth when I voted during the 20th Century:
The 1988 Presidential Election was the first time that I got to exercise my right to vote. I went to the polling place with my parents and excitedly pulled the lever for Michael Dukakis. Why? I liked his wife Kitty. I also grew up in a Democrat-voting family. My grandparents had a photo of JFK hanging in their home. My grandmother would proclaim “Democrats are for the working people.” Both of my parents voted for Democrats most of the time, although they were registered as Independents. They claimed to keep open minds on the off chance they may vote differently but they never did. I did the same, registered as an Independent but voted Democrat up and down the ballot.
I voted for President Clinton both times. He was young, good looking, charming and played the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall show during the 1992 campaign. Yes, I thought, this guy is going to be an amazing President.
What changed for her? After being in Manhattan on 9/11 she got interested in politics, researched things more, and it ended up changing her voting patterns. I think this is fairly typical of a rather straightforward kind of political change story from a person who previously had a rather shallow involvement. The real change, from which the rest followed, was that politics suddenly got her attention.
I wonder if the debacle in Afghanistan will lead to similar change stories.
How can people float along as she did, so completely incurious about one of the most fundamental aspects of our social reality?
It, i.e., that aspect, involves other people having a say in your life, and you having to abide not only their often annoying presence, but the effects of decisions which they have helped through their ignorance or self-interest, fashion, and effect.
How could these questions not have arisen naturally in her mind the first time some Goddamned schoolmarm told her what to do; or, when she got her first paycheck and saw the deductions; or, when she caught a professor lying to cover his error?
Who are these effen cattle, as Aristotle analogized them?
Yes she is an actual citizen and an individual now. But what reality did she think she was living in before, that allowed such frivolity, and above all else, moral – I hesitate to call it self-centeredness ***-obliviousness?
*** There must be a kind of self-centeredness that is not particularly concerned with drawing boundaries or keeping what is yours, but reflects instead a beam of interests so narrowly focussed on appetite satisfactions both literal and figurative, that the person does reduce to a kind of grazing animal. One quite capable of social interactions and even sacrifice, but so completely indifferent to what lies just at the horizon of memory, or sensation as to be the human equivalent of an affable drone.
One wants to shout, “Hey idiot, look up at the sky! It is right there, above your head. Doesn’t that provoke any questions in your mind?”
DNW:
In the 80s and 90s things were much more muted than now in terms of restrictions on liberty. It was easy for people not to notice, and just to live their lives trying to pay attention to family, their livelihoods, their friends, and their hobbies. It’s quite a human thing. Most people even today would rather turn away from a deep dive into current events. Humans are human, and it’s not all that unusual.
Plus, there was no internet back then and it took considerably more effort to become informed. Most people only watched or read the MSM, and probably no more than one paper and one news station.
Most people don’t feel the crunch until it really crunches on them personally, and even then it takes a while to connect the dots.
“it’s easy to be a liberal until the shit hits your own fan”
A perfect explanation of the 58% of Californians who still think Biden is doing a good job. Enough shit simply hasn’t hit their fan yet. But it will. Some perhaps most, will blame Trump because the alternative is to look in the mirror.
DNW,
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” Leonardo da Vinci
This woman was one “of those who see when they are shown”.
Must everyone’s pursuit of happiness involve thoughtful consideration of political issues?
I dare say hers did not. It took the personal impact of 9/11 to jar her out of her personal pursuit of happiness (musicianship). Yet I dare say she is less happy today than she was before 9/11. Ignorance is bliss after all…
Simple trust in our leadership shouldn’t be a foolish enterprise and when politics stopped at the water’s edge, it was a given that though both sides often disagreed, they were in agreement as to America’s worthiness.
Wherein the democrats have lost their way is in embracing the ideological imperative that reforms must be done, whatever the cost and whatever the means necessary.
Ok, I get what you are trying to say .. sort of.
But, I was alive in that era too; and before as well.
She said that Grannie said that, to paraphrase, “Democrats are for the working man”. Didn’t she ever ask what that meant? Her household was undoubtedly full of artifacts and traces of activity that surely would have provoked questions about the world we live in that would have led to some consciousness of history and eventually to social history and politics.
I mean, analogizing from a certain unnamed kid’s experience, we might say that he saw his Dad’s navy uniform in the back closet. The kid is naturally going to ask about it. That Nazi Mauser war trophy in the back of another closet: Certainly a question provoker. “Dad, what’s “Logic” mean on those old college books you have?” “What’s industrial psychology?” ; “How come there is a saddle in the attic?” Did you have a ranch at one time? How come we don’t now? ; “Why didn’t you guys [at XYZ Agency] just kill those Russian spys when they were caught snooping around?” [ leading to an involved discussion of international ethics/protocols, retaliation, and the morality of administering extra-judicial punishment] ; “What was that you said to Mom about some of the college professors you had, being known communists, according to your colleagues back when you both worked there?”
The point being, how can any kid grow up in this world without asking perfectly natural questions of his parents, which inevitably lead to some pretty serious and alternate perspective generating conversations.
You, had a crazy Stalinist uncle. Man, if that did not get you an informal education, what possibly could?
No, but citizenship, political peerhood, and the moral exercise of the franchise does.
Maybe we should have two classes of citizens, and one of cossetted thralls. Those with full citizenship, those who cannot vote but receive certain rights and immunities; and a class of guffawing morons, who receive transfer payments until the Morlocks demand dinner.
Might suit the present population better than the burden of consciousness, and moral responsibility for their own actions.
DNW:
You’re a bright guy, I like you and we’ve had some good conversations. Yet…
Are you new here? 🙂
The woman is a human being and human beings are generally about living their lives, surviving and reproducing, if possible. Humans are mostly not about pondering the Big Political Questions and acting upon their interim answers.
It’s like you keep singing, “Why can’t a human be more like a DNW?”
–Rex Harrison, “Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Doz5w2W-jAY
You’re an odd duck. I’m an odd duck. Most of the commenters here are, in their ways, odd ducks. Humanity needs us odd ducks.
But humanity is not going to become all odd ducks.
That’s probably a good thing.
No Duck Left $%^&*#@~
I’m angling for the Taliban Account.
Well, you’re a Zaph-Odd Duck.
I’m still working out that taxonomy.
DNW’s point is fair though. There’s little point in Representative Government if most of the electorate is unfit to vote. Now at this point it hardly matters given that voting is corrupted, representative government is corrupted, and real power is wielded behind the scenes by individuals and groups who have little connection to the voters.
So why should we care if it hardly matters? Because if you’re going to design a political system, it might be wise to design one which reflects the realities of human nature and not some fantastical airy fairy ideals about human nature. To do otherwise is in the final analysis to be no better than a Progressive. Deep down, the difference between most Conservatives and Progressives is just that the Conservative is more live and let live with regard to flaws in congruency between how he imagines his ideal system will perform and what he sees he’s getting.. whereas your Prog is Procrustes with a Tokarev.
Which is why I’m a Difficult Duck and not a Conservative.
@huxley:
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…
And if you happen to mention Ducks in the Current Year…
Then it’s open season. And not for Ducks.
LOL. Well, thank you Huxley that is very generous.
Now, as to why it is that I can’t accept or understand the standard that you imply most humans beings default to as being excusable, or understandable, or acceptable in our polity?
Because we are not most human beings.
Because this is the United States of Goddamned America; and, because we are not supposed to be a population of damnable semiconscious peasants, or yoked through politics and social obligations to any such worthless people. And because these types of opportunistic herd animals were never supposed to be here, or allowed in, in the first place. And because the idea is that a freeman or woman, regardless of his or her economic status, is supposed to manifest some pride in being critically aware of the political world around them, and in which they have a determining role as a citizen.
Now I’m not swearing at you. What I am swearing at is the people who assume an old world version of sociopolitical relationships as organic … Which in our polity as historically constructed they, these relationships were not.
Our systems were self-consciously designed and constructed for a population, which in substantial numbers nowadays seems congenitally unfitted to rise to: namely the responsibility involved in inhabiting such a free country.
Americans are supposed to be, and once were by considerable historical evidence, largely a self-selecting breed capable of living it.
Then the Irish and Germans came. Kidding of course, sort of, almost, a bit.
Now the country is run by the 56% of neurotic liberal females and their soy-boy servants and cucks.
So, who is it you are going to go out of your way to pull out of the flames?
@huxley:
“I’m working out that taxonomy.”
*ozzie man voice*
Go for your life, mate! Taxonomies are great. It’s taxidermy keeps me awake at night. Stuff that for a joke!
DNW’s point is fair though. There’s little point in Representative Government if most of the electorate is unfit to vote.
Zaphod:
However, DNW’s and apparently your solution is to deny the vote to people who don’t think like him and reach similar solutions as he does.
We can agree on not allowing children and most teens the vote because their brains and experience are immature. But after that it gets tricky.
Do we deny women the vote because they are more prone to social/family thinking and thus tend to the left?
I would note that the leftists of my generation, less so the current crop, were quite bright, booked and still hard left. They had considered the Big Political Questions and come to their conclusions — rather different from DNW’s.
Noam Chomsky and Bill Ayers were pretty fierce. That’s one reason the New Left stomped a lot of mush-minded conservatives back then.
When I was still on fcbk, I was surprised by some of my old high school friends still voted according to the “who would I rather sit down and have a beer with” (a direct quote) technique (and the girls used much the same idea, but with the candidate’s spouse and how well their children were perceived to behave – though sometimes physical appearance of the candidate was also mentioned). Competency and goals didn’t matter, just “likability.”
What human nature is that?
Your consistent position, as near as I have been able to grasp it, is that there is no, at least in a moral sense, single human nature.
Now, here is the thing: if in admitting that thesis as it applies to what appear to be obvious races and ethnicities – or as I would prefer lineages – why stop there?
All you need in order to reach the 51% [actually much less] threshold for characterizing – or stereotyping – a discrete population, is for enough assortative selection to have taken place within such a reproductive community, for there to be a noticeably pronounced trait within that population of families. Be it physical cowardice, the incidence of schizophrenia, short stature, blue eyes or any number of politically relevant or irrelevant traits.
I am sure that cultural conditioning plays a role too. How militant are you, as the family with the boldest and strongest males in the district going to be, when the rest of the population is crawling on their hands and knees in order to ingratiate themselves with the Ottomans?
While I think of it… What we need here on September 11 is a ‘Where were you when you heard the news?’ Thread.
At the vacation farm I should be at today, but am not.
Which probably accounts for about 2% of my intemperance.
@DNW:
I think that all humans ought be regarded as scoundrels until proven otherwise. And governed as same. Representative Government is to laugh. Additionally there needs to be a state-sanctioned Morality. Before all freedom-lovers present foam at the mouth too much, just try to appreciate that if your State doesn’t provide you with a Morality, whey thn Other People Will. And they have. After a generation or so of this, the Other People have Pwned the State. And how’s that been working out for y’all lately.
Much should be instinctive, moral, and *not* Political. The reason everything is political today is that instinct and traditional group morals have been suppressed.
People live and self-organise (note not self-govern.. somewhere there’s a King and some Ephors with monopoly on state violence) best when not deracinated and not living with more than the tiniest bit of Diversity. I’m not Procrustes, so will always be some… but it’s not a Good. Far from it. Also people do not do well in giant conurbations.
Anyway lots of things I’d like to see and never will.
You mention the Ottomans. Your problem is thinking of yourself as a Male or as a Family Head. You should be thinking of yourself as a Phanariot, an Armenian (unless it’s 1915) or a Jew. As far as ingratiating goes.. well the trick is to be the Group on Top playing Divide and Rule. One Whites have never learned and one some Other Peoples have learned the hard way.
@huxley:
“Do we deny women the vote…?”
Yes.
Imagine you’re debugging or refactoring software. The first of many things you’d do is comment them out.
Because this is the United States of Goddamned America; and, because we are not supposed to be a population of damnable semiconscious peasants, or yoked through politics and social obligations to any such worthless people. And because these types of opportunistic herd animals were never supposed to be here, or allowed in, in the first place. And because the idea is that a freeman or woman, regardless of his or her economic status, is supposed to manifest some pride in being critically aware of the political world around them, and in which they have a determining role as a citizen.
DNW:
Then we’re agreed. You are not talking about human beings, but Americans as you would prefer them to be.
However, we live in a real world where the US is mostly populated by human beings, whom you consider not exactly subhuman but close enough that you would deny them the vote.
The older I get the longer the odds look for the US to emerge out of history, much less be the template for future humanity.
Perhaps, as Zaphod seems to say, we need to let go of Ye Olde Constitution, scrap it and start anew with something that works in the 21C.
I guess I’m sentimental and still believe it’s worth giving it a try with the current population.
However, as I said, the New Left were bright, booked, mostly men from upper social strata. They had pondered the Big Political Questions and reached very different conclusions from yours. Should there also be a filter so they can’t vote?
I let the earlier characterization regarding some supposed categorical desire on my part to stop women per se from voting pass. I did not think it was more than a
passing generalization that was not expected to be taken literally.
But whether or not that was the case with your construal, I see that there is a need on my part for some corrective comments.
I made no assertion that women should not be allowed to vote in American elections, local, state, or federal.
In fact, female ancestors of mine were among the first American women to have the franchise; and they deserved it.
But the franchise is not just some entitlement to be unconditionally bestowed on anyone who happens to be whelped within the political boundaries of the polity. We know this is so because as I have pointed out in the past and as you note now, such a position leads to manifest absurdities with morons/idiots, children, and other mental incompetents and social dependents being assigned the exercise of a civic duty they are incapable by nature and lack of experience from exercising responsibly as political and social peers.
And I do not speak of people in general and world over. I don’t care about some abstract “humanity or legislating for it. I speak here only of ostensible citizens of this polity
My argument, based on reading historical documents and commentary, is that this polity was constructed with a view to exercising certain limited powers, and that the citizenry entrusted to exercise the role of jurors and electors were expected to be competent and independent persons who were the actual peers, not just the abstractly nominal and by assignment peers, or those whom they were called upon to make laws with, and reciprocally, for.
Thus there are two elements here: peer status in reality, and reciprocal obligation and duty in fact. These must be distributive terms applicable to each and every individual within the considered population, and not fictive or nominal attributions.
If that is allowed to occur, then the fundamental predicate of association is violated.
And with the leftist enemy, that is quite obviously the case: in as much as in the view of the leftist organism, the political is merely a systemic superstructure built upon an exploitative relationship occurring within some part of what the leftist defines as “society”; i.e., any collection of people engaging in exchange relationships.
Touch the tar baby just once, and on the Marxist view you are obligated [f**ked ] forever …
The founders did not know Marx of course. But they knew of kings and paupers and vagrants and people with no vested interests, and these were not to be part of the body politic: as in a representative system where there were not the strictest controls maintained on state power, these people would eventually turn the system and everyone in it, into slaves of their own slavishness.
I do not think that everyone who thinks differently from me, should be prohibited from voting or cast into the Carribean with a millstone around their necks. But I certainly would shrug at the fate of Bill Ayers and his compatriots should that happen to them, as they are existential enemies of our lives and liberties as we have known them, and demonstrably incapable of redemption.
The short answer is that although I do not agree with Zaphod on the ethnic basis for the lines he draws, I do categorically assert that true collectivsts are – if they describe themselves truthfully – by nature enemy others; and neither fit to be considered or tolerated as political peers, human associates, or indeed, morally like-kinds in any sense whatsoever.
@DNW:
Caribbean? Are you going all mushy on us?
Bering Sea. Millstones cost good money. My guess is that the Alaskan King Crab Industry would be happy to cooperate in a win-win transaction.
I love and hate Pragmatism. It works but sucks all the Romance out of the game. I mean no Helicopters?!?
I may not love helicopters, but that does not mean I cannot appreciate, and then shrug at, the irony of Marxists who view law as a fiction, being forced by the people they are trying to murder, to take an extra-judicial swan dive from 3000 feet into the Atlantic Ocean.
I always found the moral indignation of persons – who who were essentially moral nihilists – pretty amusing. Acting outraged when the niceties of those conventional juridical systems which they had been busy trying to subvert and overthrow were skirted, seems too, too, precious.
What moral objection for example, could Kathy Boudin possibly make to having a bomb strapped to her fanny, and set off by those whom she had just previously been trying to kill?
We all know the rules for radical scam of making their enemies live up to standards which the lefties disregard.
But when that now transparent trick fails, there are still plenty of people willing to plead that the self-declared soulless other, be accorded a due process designed to apply to someone whose life was presumed to have an eternal destiny, and an objective value. Apparently this song and dance is performed in some hope against hope, that it will be reciprocated. History laughs; and Biden takes office.
More than one oops. But this one …
” … not just the abstractly nominal and by assignment peers, or those whom they were called upon to make laws with, and reciprocally, for.”
should read
” … not just the abstractly nominal and by assignment peers, of those whom they were called upon to make laws with, and reciprocally, for.
I guess the “r” key is just above the “f”
DNW:
Most kids are just not that interested in why their older relatives believe what they believe or think what they think. Nor are they interested in politics. It’s usually just annoying background noise. Kids usually imbibe the precepts without thinking much about it.
The fact that I had a crazy Stalinist uncle kept me from ever being a leftist. But I had zero desire to discuss his political beliefs with him, and only listened when I was in a social situation where it was unavoidable.
I take issue with several of the points made above.
“the idea is that a freeman or woman, regardless of his or her economic status, is supposed to manifest some pride in being critically aware of the political world around them, and in which they have a determining role as a citizen.” DNW
Not so. The founders never imagined that the average citizen in their States fulfilled that metric. They did understand that the public had common sense grounded within Christian morality and Judeo principles. When so many Americans abandoned religious strictures, personal subjective morality prevailed, which is always subject to de jour ‘revision’.
“However, as I said, the New Left were bright, booked, mostly men from upper social strata. They had pondered the Big Political Questions and reached very different conclusions from yours.” huxley
Arguably, the foremost intellectual of his day was Gore Vidal, perhaps the last leftist to engage in reasoned debate. Yet I was never impressed with his arguments, despite myself being thouroughly liberal. Intellect does not equate to common sense, much less wisdom. Marxism’s tenets, the godfather of collectivism are so transparently flawed, as to call into question the intelligence of anyone who espouses them.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get past Buckley’s Boston Brahmin demeanor, which I found offputting.
Perhaps not the “Inhabitants”, perhaps not the entire body of the citizenry, but certainly the presumed political class of republicans, and ideally, all franchise holders.
And although I eventually made reference to the Founders’ generation in a subsequent comment, in the comment containing the particular passage which you quoted, there was no such reference or specific context.
The remark was instead – and as it referred specifically to females must be read as – a more general reference to the presumed necessity of the existence of republican virtue in members of the political class of a republic, if it is to survive.
It you wish a Founder quote along these lines though, one can easily be provided by referring to the famous last lines of Federalist No. 55.
By the early 19th century the notion of republican citizen awareness and responsibility was circulated as a reformulated John Philpot Curran epigram, attributed in our era to Jefferson as “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”
I did not think that the general idea that the concept of republican virtue and pride permeated the republic and was considered necessary in its first decades through the early 19th century, was particularly controversial.
https://northcarolinahistory.org/encyclopedia/republicanism/
I have obligations the rest of this weekend, and so I may have to leave it there …
Some time back, I proposed a question. Is there a moral requirement for citizens with at least minimal cognitive abilities to use them seriously in matters of public affairs?
IOW, would the Changer whose story sparked this thread be considered shirking a known duty, being so frivolous and uninterested in public affairs? It would be a major issue restricting the franchise to those who could pass a current events test. So it remains, I think, a moral stricture that one should use rational thinking, even to the extent of being uncomfortable with the result when it encountered habits of thought which one preferred.
IOW, don’t be a mush head. If “mean tweets” are the primary pillar of your voting pattern in the last few years, you’re doing it wrong and should apologize. You may, rationally, still like Biden, but you at least have to think about it. Don’t convince yourself that, because Trump is not POTUS, it’s actually “funemployment”, for example.
DNW,
I would respond by pointing out that the first proposal was limiting the franchise to property owners. The rationale being that owners of property were literally “invested” in the country and that their self-interest dictated support for the country’s preservation and prosperity. The practical objection that such a restriction would never gain approval among the propertyless class made it a “non-starter”. So all white men of age, including the vast “unwashed” gained the franchise. In time, essentially the same argument led to women and minorities gaining the vote. What separated the “unwashed” then and now was the embrace of Judeo/Christian values.
“So it remains, I think, a moral stricture that one should use rational thinking, even to the extent of being uncomfortable with the result when it encountered habits of thought which one preferred.” Richard Aubrey
Salesmanship studies have consistently shown that 75% of people base their buying decisions on emotions. The primary ones being greed and fear. Thus our consumer economy. Is there any real doubt that the same applies to political views and the votes that follow?
Perhaps no more perfect example exists of this than the 1952 Presidential contest between Gov. Adlai Stevenson and Dwight D Eisenhower. Stevenson had the intellect and an unmatched resume. Eisenhower was a war hero. No… contest.
GB Audie Murphy was also a war hero. Ike had done a job of coordinating a huge enterprise, mostly from scratch.
In the discussion of American citizenship let me me add a datum. It’s still early in the 3 day weekend. My online buddy bc report
47 shot, 2 fatally in Chicago through this morning:
https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-shooting-mass-shootings-violence/11001013/
Richard,
Agreed, despite Murphy being the most decorated WWII combat veteran, that achievement obviously did not qualify him for consideration for the Presidency. Whereas, Eisenhower had directed a massive campaign and had done so working with big egos and foreign allies. So arguably, he was a worthwhile candidate in his own right. Nevertheless, in peacetime and with no other peer power, arguably Stevenson was the ‘rational’ choice.
JimNorCal,
It’s not ‘inherently racist whites’ racking up those numbers. Nor asians or hispanics. But the voters who elected Chicago’s leadership are enabling it.
@JimNorCal:
47 shot, 2 fatally illustrates perfectly (Steve) Sailer’s Law of Mass Shootings which states that the higher the proportion of individuals wounded vs. killed the more certain you can be that the shooter was Black. They’re just not very good at getting things done.
Zaphod:
My favorite quote from “Barcelona” (Whit Stillman film):
___________________________
Spanish Woman: [What about] All those people killed in shootings in America?
Fred: Oh, shootings, yes. But that doesn’t mean Americans are more violent than other people. We’re just better shots.
GB. Stevenson was a smart guy but his executive experience was not up to Ike’s. That the sharp end of Ike’s work was war doesn’t make the organizing irrelevant to other issues.
And you don’t need a peer power to have a pain in the ass. See the Korean War and MacArthur.
DNW: agree with your point about the presumption of republican virtue and/or civic knowledge on the part of voters. It wasn’t just a fusty 18th-century bewigged thing. My parents had it and passed it on to their children, just as most parents of their generation did. They would have called it part of being a grownup. Well, that’s gone.
Geoffrey Britain: Connecticut Brahmin. Buckley grew up in far northwestern Connecticut–the “Northwest Corner” to its lockjawed WASP denizens. Brother James still lives there–98 years old. “Know Your Brahmins!” (title for an imaginary mental hygiene movie, with sprightly intro music).
Zaphod: thumbs-up on “Barcelona”. Also “Metropolitan”. “Look out, he’s a Fourierist!”
Re: gun violence. My wild-ass hunch: correct for vibrant etc., we’d have a gun violence rate on par with Estonia’s.
Re: Ike. Ike was way smarter than Adlai. Read his farewell address: he nailed it, and not just about the MIC. Unlike Murphy and hundreds of thousands of other men he commanded, he had no combat experience. Zero. And unlike Milley and our current crop of four- and five-stars, Ike was really good at his job. College president too (Columbia)–little side gig he had while also serving as the first NATO commander.
I assume she’s STILL a Republican voter ? Because there are LOTS of fake post-9/11 “conservatives” that are nothing of the sort.
Some of them eventually went back to being reflexive partisan Democrat supporters. Like Michele Catalano at ASmallVictory.net. Her site appears to be defunct now. Or John Cole at Balloon-Juice.com. Both post-9/11 conservatives that eventually went back to being lunatic partisans with incurable, chronic Bush / Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Others continue to pretend, but can’t really pull it off. Like KarenPundit at HotAir. As well as much of the NeverTrump losers in Conservative Inc.
It’s one thing to have an “opposition”, so to speak (I hesitate to use the word “enemies” though I absolutely believe that word is 100% accurate), it is entirely another thing to have traitorous scum in your own midst.