as for strzok, besides his norman bates mien, is just a guy who takes credit for other’s work, puteyev ran the chapman ring, (he’s the jeremy irons character in red sparrow) and he was a walk in, yet they still almost let them get away, other soviet agents like dobbins had the run of the place, and apparently this new cell leader, they recently discovered, which were sleepers, but he went after carter page and general flynn, lying about whistleblower lokhova,

About 2% of U.S. Army personnel outranked Alexander Vindman at the time of his retirement. Vindman fancied ‘the Interagency’ made policy and not the president, and took to scheming to undermine his boss. He merited harsher punishment than he received. He was mustered out, as are half those occupying the rank of Lt. Colonel. Peter Sztrok is a much more sinister character. A trial lawyer of my acquaintance watching his performance in front of Congress said in more than four decades of questioning witnesses in criminal and civil trials, he had never seen such snide and condescending behavior. He did injury to private citizens. He deserves criminal prosecution.

These men were not low level. Had they been, they would be less trouble. Miles Taylor was low level.

similarly in afghanistan and iraq, he carried taliban and al queda propaganda, against our troops old habits die hard,

Around about 1985, Michael Kinsley offered that in Washington, an official’s reputation tends to expand – like a gas – to fill whatever office he occupies. That’s John Kerry. Kerry is notable, like all members of Congress, at being able to run fundraising and publicity campaigns. However, he’s a Democratic Senator from Massachusetts. Democratic Senators in Massachusetts have, since the end of the Great War, been re-elected > 90% of the time (while Republican Senators are returned to office about 50% of the time). He won a tough primary elections in 1982 and 1984; none of his subsequent campaigns were challenging and three of them were walks. Prior to getting elected Lt. Governor on a ticket with Michael Dukakis, he practiced law in a two-lawyer firm. His partner (who was also his sometime girlfriend) eventually quit practicing when she landed a judicial appointment. Prior to that, he’d been employed in the district attorney’s office. His duties were largely administrative and the DA got tired of him after a while and fired him. Prior to that, he was a student at BC law school; not one of the more capable it emerged when his transcript leaked. Prior to that he was in the Navy, on active duty for three years. Not much wrong with his Navy service that should interest anyone. It’s just that he built his entire public persona on those three years – more precisely, on a four month combat posting to the Mekong Delta. He was awarded a mess of metals for unimportant things and sent home early. I’ve known a few combat veterans. They didn’t make much of it. My mother’s observation of her contemporaries who’d been in combat (WWii and Korea) was that they’d start to tell a story and then come to a dead stop in the middle of it. Kerry made use of his boatmates as campaign props.

So, who is John Kerry? Well, there are people who know him who think well of him and people who do not. To the rest of us, he’s a high class blowhard, a mediocre lawyer, and has an astonishing nose for women with eight-figure sums of money behind them.

As for Al Gore, he’s the beneficiary of one of the odder features of American politics – brand loyalty. He was a newspaper reporter and serial grad school dropout who got elected to Congress as his father had previously represented that district. It was his association with Bilge Clinton that cost him his reputation in Tennessee. He’s gotten very wealthy since his retirement from politics, benefiting from the willingness of businessmen in regulated sectors to make the actuarial calculation that their target pol might one day be able to do them a favor.

They have six children between them, all of whom had a tony education, and, one might surmise, benefited from the starfu*ker tendency among college admissions officers. One of the six is impressive.

That is my definition of “low-level”. Low enough that their positions couldn’t honestly cash the checks their egos were writing.

And they don’t like looking like fools.

*Ordinary people will come around to this faster, compared to those who have invested heavily in the pursuit of elite status. The latter may not come around until they are overtaken by events and their investment becomes worthless.

Vindman and Sztrok were high-level functionaries.

Trad poetry is still being written. We discussed Dana Gioia on this forum a while back. Check out A. M. Juster’s (real name: Michael J. Astrue) work: https://www.amjuster.net/. Interesting factoid: Astrue was a government bureaucrat (commissioner of the Social Security Administration, 2007-2013).

Deco: you’re probably right about poetry being a niche taste, although you might be surprised by some of the places where it still pops up.

“…Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.”

(Larkin, “Church Going”)