Follow awfulagent on Twitter

About Me

A blog wherein a literary agent will sometimes discuss his business, sometimes discuss the movies he sees, the tennis he watches, or the world around him. In which he will often wish he could say more, but will be obliged by business necessity and basic politeness and simple civility to hold his tongue. Rankings are done on a scale of one to five Slithy Toads, where a 0 is a complete waste of time, a 2 is a completely innocuous way to spend your time, and a 4 is intended as a geas compelling you to make the time.

Saturday, January 16, 2016

Politics!

One of the things I hate about politics, politicians, and the people who support them is the complete inconsistency of their morality -- i.e., things that are 100% acceptable and which should, must, have to be totally overlooked when your guy does it are 100% wrong and heinous and awful when the other guy does it.

A quick example of this:  Could you imagine how the right wing propaganda machine would be humming if a major Democratic figure had been caught outright lying about the funding of their campaign, if some sob story about sacrificing all to run for office turned out to be "Goldman Sachs gave me a loan, and after I knew I'd be getting the loan, I put all my own money into the campaign."

That's what Ted Cruz did, and the story's gotten surprisingly little traction.

And much as I don't like Ted Cruz, I think everyone should consider him a natural-born citizen eligible to be President of the United State.

But at the same time, much as I don't like Donald Trump, I'll give him points for questioning Cruz's citizenship.  Because it at least demonstrates a moral consistency, being willing to go after a Republican the same way he went after Obama on the same issue.

That's a lot better than the professional politician who happily changes his mind every time the party in the Oval Office changes hands.  Confirming justices is good or bad, depending.  Using executive orders is good or bad, depending.  Well - no.  You can disagree on the particular executive order all you want, or the particular judge or justice.  But your entire world view on the legitimacy of the tactics used in pursuit of political power shouldn't change based on the identity of the person or party exercising that power.

No comments: