Let he who is without sin cast the first stone, the saying goes. I’m not aware of any such sainthood restrictions on casting the 100th stone so I’m going to proceed despite my own laundry list of sins.
Matt Gaetz, is just the latest in a long line of politicians being revealed to be immoral deviants. These politicians often preach to us and express indignation at some perceived moral failure while they themselves behave like greedy, perverse hyenas prone to debauchery behind closed doors.
The list of politicians who have demonstrated unethical behavior keeps growing. It seems like every month we get several reports of how some government officials have violated our trust, yet not much is ever done about it. Even in clear cut cases where a politician has straightforwardly acted unethically, they often go unpunished and promptly re-elected.
Look at almost any case of some official being guilty of misconduct and you’ll undoubtedly also be able to quickly dig up numerous instances of them vigorously feigning adherence to moral decency and accusing others of failing to do so for one reason or another.
Sure enough, Matt Gaetz has repeatedly accused other members of Congress of unethical behavior, while faking moral superiority. A few days before being forced to withdraw his name for Attorney General, he said on Twitter, “Stock trading is such a huge part of congress. It shouldn’t be. I can’t wait to tell all these stories of corruption, treason and betrayal.” His umbrage was obviously a complete fabrication.
It’s clear that he withdrew his name from contention for Attorney General because he wanted to avoid the release of the ethics report. He has been investigated for sex trafficking, having sex with a minor, misusing campaign funds, paying for prostitutes, and inappropriately receiving gifts. The release of the ethics report on Monday revealed that the House Ethics Committee had “substantial” evidence that he paid to have sex with a minor and regularly solicited prostitutes, among several other crimes.
What do we expect when we elect someone who looks like a cartoon villain?
In response to the revelation that he made Venmo and PayPal payments to prostitutes, Gaetz said, “In my single days, I often sent funds to women I dated – even some I never dated but who asked.”
He expected us to believe this but his subsequent actions do not sound like those of an innocent man. If he was innocent, why would he withdraw as the AG nominee? An innocent man would probably not threaten other members of Congress with making revelations about their use of public funds to settle sexual misconduct accusations.
We shouldn’t find it hard to believe that what Gaetz claims of other Congress members is true, but the fact that he never disclosed this is an indication of his lack of integrity and of the depth of the depravity in Congress.
If Gaetz knows of these abuses, surely other politicians know of it as well and they haven’t exposed it either. They protect each other to protect this system that they’re a part of, and why wouldn’t they protect it when it is so personally rewarding to them.
Nancy Pelosi has understandably drawn criticism for her husband making Nostradamus jealous with his fortuitous stock trading decisions. She has even said that she would be willing to support a ban on stock trading for members of Congress. This is mighty decent of her, although legislation of the sort that would have any chance of passing would only ban members of Congress from trading, not their family members – a mere symbolic concession to distract.
It is well known that politicians use information that is not available to the public to make very profitable investment decisions, but nothing is done about it. For all the moralistic preaching that they do, they do nothing about the unethical behavior that is going on around them and instead happily take part in it.
Most alarmingly, we do not have a good system to catch and expose unethical behaviors in Congress because the deviants are left to police themselves – this means that we’re only hearing about a small percentage of the total cases of misconduct – only instances whose revelation happens to promote party goals.
The parties in Congress rarely have an incentive to investigate or punish members of the opposing party because doing so would prompt a retaliation from the other party. It’s mutually assured destruction, which produces a truce between politicians: you don’t tell on me and I won’t tell on you.
Here’s hoping that Gaetz reciprocates with a violation of the truce himself by exposing his fellow perverts in Congress.
Rafael Perez is a columnist for the Southern California News Group. He is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.