Now David Plotz will never accept a future piece from me, though this does not deter my brain from its Slate bracket file (and much as anything, my Slate byline aspirations need fieldwork), but I shall raise my voice, gently, on the moderate left rollback of the Petraeus imbroglio: If the neo-Eisenhower moderates, a species with no political home to call their own, exhibit character flaws, journalists like Yoffe roll out the tape measure and say let's be adults. Eh. Not so simple. People get hurt, and even if sex that violates commitments to monogamy is no longer criminalized, the state still has an interest in containing adultery. My fling was inconsequential. All of them were, but that does not mean I could not have gotten killed, and I did immerse myself in a pathological marriage between a draft dodger and his wife, unwittingly. Young and stupid, I wanted the thrill of romance, and married men, I discovered, were not afraid of me, and if I was not florid, cranky, and breast fallen, I'd do it all again, but more coolly, smarter. There is a huge difference between the thrill of forbidden pleasure, however, and illicit affairs that damage employment and productivity. And my former supervisor traumatized me, even if she did not mean to do so, by throwing me off my guard, in an email, about her orgasm intensity, and this in spite of the fact that I sought her confidence. I concede that. I enjoyed her company and was lonely and needed work again, but putting all that together became combustible. I did ask her things I feared asking my mother, and that was my mistake, because Linda is an alpha, and like any alpha, her dominance took over, and I became anxious, and the rest is history. That damage will never go away, and I doubt it will for Holly Petraeus either, and her grief is more salient than mine.
Men with power seem to need that urgency inherent in the impetus to spread their seed. We get that, but Petraeus and Broadwell were military officers. The Bush Administration did a great deal of damage creating Homeland Security, adding additional layers to a security apparatus that may not have made us any safer. Obama will not roll it back, but he is more visionary, and as president he should care that intelligence vital to the nation is well managed; it damages his legacy otherwise, carrying over bad ideas from a corrupt and inefficient administration, like Holder being out to lunch with Fast and Furious. Petraeus and Broadwell are human, and Paula was not nuts. She was enamored, and intense, but neither she nor the general are children, and Emily, perhaps Milbank as well, in a more nuanced fashion, treat them as if they were. We joke about the CIA, but we sober up real fast if, say, China takes North Korea off the leash and Seoul finds itself hit with a warhead, si? To serve within the top echelons of power is a privilege, and that should come with certain restrictions on indulgence. Unlike my former boss, Petraeus did take responsibility for his behavior, and then hired a lawyer, which is seemingly at odds with the idea that there are no extraneous legality issues remaining.
Rehabilitating his reputation is one thing, but whisking him back into executive authority is foolhardy, especially if he could not see the implications of having something necessary to conceal before he and Broadwell became lovers.
We tend to believe our republic does a bit more than mirror that Politburo in the east, but what Petraeus and Broadwell did is equivalent to the Communist Party corruption that makes the west feel so superior.
No comments:
Post a Comment