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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34957 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 28, 2022

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Sam Brinton is in the news this week.

For those who don't know, Sam is the first non-binary, gay drag queen to hold a federal government leadership position. I know him for his distinctive appearance, with moustache, bald head, and typical cross-dressing clothing and makeup. Here's another piece about him, from several months ago. The culture war angle should be obvious, as this man was highlighted, along with Rachael Levine, as examples of progressive hiring in the Biden administration. Suffice to say that he is not the kind of person I can take seriously, and I do not think he should have been hired, and certainly shouldn't have been celebrated. But that's not why I'm posting.

Now, why was he in the news this week?

Brinton was caught stealing luggage from an airport terminal. I'll notice that this article has no pictures of him. A summary, from here:

On Sept. 16, a female traveler alerted the Airport Police Department at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport that she was missing a piece of luggage.

Law enforcement officers who reviewed surveillance footage that same day saw Brinton remove a navy blue, hard-sided, 26-inch roller bag made by Vera Bradley from Carousel 7, according to the criminal complaint filed in Hennepin County District Court.

The victim confirmed, through a digital still of surveillance footage, that it was her bag with total contents worth $2,325, according to the complaint.

The same style of Vera Bradley luggage sells for $295 from VeraBradley.com.

Law enforcement confirmed that Brinton arrived at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport at 4:27 p.m. Sept. 16 on a flight from Washington, D.C., and had not checked a bag when he departed Washington.

Law enforcement learned that Brinton stayed at the InterContinental Saint Paul Riverfront hotel, and video surveillance from that hotel showed Brinton checking in with a bag that fit the description of the stolen luggage.

So he's been put on leave, for now, and he's due in court on the 19th of this month. At first, I wouldn't have considered posting this, as I simply found it funny in an absurd way, but then I ran across what is really the reason why I posted. I ran across a thread on twitter explaining why this was actually serious, and reflected a dangerous escalation of perverse behavior. I'll quote the main points:

The public needs to understand that this sexual deviant did NOT accidentally pick up the wrong suitcase, as he checked no bags on the flight. This was likely a targeted attempt at gaining access to a woman's underwear. This is what the Biden Admin desperately wants to keep quiet.

With nearly 13K clinical contact hrs, over 14+ years, working in a clinical capacity with men who sexually offend... with men who've done very deviant and heinous things to women and children... I can assure you that, once you see a man steal female items, it's really serious.

Go ahead and read the whole thread.

I hadn't considered this angle, at first, but once it's been pointed out to me, I can't shake it. It's the most plausible argument I've heard of for why Sam would steal the woman's luggage, given that all others make no sense.

So, to wrap up, my questions. First, should he be fired for stealing? Second, how likely is it that Sam stole the luggage specifically for underwear? And third, does this move the needle for you in any way, when considering whether to trust, hire, or promote people like Sam?

I’m not sure there’s an explanation that makes Sam look good or innocent, but given that he doesn’t swing that way I’m not finding the ‘stealing a woman’s underwear for sexual purposes’ particularly convincing.

I will say that his apparent inability to separate his sex life from … anything at all should have been red flag numero uno that he would do something wildly inappropriate, and that stealing woman’s clothes was probably for the purpose of wearing them(why doesn’t he just buy them? Presumably for the same reason he insists on giving interviews about how much he enjoys dressing as a dog during sex to celebrate his appointment as a nuclear waste undersecretary). Would I hire him? I mean, if he was actually qualified(which he doesn’t appear to be) and showed up to the interview looking and acting normal(which he seems entirely incapable of), possibly.

The reason why this is concerning is because it is an example of escalating sexual behavior, one that is pretty well documented with pornography and other fetishes. At a certain point, you have to keep getting more extreme, more whatever, to get your kicks. Buying women's underwear doesn't do it, now you have to steal it.

The escalation is the problem, and the escalation also explains why he stole it in the first place. I've yet to see any other explanation that even sounds plausible. "I was drunk and tired" doesn't cut it for me. He knew what he was doing when he did it, and he knew it was wrong, and then he got caught and lied about it. Why? Because he needs to escalate his kinks in order to continue getting off, the old stuff has grown stale.

I'm surprised I don't see more people engaging with this aspect, considering it was the main point of the twitter thread I linked.

At the risk of TMI, you don't have to be interested in women to be interesting in women's underwear, although the gay take looks significantly different from the straight one (and is usually far less interested in used women's underwear). "Male/male, crossdressing, lingerie" picks up 7 pages on e621, and there's a few artists that specialize in that as a theme.

From my understanding, Brinton's reasonably qualified, but that's kinda damning for the whole credentialing system in a radically different way: eg, this thesis is a lot of work done on a hard problem... in the most "What if we play a word game instead?" way imaginable. And while the modular small reactor stuff has some technical aspects, the waste fuel management side's more recent programs that Brinton's been involved in championing are even further down that scope.

You can find a lot of pervy people with deep interests in hard fields -- I'd like to think I'm one of them, if with better judgement, and while Brinton seems more furry-adjacent (the 'pups' here are a leather thing) than actually furry, you don't have to go looking hard at the furry fandom to find the obsessively bright. It's just that there's no signs of that sorta thing in Brinton's public profile. And people in the nuclear industry defended them in the sense that they believe that this emphasis on word games is not just the correct way forward, but the only one.

Afriad I only got as far as "The Department is committed to a consent-based approach to siting that enables broad participation and centers equity and environmental justice", but boy that sure reads like "taking all the study money and smearing it around political allies to do sociology studies and learning the ancient nuclear engineering wisdom of the Waquampa tribe"

It's just more federal money down the hole accomplishing nothing, so it shouldn't be so upsetting, but the intro speech about how nuclear is necessary to save the earth makes it chafe.

nuclear is necessary to save the earth makes it chafe.

But I happen to believe this.

And while you sniff at the DEI-flavored position, I will note that nuclear waste handling was a bit more...lax in the mid-20th Century, so it would indeed behoove the FedGov to try and ask the Waquampa Tribe nicely if they're at all okay with being near a waste site.

It is definitely true that nobody wants a nuclear waste storage site in their backyard, so that does create difficulties for finding someplace to store the waste. It is necessary to store it someplace, especially if the future of energy generation looks like it's dependent on nuclear power.

So consent is needed, that is also true. And it's probably also true that the way you get consent is finding a way to funnel federal money to the interested parties in the area and buying them off. So Brinton's work (if that is what they are doing) on that could indeed be useful and valuable - how do we structure a system of bribes so that it doesn't too obviously look and sound like a system of bribes? One way certainly would be to paint over it a coat of "we are deferring to the ancestral wisdom of the Waquampa tribe"; to be cynical, if anyone objects "hey, this is a scheme of bribery!", the Waquampa make good cats-paws to deflect criticism.

To me it reads as "this latest round of funding is obviously just for us to smear around for political purposes rather than solve the problem. Btw if we don't solve the problem earth is doomed, whoops my bad lmao"

The pro forma earth being doomed bit makes it worse for me.

I think Brinton identifies as bisexual, so at least theoretically interested in women. But this is the whole problem right there on a plate: why are we talking about this guy's potential or possible sex life? Because they went out and made it a big part of their public identity. And now this particular theft has come along, and it was a woman's suitcase with women's clothing inside it, and now the guy who was loud and proud about their kinks is having "was there a sexual kink reason behind this event?" discussion around whatever the hell happened.

At this stage, it would be less incriminating to confess "Okay, I'm a cheap bastard with irredeemably middle-middle class tastes, and I stole this suitcase because I adore Vera Wang (oops wrong Vera) Bradley's stuff but I can't justify to my inner Scrooge McDuck spending my own money on buying one, so what?" instead of the rest of what is being dragged out for speculation.

if he was actually qualified(which he doesn’t appear to be)

What are you basing this on? He has a master's degree from MIT and has co-authored several papers on nuclear fuel. Is fashion sense more important than actual qualifications?

I haven’t actually read any of his papers (so I may be wrong), but given how interested everyone seems to be in NOT dealing with the nuclear waste issue (exhibit 1: Yucca Mountain) I’d be suspicious of just about anyone posted to this job. I don’t think it’s a problem that the administration wants solved.

The proper course of action for the "nuclear waste issue" is to not care about it and keep doing what we're doing now because it's a non-issue pushed by anti-science "environmentalists" (in quotation marks because they're hindering the development of a safe, affordable and scalable zero-carbon energy source).

Looking at the "Career" section of Brinton's Wikipedia article, he seems to have the correct stance.

There are some technical advantages to doing some level of early chemical separation, at least if you want any of the industrial byproducts. But there are a variety of political reasons those aren't possible to implement or encourage implementation in the United States.

That would be my mistake; my previous impression had been that he was an environmental activist who liked to rant about spent nuclear fuel in between his gay puppy play.

Someone who dresses like that has no business working for the government, let alone at a high level. Just about every single American could have told you that if you had asked pre-2016.

I mean, if he was actually qualified(which he doesn’t appear to be)

When first hearing about his appointment and seeing the kind of photos* he deemed appropriate for workwear in the office, that was my first thought. But seemingly he does indeed have qualifications in the field and worked there before. So it's not quite "some arts graduate got a sinecure as deputy assistant secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition purely for the woke optics". And seemingly I should be referring to them as "they" per Wikipedia:

Education Kansas State University (B.S.), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.Sc.)

In 2016, Brinton was a senior policy analyst for the Bipartisan Policy Center, lobbying for updated regulations so nuclear waste can be used to power advanced nuclear reactors. In February 2020, the website of Deep Isolation, a Berkeley, California, nuclear waste storage and disposal company, listed them as its Director of Legislative Affairs and in May 2022 they were its Director of Global Strategy. In 2022, Brinton's profile at the Department of Energy indicated their previous work with the Breakthrough Institute, the Clean Air Task Force, and Third Way

*Though my fashion tastes are extremely conservative and bland, I've never worn lipstick, and all my shoes are flat and sensible. So others may find this apparel perfectly cromulent.

EDIT: And while I'm speaking about fashion and makeup, I don't think he has the kind of face that suits the makeup he wears. I don't know why he shaves his head and, er, don't educate me on gay puppy-play dress codes thanks (this is something where ignorance is bliss). But every time I see him, I get the image of the character Balok from the original Star Trek series episode "The Corbomite Manoeuvre".

I don't know why he shaves his head

They had a mohawk before, which managed to be worse, somehow. I expect part of it's a combination of drive to be 'quirky' without any particularly insightful outlets, making it obvious that "her" is the wrong pronoun, and just entering that age of the long-hours-bad-food-lifestyle where a large portion of XY folk end up stuck with a choice between 'widow's peak', 'balding', and 'shaved'.

They're 34 so a bit on the young side yet, but yes within the age range for "starting to go bald/have a bald spot in the middle" so shaving the head is the solution. But honestly, and this is just personal aesthetic taste here, they don't have the face for (1) pulling off that awful moustache they wear at times and (2) looking androgynous/wearing female makeup. They look to me like Balok, as I've said. The combination of shaved head, middling facial features, and cosmetics just looks wrong.

They don't look handsome to me, even if they presented as conventionally male. They've got those doughy, somewhat unformed, features that aren't particularly awful but aren't particularly good-looking either, but if presenting as conventionally male at least would be passable.

There's definitely some intentionally look-wrong going on -- just like there's a faction of blue-haired ladies that take the right-wing memes about aposematic signalling as an unintentional complement. So that's fair. And it's not like I don't have a face for radio and a voice for print, so I can't speak too much on it.

Personally, the vibe I got was more like the Talosians from The Cage/The Menagerie.

The Talosians have better fashion sense.

Oh undoubtedly. It was specifically his head that made me think that.

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