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Over the last decade or so, I've heard the name Eric Swalwell a few times.
First, because he got caught up in a Chinese Honeypot, then because he obliquely threatened to nuke me.
He has reappeared in the news recently, not only as a California gubernatorial candidate, but also as an alleged rapist. Fox news is reporting that he will step down.
The balance of power in Congress will likely remain unchanged, as GOP congressman Gonzalez will also be stepping down, though the impact on California politics may be notable.
Historically, California's executive branch has been a powerful feeder into future presidential races. The fall of Swalwell will cause a localized power vacuum that may have unexpected repercussions.
As someone who is not a California resident, I have no special insider information here. Would any locals care to weigh in on how this is impacting things within the state?
Personally I’ve yet to see anything out of these accusations that looks all that convincing. The major accuser who went on the record first said she hooked up with Swalwell many times and continued to text him, and had to tack something on at the end to imply some kind of date rape. (She didn’t remember getting that drunk!) there was one accuser who basically accused Swalwell of choking and almost killing her, but that seems wildly implausible without more evidence that he was into that.
This is like when Dems chased out Al Franken or Andrew Cuomo, there’s a noose tightening now around straight heterosexual male sex. I see a lot of conservacons cheering but this seems longhoused to me.
I also always wonder at the extent of this activity in Congress. I’ve heard rumors of sex parties and orgies and such, but it’s not clear to me how much of that is rumoring from people who don’t know anything. It’s Washington DC, it’s a major American city, of course someone somewhere is having an orgy. And Hill staffers can get up to quite a lot in private (I’ve “dated” quite a few myself). But the Congressmen? The Senators? The people who actually matter? For every Swalwell running around I imagine there’s an Elizabeth Warren not getting up to anything (I imagine, I hope, I imagine I tell myself). And what Swalwell seems to have verifiably done so far (drunkenly kiss a girl who is not his wife on camera) is not much worse than what I could find my friends doing in the groupchats.
What I mean is, supposedly there are Illuminati rape bacchanal orgies happening in Washington to blackmail the politicians and that’s one of the reasons a story like this gets so much interest but I never see the evidence. This topic gets a lot of debate from among my friends.
Professional life in America has a weird double reality happening.
One where sex exists, men are horny, and women are using their bodies to advance.
And one where we act like sexless automotons in the workplace and things are determined on merit and skill.
I call it a double reality because both are true, but they are also obviously contradictory to each other and reality at the same time. The sex realism reality is at odds with having a functional workplace. And the merit matters reality is at odds with human nature and behavior.
There are three groups that matter in most organizations (and their comparative name at a national level in parenthesis). Managers (politicians), Employees (staff), and Owners (voters).
Managers tend to like the sex reality, owners tend to hate it, and employees have mixed feelings depending on how much it benefits them.
Owners tend to like the merit reality, managers tend to hate it, and employees have mixed feelings depending on how much it benefits them.
This has served me well for understanding job shit that happens, big government, small government, big corporations, or mom and pop stores. Some things that result:
I wish I could say "if you want to fuck people at work, you are bad and shouldn't do that" but I'd be gigantic hypocrite. I dated a girl from work in high school. Met women at work parties for one night stands in college (I was working on capital hill at the time). Had a sexual relationship with someone in HR at a workplace. Later at that same workplace I met my wife, dated her secretly for a while, and then openly dated before getting married. Can happily say I stopped 'shitting where I eat' after that.
All of that to say I also have no idea what reality looks like in Washington. But "both of the realities are true" doesn't feel wrong to me. There are probably weird sex orgies, there are probably high level government employees cheating on their spouses, fucking hookers, and hitting on underage girls. At the same time it doesn't mean these sexual escapades are running Washington. I'd bet good money that all of the supreme court justices are faithful to their spouses and not getting sexually tricked into supreme court rulings one way or the other. There is probably a large amount of "meritocracy" within agencies. I put that in quotation marks, because it is merit that the agency cares about. But its not so bad to be merit in the sense of "how good is your blowjob technique".
Now here's a man who likes to live life on the edge.
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