So, the Cambridge Analytica plot thickens!
If you wade through this story diligently you might conclude that Cambridge would do just about anything you wanted to make you happy, including honey potting politicians or sending pretenders to offer bribes for real estate deals.
It would all be recorded and then you could just pop it on your campaign website, or wherever else you wanted to use it, maybe leak it to the media, and then embarrass your opponents right out of the contest. Or however else you wanted to use it!
The problem with this latest announcement about CA is that it just lifts the lid on the can full of crap that the political establishment has collected to use in its unending attempt to undermine the system and win whatever objective it wants at the moment.
My feeling is this is mostly a Republican game these days, given Steve Bannon’s connection to Trump (now fractured but who the hell knows?) and the collection of slimy operators who have always hovered around the president. (Sons included!)
Look, I am as interested in nailing corrupt people as anyone I know, and I would not do this kind of thing. Ever. I trust Robert Mueller’s folks are up to their eyes in some aspects of this story even as we speak. They certainly should be.
Everything is not automatically acceptable in politics, even if it seems to work at the moment. But this is not the kind of distinction a man like Donald Trump would understand, or value if he did.
We have spent a couple of centuries working out how we select our public officials. There have been plenty of shenanigans as part of that process, but once they are discovered, set under the bright light, they melt. People sometimes went to jail and, voila, we ended up with a cleaner process.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying what we had was perfect. Everything from Gerrymandering to felonious attempts to keep black people from voting to outright theft of property and money remains a part of the system. But when that kind of thing is discovered, it’s generally put to rest.
We don’t need anything new in this area, even if it comes from our sparkly internet products and services. Next thing, Amazon will be offering a bribery option along with its Whole Food selections.
There’s enough of that already.
Madigan’s Gleaner 