The rise and fall of John Brennan has the makings of an all-too-familiar Beltway tragedy. People do not lose their idealism in this city in grand moments of corruption. It starts with small lies that steadily reduce your resistance until the biggest lies become happenstance. It can create a type of self-deception as one treats lies as a moral option for the sake of the greater good.
If I had to pick one person to most intensely dislike in the rogue’s gallery of Beltway insiders who made Trump Derangement Syndrome a lifetime avocation, John Brennan tops the list. Narrow minded and pugnaciously self-righteous, he reminds me of someone who lives to walk into a bar and pick a fight.
If I had known that he was a teasipper (I’m an Aggie) it would have only made the dislike more intense. If I had known in 1976 that the future teasipper and bureaucratic bully was going to vote for a Communist, it might have inspired me to register to vote. My first election to vote was 1980, when things looked grim.
People who act like they’re going to punch you in the face if you disagree with them the way John Brennan did get under my skin. But now it looks like he’s going to get his comeuppance, and in this society, which values industrial strength virtue signalling the way ours does, that doesn’t happen as often as it should.
Positive Infinity 