The one and only reason that Sean Eldridge will stay honest if you elect him to Congress is because he's already got so much money that he is virtually bribe-proof. Since he is married to the privacy-destroying cofounder of Facebook, he has your interests at heart. Yes. He actually does come right out and basically say that to a group of "folks" who are either nodding in agreement or just nodding off in a political hack-induced stupor. You decide:
I've written about Sean before. (I actually made a mistake in that other piece: he is a billionaire, not a mere multimillionaire.) He's the guy who fled from an interview with the Politico gossip rag earlier this year, for fear that they would call him out as a plutocratic carpetbagger trying to buy an election. Which they did anyway, without his cooperation. Sean Eldridge: Vote for Me because I am filthy rich.
The hypocrisy also belongs to the people who decry money in politics but embrace this particular billionaire, a “Titan dwarfed."
"To live a life which is a perpetual falsehood is to suffer unknown tortures. To be premeditating indefinitely a diabolical act, to have to assume austerity; to brood over secret infamy seasoned with outward good fame; to have continually to put the world off the scent; to present a perpetual illusion, and never to be one's self-is a burdensome task. To be constrained to dip the brush in that dark stuff within, to produce with it a portrait of candor; to fawn, to restrain and suppress one's self, to be ever on the qui vive-watching without ceasing to mask latent crimes with a face of healthy innocence; to transform deformity into beauty; to fashion wickedness into the shape of perfection; to tickle, as it were, with the point of a dagger, to put sugar with poison, to keep a bridle on every gesture and keep a watch over every tone, not even to have a countenance of one's own-what can be harder, what can be more torturing? The odiousness of hypocrisy is obscurely felt by the hypocrite himself. Drinking perpetually of his own imposture is nauseating. The sweetness of tone which cunning gives to scoundrelism is repugnant to the scoundrel compelled to have it ever in the mouth; and there are moments of disgust when villainy seems on the point of vomiting its secret. To have to swallow that bitter saliva is horrible. Add to this picture his profound pride. There are strange moments in the history of such a life, when hypocrisy worships itself. There is always an inordinate egotism in roguery. The worm has the same mode of gliding along as the serpent, and the same manner of raising its head. The treacherous villain is the despot curbed and restrained, and only able to attain his ends by resigning himself to play a secondary part. He is summed-up littleness capable of enormities. The perfect hypocrite is a Titan dwarfed." - Victor Hugo, Toilers of the Sea
The hypocrisy also belongs to the people who decry money in politics but embrace this particular billionaire, a “Titan dwarfed."
ReplyDelete"To live a life which is a perpetual falsehood is to suffer unknown tortures. To be premeditating indefinitely a diabolical act, to have to assume austerity; to brood over secret infamy seasoned with outward good fame; to have continually to put the world off the scent; to present a perpetual illusion, and never to be one's self-is a burdensome task. To be constrained to dip the brush in that dark stuff within, to produce with it a portrait of candor; to fawn, to restrain and suppress one's self, to be ever on the qui vive-watching without ceasing to mask latent crimes with a face of healthy innocence; to transform deformity into beauty; to fashion wickedness into the shape of perfection; to tickle, as it were, with the point of a dagger, to put sugar with poison, to keep a bridle on every gesture and keep a watch over every tone, not even to have a countenance of one's own-what can be harder, what can be more torturing? The odiousness of hypocrisy is obscurely felt by the hypocrite himself. Drinking perpetually of his own imposture is nauseating. The sweetness of tone which cunning gives to scoundrelism is repugnant to the scoundrel compelled to have it ever in the mouth; and there are moments of disgust when villainy seems on the point of vomiting its secret. To have to swallow that bitter saliva is horrible. Add to this picture his profound pride. There are strange moments in the history of such a life, when hypocrisy worships itself. There is always an inordinate egotism in roguery. The worm has the same mode of gliding along as the serpent, and the same manner of raising its head. The treacherous villain is the despot curbed and restrained, and only able to attain his ends by resigning himself to play a secondary part. He is summed-up littleness capable of enormities. The perfect hypocrite is a Titan dwarfed." - Victor Hugo, Toilers of the Sea