Off the Reservation

One of my favorite old Dylan lines:Now, I'm liberal, but to a degree 
Me too, Bob. Every once in a while, I just have to take a few steps off the reservation…like that phrase right there: off the reservation. In the view of some that is a certifiably racist expression. Hell, I’ve encountered those in my social media meandering who regard the very word tribe as politically incorrect, regardless of its long-established and scholarly use in anthropology. Under the current regime of “woke” culture, however, almost any utterance is grist for damnation. That’s why I was glad to see Barack Obama call out the limits and presumptions of wokeness this week:

“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly. The world is messy. There are ambiguities. People who do really good stuff have flaws.”

Allow me to connect the dots between that astute observation and what may be the second…or third…or probably fourth biggest political story of the week: the resignation of California Representative Katie Hill after she became embroiled in a sex scandal. Hill’s scandal should actually…and importantly…be divided into two parts. The first involves the intimate photos of her naked and/or with the young woman she shared with her husband in an ongoing threesome. The second involves a recently passed House ethics rule against sexual relations between members of Congress and their subordinates. Hill has denied she did the latter, but owns up to the authenticity of the photos, while condemning the thirst for revenge that led her truly shitty ex-husband to shop them around. Whether she should’ve resigned…either willingly or under pressure…is not where I'm going with this. There are still too many moving pieces on the story to support a sustainable take on that, including the distraction of a sexually-charged House ethics probe during an historic impeachment inquiry as well as the rumored existence of even more titillating Hill photos. Nonetheless woke culture was all over the story, but its typical hang 'em high judgmentalism was not aimed at Hill. Instead it was reserved for the patriarchy because in its view men never suffer the harsh condemnation meted out to women in regards to sexual transgression. It was also reserved for Republicans because in its view the GOP never has to pay for its indiscretions as Democrats do. It was reserved for Baby Boomers, too, because in its view Boomers don’t understand how much of their lives millennials live out in front of smart phones posing for selfies and self-exposure, totally innocent to the consequences of sharing intimate aspects of their lives in such an uncontrollable medium.As the Brits would say, Bollocks to all that.With Al Franken having rather recently been sidelined by sexual misbehavior, it’s hard to take seriously anyone who maintains that no harm would come to Katie Hill if she were a scandalous man instead of a scandalous woman. Furthermore, it's worth noting that Kirsten Gillibrand,  an obvious woman, had her run for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination largely cut short because many “woke” Democrats blamed her for Franken’s resignation. She was, of course, just the first of many to call for it...and she was driven to do it in order to be true to her long-established, well-earned reputation as a crusader against workplace sexual harassment. In this instance it was almost impossible to tell who was Obama’s “person with flaws who was doing really good stuff”—Franken or Gillibrand--because uncompromising woke culture leaves little room for fairness or nuance.     As for how unfair the scandal gods treat Dems vis-à-vis Republicans, the historical record would indicate that it’s really pretty damn fair. Democrats Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Barney Frank, to name a few, were pretty much able to ride out their respective sexual scandals and maintain office, while Republicans such as Bob Packwood, Mark Foley, and Larry Craig were not. It is unbecoming…and rather Republican…for Democrats/liberals to whine about how only our side has to pay a price for indiscretion.And the victim of new technology defense! That could only be more laughable if Anthony Weiner had used it in arguing that as a Baby Boomer he couldn’t be expected to fully understand the complexity and combustibility of dick pix and texting.You would think that after arch-feminist avenger of sexually harassed women Lisa Bloom was exposed as a double agent for arch-sexual harassing villain Harvey Weinstein, my tribesmen..and women...would be a little more cautious about jumping into relationship controversies fraught with unpleasant surprises, hidden agendas, and sociopathy. But no. Another Dylan verse…from the same time period as the line above:But it grieves my heart, loveTo see you tryin' to be a part ofA world that just don't exist It's all just a dream, babe A vacuum, a scheme, babe That sucks you into feelin' like this
That’s how I feel when I watch members of my tribe twist themselves into pretzel logic whenever a sex scandal tornado blows over the political landscape. Factuality, intellectual consistency, ethical considerations all get tossed to the wind. Instead there’s a checklist posted on the storm cellar door as to who’s worthy of forgiveness and salvation: Women over men, Democrats over Republicans, young over old.  It’s easy to say it’s all just a by-product of our extremely partisan times. But it’s dire than that. Sexual misbehavior…or perceived misbehavior…is utterly bi-partisan. It’s as old as human history and an inescapable part of the human condition. Every effort to nail it to a particular gender, ideology, or generation is another attempt at denying our common humanity…to close our eyes to the essential messiness of our world.