Monterey — As a former red-blood-sugared American kid, Halloween was a favorite holiday. Dressing up as a pirate, princess, beatnik and going door-to-door for candy and coins (the latter for UNICEF) was joy personified. As I aged, parties took the place of patrolling about. Costumes became more ironic, sometimes political or historical, e.g. Margaret Thatcher in fishnets, Sigmund and Anna Freud in lederhosen and so forth. My posse gathered at Liz’s apartment whose terrace cantilevered 6th Ave at 9th Street over the Balducci sign. We witnessed fun, freaky things in the annual Halloween parade, a contained version of the Mardi Gras spectacle. But nothing, not even Dante’s Inferno compares with the view of 2016 American Presidential Election.
Thanks to our rubber-necking tendencies, as humans, and the pandering needs of the press to “sell news,” we Americans have been leaning over the terrace at a parade of shame and horror. The extended display of pre-election costumes and shenanigans make the dirty tricks of Richard Nixon’s Watergate era seem like child’s play. If timing, as the saying goes, is everything, then “everything” is in a manipulative tumult.
The release last week of non-information following the barrage of ho-hum blasts of Hillary Clinton’s campaign email back-chat is so transparent it might well be a magnifying glass for the Republican recipe of “treats” that they proffer to the public.
The holiday recipe for manipulation goes something like this:
1- Make a big show of releasing important information, with well-spiced threats and accusations disguised as facts.
2- Disclose no actual facts.
3- Declare negative innuendo as though it was carved onto tablets being carried by a Prophet.
4- Use charged language with hot-button terms that stoke emotional, non-logical reactions.
5- Stir the pot. Allow to boil.
This is not a new strategy. Rhetoric has long been the tricky treat generously doled out by dictators, tyrants, fascists, and all those trying to control the masses. Whenever possible, engage the public with “…sound and fury, signifying nothing…” Scare folks, bully them, pelt them with accusations like rotten eggs. Speaking as a member of the masses, wear protective clothing and review the “sweets” coming through the door in those plastic pumpkins. As a parent, I monitored the candy my child brought home with greater vigilance than my parents deemed necessary back in the days of innocence. Due diligence would suggest the need to examine “confections” such as the suspiciously timed, James Comey’s account (formerly Republican, now a registered “Independent,” 2016).
The FBI’s Director, James Brien “Jim” Comey Jr. had been the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York from January 2002 until he was made Deputy Attorney General, December 2003-August 2005. During this time, a first order of business had been taking over investigating Bill Clinton’s presidential pardon to Marc Rich, an international commodities trader. In 2003 Comey, as a Deputy Attorney General, named his close associate and friend, Patrick Fitzgerald, to be Special Counsel for the CIA Leak Grand Jury Investigation after John Ashcroft recused himself. After someone in the Bush White House illegally revealed that Valerie Plame was a covert CIA agent in retaliation for her husband’s public opposition to the Iraq War, Mr. Comey’s hand-picked appointee was unable to find a single Republican White House staff member to charge with the crime.
Director Comey has toggled between public and private sectors, having left the DOJ to become Senior VP of Lockheed Martin (U.S. Department of Defense’s largest contractor) in 2005 and becoming General Counsel at Bridgewater Associates in 2010. He has also served on the Board of Directors of HSBC Holdings (Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) until 2013 supposedly to improve the organization’s relationship with the Justice Department after the Bank had questionable dealings with drug cartels and terrorist financing, before being appointed to his current position with the FBI. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists did a story about HSBC in February of 2015, Swiss Leaks, alleging that the financial institution benefitted from conducting theses transactions and pressuring the British news service The Guardian by putting: “…on pause…” future adverts.
Perhaps it makes sense to release all the candidate’s e-mails, compare apples to apples. But let us not filter these missives though the tainted lens of a political operative masquerading as a law enforcement officer, with an axe to grind or what used to be a hammer and sickle.
We enjoy snapshots of our kids dressed up for the Trick or Treat, but certain photo opportunities are not flattering for adults. Candid bathroom shots, for instance, would prove embarrassing for most of us. If there’s a move to, “Release the Kracken,” as it were, perhaps this could be universal. Not just for presidential candidates, but also for the rest of us as well. Let’s put up or shut up. That mythical, many tentacled sea monster of full disclosure might be an excellent costume. Of course, there’s one candidate who wouldn’t dare “don” it. He’s the guy who continues withholding his tax returns.
