Hans-Hermann Hoppe has explained precisely why the scum rises to the top in a democracy. See here. His analysis is, however, restricted to elected officials: “…the selection of government rulers by means of popular elections makes it nearly impossible that a good or harmless person could ever rise to the top. Prime ministers and presidents are selected for their proven efficiency as morally uninhibited demagogues.”
This theorem needs to be extended to those unelected officials who rise to head agencies of government. They are chosen and confirmed by elected officials. They are one step removed from elective pressures. They use their posts to curry favor with those who appoint them and may in the future appoint them to other such posts and those who in the future may offer them lucrative jobs in industry or as lobbyists or as advisors. Venality and corruption are what drive these women and men, as a rule, as they are working within a corrupt system manned by “morally uninhibited demagogues”. Competition for the top posts therefore assures us that the top bureaucrats will be as venal as elected government rulers are. In the deep state arena of human endeavor, the scum will also rise to the top. Furthermore, this is going to happen in governments that are not democratic too. The currying of favor within government is a pervasive incentive no matter what form a government takes.
From this perspective, it’s virtually a foregone conclusion that Comey’s testimony is worthless and self-serving. Within hours, the main media are spinning pro-Comey and anti-Trump stories out of it, but they’re not going to hold up in the face of Comey’s admissions.
To be impartial toward Comey’s disagreeable character, it’s in the same league as James Clapper and John Brennan. This trio of deep state chiefs illustrates my point that unelected officials at the top are as bad as elected officials.
I’d say that in recent memory, all the presidents have been morally uninhibited demagogues: Clinton, Bush 2, Obama, and now Trump. I believe that they also exhibit other character defects that are part and parcel of the selection process by which they rise to the top. They each may not possess every one of these characteristics, but they possess enough of them such that they are neither “good” nor “harmless”, as Hoppe says. These characteristics include hubris, arrogance, ignorance, venality, stupidity, cowardliness, narcissism, cynicism, hypocrisy, overconfidence, lack of self-control, lack of education, inconsistency, lack of principle, lack of understanding, lack of conscience, lack of honesty, lack of empathy, and lack of mature judgment. These people are really not good, i.e., they are bad persons; and they are surely not harmless.
9:04 pm on June 8, 2017
