Daniel McCarthy: The Case for Matt Gates

I don't have an opinion on Gaetz.

He's on the periphery of my awareness.

Even after all these years, I still jump for the left/MSM's character assassination trial balloons, as much as I hate to admit it.

Thus far, it sounds to me like a lot of hearsay. And the left long ago honed their game in this respect.

And they seem to have an endless supply of cultists willing to be the vessels for sexual-assault accusations.

At any rate: I'm not resistant to evidence about Gaetz--not at all. I've got no commitment to him. But we know what the left has become, and we know we can't accept mere rumors of hearsay.

So I'm suspending judgment.

Don't know what else we could reasonably do.

This part of McCarthy's essay really struck a chord with me, inclined as I am to want Washingtons:

There are two ways to look at the corruption that is rife in 21st-century American life. One view is that reform demands a saint to reproach the wicked. While we await a political hero with the character of a second George Washington, we must make do with morality-reinforcing illusions, according to which our most powerful institutions—the federal government, the media, the medical establishment—are also good institutions, while wickedness is a characteristic of lone individuals, especially of those who challenge the norms of our institutions.

The second view is that if we must await an immaculate reformer, reform will never come. So we ought to support even obviously flawed individuals when they take on the necessary work of confronting systemic evils. Those systemic evils aren’t impersonal, of course—they are the product of people who insist that they are upholding what is good even while they do what is bad. The merely human, rather than angelic, reformer has a doubly difficult task: In addition to being assailed for his mortal failings, he is charged with attacking the very decency of our institutions. Hence, the campaign against Trump branded him as a threat to democracy itself, as well as a convicted felon.