Ladies and gents, we’re going to do something a little different today. I’m going to tell you all a story. It’s a true one, too. No tall tale, no puffery or hyperbole, if I can help it. Just a simple story of something I noticed, then a discussion of what that means.
Photo by Nohe Pereira on Unsplash
Years ago, I started work at Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany as a temporary contractor. I was actually a temp hired by a contracting company, but I needed a job and they were paying pretty decent by temp standards.
Tilting At Windmills is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
I showed up and, on my first day, I didn’t have much to do. The guy who was supposed to teach me seemed to have other things to do, so I spent the day sitting around doing nothing until about 2:00.
We went home at 4:00.
Still, it became a thing, and every morning I’d show up at 7:30 and leave at 4:00.
The guy who was supposed to train me — We’ll just call him “A” — was a nice enough guy. He actually went to high school with my wife, though they weren’t really friends or anything. He and I became somewhat friends, though we were both better friends with a third guy who was just down in our offices to help us through a project.
Still, we got along.
Which was probably for the best because, first, “A” wasn’t a temp, but a full-time employee, and also the son of the guy who ran the entire operation from the civil service side.
In other words, getting on his bad side could well end up getting canned.
Then one day, “A” didn’t show up for work. He wasn’t answering his phone, nothing. Around noon, he finally dragged himself in. Shortly afterward, Daddy came down to chat with “A.”
The outcome? Oh, well, “A” got pulled out of our warehouse office and sent to work in the office of a different contractor. No big, right? It wasn’t until we found out that he was given a job with more money and more responsibility.
He got canned from that one a couple of years later because he was downloading music by the gigabyte using the company’s T1 line…only to end up with a better job with more money and more responsibility.
The guy literally failed upward.
It was a wake-up call for me, the eternal optimist. I worked diligently and received only the bare minimum, something I have a habit of doing, I’m afraid. He screwed up and then advanced.
In and amongst this was a co-worker I’ll call “D.”
D knew “A’s” father from his country club, where she used to work. Then, when she needed a job, he landed her one in our operation.
Now, I like “D,” which is why I’m not using a name, but I also know something they may not. See, one day, “D” had a problem and wanted help understanding something on their pay advice. It means I saw what they made, and I got pissed.
“D” was a lower-tiered worker than me within the company’s hierarchy, but they made more than me.
Why?
Let’s just say the connection between the big boss and “D” isn’t lost on me.
See, when we look around and see people like Nancy Pelosi and others get rich while in public office, it’s obvious there’s corruption there, but it’s easy to dismiss it because they’re politicians. Of course they’re corrupt.
But the truth is that the system is rotten to its core, up and down the line. Not everyone plays the game like that, but there are enough examples that we don’t really have much hope of accomplishing anything.
The reason everyone lost it over DOGE last year was because cleaning up the excess meant cleaning up the graft. It made it harder to just manufacture jobs for waistrel sons or potential paramours. It meant there was a limit.
The system is rotten. It’s broken. And Elon Musk was never going to really purge the entire system.
From spouses getting jobs out of the blue, even when there was never an opening, to civil servants retiring on Friday, then coming back to work on Monday with a spiffy new contractor job doing the exact same thing for more money, all while drawing retirement, I saw enough questionable stuff to recognize there wasn’t anything new.
I’ve been thinking about that for a while.
I’m not interested in opening myself up to lawsuits, hence the pseudonyms, but I’d eventually win any such case, because truth is an absolute defense against defamation claims. I haven’t really talked about this before, and I kind of needed to.
You see, I love my country. This is the greatest country in the world, in my not-so-humble opinion. However, if we’re going to preserve the parts of this country that matter, we need to do it by cutting out the rot. The ideal way to do that is to bring this up, talk about it, and then start backing candidates who will clean it up.
And people know it. Why do you think so many people just don’t accept that absolutely no one who hung out with Jeffrey Epstein on that island took part in the same sick stuff he was into? Why do you think people want to know about who all has had cases paid off by the congressional slush fund used to silence victims of sexual misconduct of both lesser and greater types?
Our elites view themselves as a new aristocracy, but the bureaucracy sees itself as the new mandarins, a different kind of elite. Both figure they can get away with whatever, especially if they’re not directly profiting off of it, just building their own little fiefdoms.
That’s not how our system is supposed to work.
Yes, you’re going to need a civil service to administer the things the Constitution says the government should do, but things have gotten massively out of hand, and with that power has come corruption.
That corruption is what will bring down this country faster than almost anything else. When people of any party start rewarding buddies and family, or start pardoning sons for crimes they’d been convicted of, you have a problem, and people see it, and it just degrades the moral standing of the nation as a whole.
Share
I have no problem believing that Hunter Biden is also guilty of influence peddling, and that Joe made bank off of it. That’s because it fits so much else, and yeah, I’m not saying that Joe was the first or the last to do that kind of thing. He was just sloppy about it.
But it doesn’t stay in the White House, either. After all, I’ve referred to members of Congress more than once.
What upsets me most is that I don’t really have an answer for you. I want to preserve what makes this nation great, but I also want to take a chainsaw to the rot and rid us of it once and for all.
At this point, I’m open to suggestions.
---
Tilting at Windmills is 100% reader-supported. If you enjoyed this article, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription for 15% off the first year or making a one-time donation here . You can also check out our store . Your support is greatly appreciated.