Andrew Cuomo sexually harrassed mutiple women

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I won't tell if you don't.

It's been a long time since we've crossed paths. Hope things are good. I'm sure neither of us are quite the same people we were back then.



I don't think we'll ever know, but I personally believe recognizing the potential for dissonance is important to helping society evolve on the issue and find better solutions. People treat this issue as so black and white, when all my conversations have indicated it tends to be much more nuanced to the people involved. Failing to understand that is a large roadblock standing between destructive situations and effective solutions, IMHO.



Both parties are good at ignoring what stands in the way of something they want.

Clinton's impeachment was more than 20 years ago and, while harassment was part of the social conversation then, society was still accepting much more than it does today.

I'd like us to be done with the problem for good, but it keeps bouncing back. I'm hoping the ratio is two steps forward for each one back, at least, but that might be naive.

(I had a far more detailed response typed out but seem to have lost it. Oh well)

That's a pretty concise version of where I'm at, my cynicism has devolved to the point where I just skip straight past "because it was the right thing to do" and start looking for profit motives when it comes to any political maneuver. The one that always comes to mind is the way Al Franken got railroaded out of the senate to clear the line of fire on Roy Moore and Donald Trump; there was no dressing that up as genuine indignation, it was a purely political calculation, and I think enough people realized that to help tank Gillibrand when she tried to run in 2020. Of course I already knew she was a hack after her political change up after being appointed to Hilary's old seat, but I realize that my level of interest in these things is not normal.

I use the example:
Hitler murdered millions.
Stalin murdered more.
Both were wery naughty boyz.

But, but, they are killing you for the *right* reasons.

Last edited by Pepe on 12 Aug 2021, 9:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[ laughs in Mao ]

Oh, Ok.
But are you saying this is *not* corrupt behaviour?

Explain to me how Tulsi Gabbard was relevant to the topic? Also, can you explain to me how a veteran who served two tours in Iraq is a traitor.

I'm mulling over this "out loud" as I write ...

My first reaction to your statement was "of course not," but I realize I mostly don't feel corruption is the right term. The calculation a political party makes in these situations is not "dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery." The failing by the harasser/politician is a personal one, that only directly affects the politician and those who work for the politician. It isn't one of policy, or of putting personal interests ahead of those of constituents; it isn't a violation of the oath of office in any direct sense, and it doesn't have direct effect on the politician/harassers ability to do their job in accordance with the needs of constituents. It is only in the broader sense of setting tone and precedence for the nation that the behavior will have destructive effects beyond the people involved. I see potential for corruption in how the party chooses to project to the public its response to the behavior, but not in the choice of response itself. The choice of response is going to be a lot more pragmatic, weighing the positive the harasser/politician can accomplish in office, against the strong anti-harassment messaging a resignation would send.

In the private sector we fire harassers to protect against lawsuits, and to send a message about the willingness of a company to do what is needed to insure a safe and healthy work environment for all. But politicians work for the voters, not their political parties (even if it often seems like they do), which changes the equation substantially.

That's actually what makes the Clinton and Kennedy responses so repugnant; in both cases, forcing them to resign would not have changed the political calculus, Gore as president instead of Clinton, or whatever Massachusetts liberal instead of Kennedy, but they were politically powerful and so not held accountable. Clinton particularly sticks in the craw even 20 years later due to the way the feminists of the time performed tortuous logical back-flips in order to excuse his behavior, it was really a preview of the turn evangelicals would later take with Trump, though in many ways I would argue more hypocritical. Confronted with Trump's character, Christian voters shrugged, where as feminists actively defended Bill Clinton and attempted to justify his action or even argued that the real problem was Republican prudery in the face of a sexually vital president.

My position, unlike me, is rather simple.
Protecting someone who has been compromised to the point of having to resign, is a corrupt act.
Hyperpartisanship is not a virtue in my book.

If the orange man was still a threat, this protection would have continued, of that, I am convinced.
I am not a spring chicken and have seen too much of life not believe in the perversity of political animals.

The wise old skunk has spoken.

I personally feel that replacing a president is highly disruptive for a nation. I would never do it over what was essentially a personal failing, and Gore lacked the political skill Clinton had at that time. Back in the primaries, we didn't "really" know about Clinton's personal failings; it was just rumblings, and truth be told pretty much all politicians back then had strong failings when it came to how they interacted with women, so the odds of replacing him as a candidate with someone better were pretty small. Once he was in office, it seemed too late to me. Nor were we fully aware back then of just how deep scars from harassment would run, so nearly everyone was more likely to pay lip service then move on. But Clinton wasn't impeached over the harassment, he was impeached over potential perjury, and on that score I felt his lawyer instincts had threaded the needle of "what the definition of is, is" fairly well (similar to the way Trump can claim his call with the Ukraine was "perfect;" both Clinton's statement that raised the perjury question, and Trump's phone call to convey a message without saying it, involve a skill certain professions understand quite well).

Still, I look back at my thoughts from the time with regret. There was clearly an element of believing what one wants to believe involved. By the time Hilary first ran as a primary candidate for president, there had been enough evolution in my mind for a friend's statement against her representing the Democratic party to really stick with me: "the last thing we need is Bill Clinton in the White House with too much time on his hands."

I strongly believe, based on my own lifetime observations, that you have to look at each time period differently on this issue. Everything about our culture and our understanding has been evolving and moving throughout my adult life. Some steps forward, some back, some lateral but distinctly different. Past examples can be instructive, but judging how they were handled by today's standards isn't reasonable. That isn't to say past behaviors become any more "right," but the way they were received was highly dependent on exactly where the shifting norms stood. If you are going to make judgements about the responses to the behavior, you have to understand and allow for the societal climate of the time period.

Most women my age have faced a significant amount of harassment during our professional careers. But most of it was during a time we were culturally expected to move on and push the experience out of our minds. No one would be demoted or fired for it; the men were just "acting like men." To suggest that the workplaces protecting those men were corrupt would fail to consider just how normal it was. Am I grateful that we now understand it should never have been normalized, and that real harm results? Absolutely. But getting to the right answer is a process, and where any of us were 20 years, 40 years ago, is very different from today.

I believe in clear lines of separation between compromising behavior that is personal in nature, and compromising behavior that direct involves governing decisions. The former can be abhorrent and may result in voters abandoning the candidate in the next election, but it won't harm the structure of government beyond our ability to positively perceive our government. The only reason the behavior is compromising is usually that political opponents have picked up on it and weaponized it; without that, most voters would never even know.

There are no perfect people. Jimmy Carter had the strongest personal character of any politician in my life time, but he wasn't a great president. I've long ago accepted that one has to make a pragmatic choice on these issues.

I don't want to in any way defend anyone who engages in harassment. I have seen and experienced the real harm it causes, and the ripples of that harm. But I don't see the handling of it as an issue of corruption; I just don't feel it fits the definition. It's more a failing to do everything possible to protect victims, a weakness of understanding, a failure to see the needs of victims as exceeding those of politics. What I will fight the strongest against is demonizing the victims; that has no place in all this. I suppose I should apply the word corruption to the demonizing; that fits the definition.

I understand and respect your point, I'm just in a different place.

Source: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/andrew-cuomo-resigns.html