Elusive Reasons Part 2: A Suggestion

     In response to the earlier piece, reader Mark Clausen has submitted a tantalizing note of explanation:

     They simply have to utterly destroy DJT to discourage any future upstart "outsiders" that any encroachment on "their" turf will not be tolerated -- especially by those who have not been vetted by decades of corruption.

     I added the emphasis.

     A corrupt organization must ensure that all its members are corrupt. This guarantees certain advantages, one of which is the ability to destroy anyone who turns on the organization. A passage from Martin McPhillips’s blockbuster Corpse in Armor underlines this nicely. A conversation is taking place between “The General,” who heads a super-secret, officially unacknowledged organization that investigates and thwarts terrorist plots, and Charles Spencer, a multibillionaire who is one of the American heads of a communist-terrorist conspiracy that has plotted to nuke New York City. Spencer, whom the General’s team has just captured, has been fooled into thinking the General, whom he knows as “Edward,” is a member of a higher-level committee in the conspiracy. The General is probing for a way to prevent or forestall the attack:

     “We need to delay the attack and we want you to tell us how to do that.”
     “It can’t be done,” Spencer said. “Can’t be done. Simple as that.”
     “You must have kept a key to delay it, Charles. No one is that irresponsible.”
     “Eddie, I’m sorry, but I had to make it so that nothing could call this attack off. It was my decision. Now we have to prepare for the aftermath. But calling it off, it can’t be done.”
     “I don’t believe you,” the General said.
     “Believe or not as you please,” Spencer answered. “It won’t change the facts. I relinquished control over the nuclear operation.”
     “You’ve never relinquished control over anything, sir,” the General said. “You certainly wouldn’t let go of something this important.”
     “Well, look, Edward,” Spencer said, “maybe there is a thread that could be pulled, but first just get me out of this chair. My damn fingers are numb.”
     “You need to give me that thread first, Charles.”
     “No. I have nothing for you. You want to continue humiliating me, then I’ll let you guess about what I know. Stop treating me like a dog and I’ll be more forthcoming.”
     “Here’s what I’ll do for you, Charles, if you don’t tell me how to delay the nuclear attack. I’ll let you go, get you all cleaned up, back to your tip-top condition and send you on your way back to your life, and as you arrive back at whichever estate, the news will break, here in the U.S. and around the world, that you are a pedophile.”
     Spencer froze. It was as though he turned into polished marble, the transformation was so immediate and complete.
     “Yes,” the General said, “we know all about your secret life. Did you think that you would be allowed to accumulate all that money and power without us retaining methods of control? We don’t care about your habits. But we know how attached you are to your grand reputation in the bourgeois world, and what this revelation would do to you.”
     Decades of cultivated arrogance drained out of Spencer in a matter of seconds. The General had the thing that was worse than death for him.

     The salient thing in the above is that Spencer absolutely accepts that those above his head would have assured themselves of “retaining methods of control,” and that they would use them if it should prove necessary to break him to harness. It’s what Spencer would have done were their positions reversed.

     The corrupt trust only in the corruption of others. Thank you, Mark.