Schiff and his Whistle-Blower

The New York Times said yesterday:

"The Democrat head of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam B. Schiff of California, learned about the outlines of a C.I.A. officer's concerns that President Trump had abused his power days before the officer filed a whistle-blower complaint."

On September 17, Schiff led NBC to believe he had no contact with the whistle-blower.

Now, that he's been found out, he admits he should have been more clear.

This is naked, Machiavellian progressivism. The purpose is noble. Therefore the end justifies the means.

Be informed.

The New York Times published this yesterday:

WASHINGTON — The Democratic head of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, learned about the outlines of a C.I.A. officer’s concerns that President Trump had abused his power days before the officer filed a whistle-blower complaint, according to a spokesman and current and former American officials.

This left many wondering why Schiff had led his friends at MSNBC to believe that he had not had any contact with the "whistle-blower."

On September 17, nine days before the whistle-blower's complaint was released to the public, MSNBC contributor Sam Stein asked Schiff on the air, "Have you heard from the whistle-blower?"

Schiff responded, "We have not spoken directly with the whistle-blower," never mentioning that one of his committee staffers "had" directly spoken to the whistle-blower. And that staffer "had" shared with Schiff some of what the whistle-blower had told the staffer.

MSNBC, on Thursday, said that Schiff had spoken to one of them "a couple of minutes last night" and "expressed regret for not having been more clear in his wording."

Schiff is rarely if ever "clear in his wording."

In February 2018 the Democrats were trying to destroy the Trump presidency with the Russian dossier and all that went with it---including a memo---"the FISA memo."

Ultimately the memo was made public and it exposed deep state corruption during the Obama-era between the DNC, Hillary Campaign, DOJ and the FBI. It was finally released over Schiff's attempts to bury it. It revealed that Schiff had simply not been telling the truth.

Even MSNBC tried to sort of cover for Schiff, who had lied to them, with this current matter:

"He, Schiff, said at the time, when he was saying that---obviously we now know that the whistle-blower had approached his staff, but there wasn't 100 percent certainty that the whistle-blower who had approached the staff was the same one who was behind the actual complaint. There was a suspicion it was, but there wasn't 100 percent certainty."

Then they had to finally and painfully admit: "I will say, this puts him in some---in some trouble. He clearly wasn't being forthright with us a couple of weeks ago, and he should have been much more clear about it."

Then MSNBC gave a tutorial on true progressivism.

They said,

"It's the substance of the complaint that's the story. The process by which the complaint became public is a story, and you can consider that in its own right, but in terms of gravity of the situation, I don't think the process stands up all that well to the complaint itself."

Steven Mintz has written this:

Do the Ends Justify the Means?
A Machiavellian Perspective

A characteristic behavior in today’s society is the belief that the ends justifies the means. This means actions people take are justified regardless of how they go about achieving their desired end result. For example, some students I have taught justified lying on their resume because it could help them get a job.

In politics and government, lying and then justifying it through the ends vs. means philosophy of behavior is a favorite past time. You may recall that former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, made a false statement to Congress when he responded to a question about whether the National Security Agency was collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans by saying “No sir, and “not wittingly.” We all know that was a lie borne out of a belief the ends of collecting such data justified whatever means were necessary to get the data regardless if it tramples on our rights under the Fourth Amendment that protect us against unreasonable search and seizure.

The entire financial recession of 2008-2009 can be summed up as a group of investment bankers who sought to become millionaires by trading in subprime mortgages knowing the homeowner might never make the payments but not worrying about it since the bankers sold off those mortgages to third parties who then assumed the risk. This created a problem of moral hazard where the party that creates the achieved the desired end result by manipulating the means.

The statement that the ends justifies the means can be traced back to Niccolo Machiavelli. The closest he came to it was when he expressed his view in Chapter XVIII of The Prince:

“There is nothing more necessary to appear to have than this last quality (appearing to be religious), inasmuch as men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you.”Machiavel_Offices_Florence

In this quote from Chapter 18 of The Prince about keeping faith, or being true to your word, Machiavelli is instructing a Prince on how to behave and how to keep up appearances. He says it’s very important to appear merciful, faithful, humane, upright, and religious. He also says that one must be prepared to act in a manner contrary to the appearance to keep up the appearance. This is because everyone can see what you appear to be, and only a few will get close enough to touch you and actually find out what happened.

These people (each with slightly different reasons and motivations) are all about appearing as they wish people to see them. Even if it is nothing like what they really are, even if they are saying the exact opposite of what they will eventually do, they know that few will see through their appearances. So, for Machiavelli, to appear to be doing something is good enough even if the actor has no intention of doing so, or achieving an end result far outweighs how we got there; what road we took; and whether our behavior was ethical or not.

The reason the means are important, maybe more important than the ends, is how we get to our goal is just as important as getting there. In other words, destiny tells us what we are to the world, but journey tells who we are; it’s the journey that unlocks our potential and establishes who we are as a person and what motivates us towards action.

Be Informed. Be Vigilant. Be Faithful. Be Prayerful.