X-Rated Films: Senate Edition
In a video obtained by the conservative news site The Daily Caller, a congressional staffer was having gay anal sex with an unknown man Hart Senate Office Building hearing room.[i] The Daily Caller’s exclusive breaking the story has clips of the video laced throughout the article. The staffer turned out to be an aide to Senator Ben Cardin. Another conservative outlet, The American Spectator, reported on the gay sex tape, remarking that “The so-called hallowed Halls of Congress play host to a plethora of indecent acts every day — but one staffer for Senator Ben Cardin is taking it to new levels.”[ii] The brief report proceeds to comment on the video and various still images of the aide and his partner. It seems like these conservative reporters studied this gay sex tape thoroughly. As Rachael Bade for Politico notes, though The Daily Caller nor The American Spectator named the staffer in the video, “conservative outlets identified one person seen in the video as Aidan Maese-Czeropski, a legislative aide to Cardin.”[iii] In the Daily Caller report, it notes that “The alleged staffer can also be seen in a photo, naked on all fours, looking back at the camera on the table where Senators often sit to ask questions during a hearing. It appears to be unprotected sex.”[iv] Evidently, they did more than simply glean the video to report on the basic facts. Just like the most ardent anti-gay televangelists and conservative commentators are the most fascinated with trans and gay issues, the conservative outlets reporting on the senate gay sex tape are speaking with ire and condemnation, but their actions betray their curiosity.
This is not to say that they are all closeted, not even close, but it is interesting that the same pundits who rail against gay marriage and pornography also go into detail about the findings of their ‘investigations’ into porn. To the religious right, homosexuality is a sin, and it is to be vehemently condemned, as it is ‘unnatural’. Thus it, like other sins, must be avoided and temptation must be avoided, implying that they believe if more people were given the option, they would ‘become gay’, as if it’s a switch that you turn on and off in your mind.
Should these goofs have made a sex tape in the Senate? No, of course not, but is it worse than J6, as the conservative commentator Charlie Kirk said on the PBD podcast?[v] Clearly not. It is fitting that people are giving it to each other in the Senate, as that is what the daily meanderings of Washington result in, people getting shafted. The conservative elite is quick to pearl clutch about people making amateur pornography in what Republican Josh Holmes called his “beloved Senate”, but not only are they weirdly detailed in their reporting on the gay sex tape, they are not outraged about the shafting that goes on in that same place every day.[vi] Thomas Knapp captures this when he writes that “This incident may well constitute the first event in Hart 216’s history where only one person got screwed.”, and that “Unwise, immature, and inappropriate as it may have been, the whole thing didn’t rise to anywhere near the filth level embodied by Congress’s daily operations.”[vii] The conservative elite is horrified by the gay sex tape because for them, it symbolizes the supposed moral decline of the US. That is why Kirk remarked that it was far worse than J6. The act of filming a porno debases the Senate, however, the act of filming a gay porno is even more debasing and degrading. Perhaps God will strike down Capitol Hill with a bolt of lightning as punishment.
Beyond the oddity of puritans watching this video in an endless loop, insisting it’s for research, not interest, what this event epitomizes is the selective outrage of the conservative elite. They are disgusted by people filming a gay porno in the Senate, yet they advocate for policies that are sadistic and inhumane, condemn our culture of ‘sexual anarchy’, underpinned by the entertainment industry, not just pornography, as the reason for America’s decline relative to great powers like China and Russia, and they despise libertines and sexual radicals. To the conservative elite, the existence of gloryholes, gangbangs, and orgies is obscene, however, the existence and rampant use of cluster bombs, drones, and cruise missiles is just and necessary. As Knapp points out, “The Capitol Hill complex would no doubt take first place in any ranking of America’s raunchiest BDSM clubs.”[viii] This is where the conservative elite does differ from illiberal liberals. They lament what they perceive as moral decline in the US. They see the turn away from American exceptionalism towards cultural relativism as evidence of this. Thinkers like Noam Chomsky and Glenn Greenwald, who are extremely critical of US imperialism, are seen as engaging in cultural relativism and more sympathetic to autocrats than to the US. The conservatives who left the Republican party following Trump’s nomination in 2016 cited his immorality as a reason for their departure, however, they supported the Bush administration’s policies of militarism and torture. The images from CIA blacksites in Abu Ghraib are sadistic and pornographic, and such sadism is justified as necessary to fight the evil of jihadism.[ix] Dropping bombs and floating massive armadas of warships is seen as necessary to fight the evil of communist China. Senators and members of Congress revel in an orgy of warmaking and of shafting the lower classes daily, and we’re supposed to be outraged and ashamed that two people made a gay porno in a hearing room?
Collectively, Washington engages in far more sadistic and grotesque acts than these budding pornographers. The US ruling class is like the elites depicted in Brian Yuzna’s film Society, in which a teenager in California learns that his family is part of an alien species who together form monstrous sex cult who do what they call ‘shunting’, where they transform into deformed beings, melding with each other in a twisted orgiastic mass, sucking unsuspecting victims dry.[x] This may seem extreme, but considering the result of decisions made in Washington, it is fitting, and it is not surprising that millions of people believe there is a reptilian elite. People like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are so inhumane and sadistic in their policy actions that they must not be human at all, or at least, the humanity in them is suppressed.
Just as the elites in Society meld together into a mass, mostly all the elites in Washington meld together on key issues like Ukraine and China, smearing dissenters and sucking the body politic dry, leaving a carcass that was once the American Republic. The gay sex tape scandal in the Senate is a distraction from the truly horrific acts of sadism that are perpetrated in Washington daily.
Notes on Conservative Internationalism
Kori Schake, a former official who served in the National Security Council and the State Department under George W. Bush, published an article in Foreign Affairs titled “The Case for Conservative Internationalism”, and in her article, Schake argues against the isolationist wing of the Republican party that remains under Trump’s reign.[xi] She makes her case for a return to the party of Raegan, to a foreign policy that was underpinned by a united vision which strove to “promote American security and economic power while supporting the expansion of democracy around the world.”, and “It meant advancing free trade, ensuring fair international competition for U.S. companies, and promoting the rule of law in immigration policy. And it meant opposing authoritarianism, especially when autocrats directly challenged U.S. interests.”[xii] What Schake misses is that Raegan supported many dictatorships, from Suharto in Indonesia to Pinochet in Chile, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq, who was then toppled by Bush. So, Schake is hailing the foreign policy vision of Raegan, who, as part of that vision, supported a despot who was eventually excised from that vision later when he was no longer useful. Raegan did not champion the expansion of democracy around the world, he sought to expand the US sphere of influence. These are not the same.
Rigorous debate, once prized in the West, is now taboo on issues of US foreign policy and national security. Debate within the Republican party is seen as ‘chaos’ that results in a chaotic foreign policy. Trump’s rhetoric harshly critiqued Bush era Republican ideologies of neoconservatism and conservative internationalism. Schake captures the Washington elite’s contempt for debate on foreign policy when she writes that “The GOP’s disorder is especially evident—and dangerous—in the realm of foreign policy.”[xiii] This is absurd for two reasons. Firstly, Trump, for the most part, governed as a conservative internationalist. He may have expressed disdain for international law, norms, and human rights, and he may have broken with the rest of the West on issues like climate change, but he sent arms to Ukraine, sabotaged the Nordstream 2 pipeline, approved a troop surge in Afghanistan early in his presidency, just as Barrack Obama did after he also promised to end the wars in the Middle East, and he took a hardline stance towards China, promoting a ‘free and fair Indo-Pacific’. While Trump’s rhetoric expressed a desire to turn inward, his policies showed otherwise. This is embodied in a document outlining Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy that was declassified just before he left office in 2021.[xiv] What this document showed was that underneath Trump’s bluster, officials like Robert O’Brien and Matt Pottinger were crafting a strategy for the Indo-Pacific that relied on US allies in the region and was a complete contrast to Trump’s rhetoric on alliances. Secondly, the disorder or disagreement on foreign policy within the Republican party proves that the ideology that Schake and other Washington elites champion is not beyond debate. Mostly all the Bush era Republican intellectuals already broke from the party following Trump’s nomination in 2016. The idea that the party will rally around someone like Nikki Haley, who is essentially a female Bush and is no different from Joe Biden, certainly on foreign policy, is false. Figures like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene are attacked by the likes of Schake as in their worldview, the ideology espoused by those on the ‘isolationist right’ is anathema and dangerous. In their ideal world, the entire population agrees on a US grand strategy of internationalism, liberal or conservative.
Where disillusioned neocons found comfort in the Democratic party under Hillary Clinton’s leadership, as well as Biden in 2020, Biden’s strategy of protectionism and his withdrawal from, or as Schake and others refer to it constantly, the ‘abandonment’ of Afghanistan, are more a continuation of Trump than a reversion back to the status quo. However, outside of trade and a few troop withdrawals, Trump did govern as a conservative internationalist. A prime example of this is his disdain for international institutions, as Henry R. Nau, a scholar who writes extensively on conservative internationalism, argues that conservative, unlike liberal, internationalist favor small government in the international arena, just as they do domestically.[xv] Nau writes in an article published in National Review in 2017 that Trump was pursuing an internationalist foreign policy despite his tirades against it during his campaign. Nau argues that Trump oversaw a globalism that is “nationalist, not universalist.”[xvi] Although Trump declared in a speech at the United Nations that he is “a nationalist, not a globalist.”, some, like Nau, see his foreign policy as globalism in a different form.[xvii]
Schake and other so-called conservative internationalists are making the case for a failed, ebbing world order. They wish to return to a grand strategy that has already been proven disastrous. Conservative internationalism is, as the scholar Michael C. Desch argued in his review of Nau’s book, Conservative Internationalism: Armed Diplomacy under Jefferson, Polk, Truman, and Reagan, “neoconservatism rebaptized”.[xviii]
It is not surprising that Trump differed little from his predecessors on foreign policy, since he hired neoconservative goons like John Bolton and H. R. Macmaster. As I’ve noted before, without the ‘adults in the room’, perhaps Trump will finally be unleashed to truly unravel the US led world order and its intricate network of alliances and troop deployments. Scholars like Schake and William Inboden, who also wrote an article for Foreign Affairs on why the GOP should again become the party of Raegan, need to be more introspective on the world order they champion, as do liberal internationalists as well.[xix] Schake, instead of being reflective or introspective, is adamant that the US led liberal world order created in the aftermath of World War Two makes the world safer and more prosperous, and that absent US leadership, another great power will rule the world order. Schake writes “That someone else would likely be China. And China in charge would make for a dangerous world in which it and authoritarian allies such as Russia and Iran could amass the military and economic power to impose a repressive vision on the world.”[xx] Again, this is that same neanderthal level argument that tries to assure us that China, Iran and Russia are conspiring to depose the US as leader of the world order and to then mold it in their own image. The Western ruling class needs this moronic narrative to be true to justify obscene defense spending and the development of bigger and more devastating killing machines.
The current US and Western leadership is authoritarian and repressive. If enough people deviate from this narrative even slightly, or ask questions critical of it, then the permanent regime will be exposed for who they are, everything they project onto the rogue states in the international arena, like North Korea and Iran. Ultimately, conservative internationalism is not that different from its liberal counterpart. It is simply an attempt to repackage failed ideas of hegemony and imperialism.
[i] Rodgers, Henry. “EXCLUSIVE: Senate Staffer Caught Filming Gay Sex Tape in Senate Hearing Room (GRAPHIC).” dailycaller.com, December 15, 2023. https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/15/staffer-caught-filming-sex-tape-senate-hearing-room/.
[ii] Cockburn. “Please Stop Taking Nudes in the Halls of Congress.” The Spectator World, December 15, 2023. https://thespectator.com/newsletter/please-stop-taking-nudes-congress-cockburn-notes-12-15-23/.
[iii] Bade, Rachael. “Cardin Staffer Linked to Sex Tape Leaves Senate.” POLITICO, December 16, 2023. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/16/cardin-staffer-linked-to-sex-tape-leaves-senate-00132147.
[iv] Rodgers. “EXCLUSIVE: Senate Staffer Caught Filming Gay Sex Tape in Senate Hearing Room (GRAPHIC).”
[v] Valuetainment . “‘Worse than January 6th’ – Charlie Kirk Reacts to the Gay Sex Video from the Senate.” http://www.youtube.com, December 18, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMOomEs_5RI.
[vi] Rodgers. “EXCLUSIVE: Senate Staffer Caught Filming Gay Sex Tape in Senate Hearing Room (GRAPHIC).”
[vii] Knapp, Thomas. “About That Senate Hearing Room Sex Tape.” CounterPunch.org, December 21, 2023. https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/12/21/about-that-senate-hearing-room-sex-tape/.
[viii] Knapp. “About That Senate Hearing Room Sex Tape.”
[ix] Viner, Katharine. “The Sexual Sadism of Our Culture, in Peace and in War.” The Guardian, May 22, 2004, sec. World news. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/may/22/iraq.comment.
[x] Society. Wild Street Pictures, 1989.
[xi] Schake, Kori. “The Case for Conservative Internationalism.” Foreign Affairs, December 4, 2023. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/case-conservative-internationalism.
[xii] Schake. “The Case for Conservative Internationalism.”
[xiii] Schake. “The Case for Conservative Internationalism.”
[xiv] Medcalf, Rory. “Declassification of Secret Document Reveals US Strategy in the Indo-Pacific.” The Strategist, January 13, 2021. https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/declassification-of-secret-document-reveals-real-us-strategy-in-the-indo-pacific/.
[xv] Nau, Henry R. “Why ‘Conservative,’ Not Liberal, Internationalism? – Foreign Policy Research Institute.” http://www.fpri.org, January 8, 2018. https://www.fpri.org/article/2018/01/conservative-not-liberal-internationalism/.
[xvi] Nau. “Trump’s Conservative Internationalism.” National Review, August 24, 2017. https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/08/donald-trump-conservative-internationalism-foreign-policy-protects-american-interests/.
[xvii] Nelson, Louis. “Full Text: Trump’s 2018 UN Speech Transcript.” POLITICO, September 25, 2018. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/25/trump-un-speech-2018-full-text-transcript-840043.
[xviii] Desch, Michael C. “Neoconservatism Rebaptized.” The American Conservative, November 20, 2013. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/neoconservatism-rebaptized/.
[xix] Inboden, William. “The Fight for the Future of Republican Foreign Policy.” Foreign Affairs, November 9, 2022. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/fight-future-republican-foreign-policy.
[xx] Schake. “The Case for Conservative Internationalism.”
References
Bade, Rachael. “Cardin Staffer Linked to Sex Tape Leaves Senate.” POLITICO, December 16, 2023. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/16/cardin-staffer-linked-to-sex-tape-leaves-senate-00132147.
Cockburn. “Please Stop Taking Nudes in the Halls of Congress.” The Spectator World, December 15, 2023. https://thespectator.com/newsletter/please-stop-taking-nudes-congress-cockburn-notes-12-15-23/.
Desch, Michael C. “Neoconservatism Rebaptized.” The American Conservative, November 20, 2013. https://www.theamericanconservative.com/neoconservatism-rebaptized/.
Inboden, William. “The Fight for the Future of Republican Foreign Policy.” Foreign Affairs, November 9, 2022. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/fight-future-republican-foreign-policy.
Knapp, Thomas. “About That Senate Hearing Room Sex Tape.” CounterPunch.org, December 21, 2023. https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/12/21/about-that-senate-hearing-room-sex-tape/.
Medcalf, Rory. “Declassification of Secret Document Reveals US Strategy in the Indo-Pacific.” The Strategist, January 13, 2021. https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/declassification-of-secret-document-reveals-real-us-strategy-in-the-indo-pacific/.
Nau, Henry R. “Trump’s Conservative Internationalism.” National Review, August 24, 2017. https://www.nationalreview.com/2017/08/donald-trump-conservative-internationalism-foreign-policy-protects-american-interests/.
———. “Why ‘Conservative,’ Not Liberal, Internationalism? – Foreign Policy Research Institute.” http://www.fpri.org, January 8, 2018. https://www.fpri.org/article/2018/01/conservative-not-liberal-internationalism/.
Nelson, Louis. “Full Text: Trump’s 2018 UN Speech Transcript.” POLITICO, September 25, 2018. https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/25/trump-un-speech-2018-full-text-transcript-840043.
Rodgers, Henry. “EXCLUSIVE: Senate Staffer Caught Filming Gay Sex Tape in Senate Hearing Room (GRAPHIC).” dailycaller.com, December 15, 2023. https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/15/staffer-caught-filming-sex-tape-senate-hearing-room/.
Schake, Kori. “The Case for Conservative Internationalism.” Foreign Affairs, December 4, 2023. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/case-conservative-internationalism.
Society. Wild Street Pictures, 1989.
Valuetainment . “‘Worse than January 6th’ – Charlie Kirk Reacts to the Gay Sex Video from the Senate.” http://www.youtube.com, December 18, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMOomEs_5RI.
Viner, Katharine. “The Sexual Sadism of Our Culture, in Peace and in War.” The Guardian, May 22, 2004, sec. World news. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/may/22/iraq.comment.
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