Washington's Two Absolutes and Insiders' Fear of Trump

During the early Seventies I was a young man just starting out. One of my first ventures while struggling with a suitable curriculum to major in at college was a stint with the federal government. Though a friend from the University of Miami I landed a temporary position at the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA. Bob Orgaz was a computer programmer at the Virginia Beach NOAA facility, and he worked closely with University of Miami Rosenstiel Marine Science staff across the street.

Our office was headed by quite an interesting character, Mr. John Stimson. Right after being introduced, Stimson told me to call him John rather than the formal Mr. Stimson. That was his father, he explained who happened to have been a former Secretary of War during the Roosevelt Era. He was a tall man, and it was apparent from his stature that he had been a strong, lanky man in his youth. Now he was well over sixty, and like to pace back and forth nervously with his right hand in his pocket, shaking keys and occasionally pulling out the contents, in loose change, as he contemplated going to a machine to buy another soft drink.

John liked to tell stories. Our office work was sometimes slow, and could be boring. He filled down time, waiting for reports from Fisheries by enlightening me on a few things he believed would help me put a foundation beneath my feet. To illustrate the most important lesson John had chosen to offer me, he told me of the time he served on a U.S. Naval vessel during which he shaved only one side of his face for two weeks. Stimson had been raised on the Washington, D.C. diet of sugar and white bread; it was sweet in the mouth but lacking any semblance of nutrition. 

Der Kriegsmarine Panzerfaust 

After the first week of shaving only half his face, the young sailor had a small following on the ship. He had also made his commander extremely irate. Everyone knew what John Stimson was saying with his silent half-shaven face: The commander was two-faced, like a Washington politician, “always talking out of both sides of his face.” Many of the ship's crew suffered under that duplicitous commander's reign, but no one would speak up, or out of turn. In the end, John's silent protest made its point, and improvements were made onboard.

That was his introduction to a more important lesson.

Since I was at the very beginning of a potential career in federal bureaucracy, John thought it essential that I learn the Two Rules that Govern Washington, D.C. – the federal government and all its extensions.

Rule Number One: Know who to suck up to. If you don't know how to suck up, you'd better learn fast. Even so, it does you no good knowing how to suck up unless you know Who to suck up to. This is to say, also, that it NOT “who you know,” as many believe. It doesn't matter who you know. You have to know Who to suck up to.

Rule Number Two: Do it.

The essence of this lesson is that not following these two rules prevents everyone from advancing. It often causes many to retreat, that is, most people are not able to hold a position unless they continue to suck up, and of course they had better know to whom. Many bureaucrats, John explained, had achieved a high position and lost it because they made the mistake of believing that they no longer had to follow the Two Rules. There are no exceptions. It is a lifelong commitment.

As Stimson put it, “Swollen heads shrink very fast in Washington.”

Five years later I was visiting friends in the city of bureaucrats. A family friend, Audrey Marra, introduced me a close friend of hers, a British reporter who had written about Washington politics for thirty years. He was a kind old Gentleman from the Old School who had “crossed the pond” after the Second World War. We met at a bar downtown, a favorite drinking hole for journalists and bureaucrats to meet and exchange gossip. “You must know, my young friend, that this place, this whole city and its suburbs, is a cesspool of gossip. Without that gossip we would never have anything to write.”

While enjoying my first taste of Guinness Stout, I was blessed with his explanation. “You see, the really good stuff we can't print. We get the same story, or very close versions of it, from multiple sources. We know that much of it is true, or all of it's true, but we can't print that good stuff. We have to settle on a middle-of-the-road watered down version of truth, or the half-truth if you will. None of us would be here, still writing, if we told the straight truth without watering it down. No one here likes their truth straight, like their whiskey.”

We ordered second pints of Guinness for the table. “I can tell you're a bright young man. And since you like my favorite beverage, I'm going to share with you some wisdom of my thirty-plus years in this city.

“The reason we can't print the truth … we really should, as journalists, as that is our purpose, to find and print the truth, or, in this age, to make television reports of it … the reason is that to do so goes against the Two Rules by which this place operates.

“If you spend any time here, you'll learn the Two Rules. If you don't, you have no future here.

“You said you're thinking of staying on. So I'll tell you why we can't print the truth as we know it, and I assure you it is much different from what you read in print. That's a fraction of half-truths at best.

“A writer such as myself, and look behind you at another two dozen of us in this room, has to know who to suck up to in order to hold our positions. We have to do it or we have to leave. Many times I've thought of going back across the pond to a country home in the peaceful little town I came from before the War. But here I am. It's not the money that keeps me here, it's the people. In almost thirty-five years in this city … many have come and gone, many have gone in not a good way. Because this is a rotten place, like no other rotten place on Earth. To survive in a rotten place like this, and there is no other like this, one has to know to whom one has to suck up to. For me, it's simpler because it's mostly my editor. For my editor, it's more complex. And, we have to pay homage to our sources, but not in order to get the story. We get more stories than we can print, thirty times over. So we have to know which stories not to reveal because to do so means that we've omitted someone we were supposed to suck up to but … by writing a forbidden story we've committed an unforgivable sin.”

While taking this all in, I reflected on John Stimson's similar words. To my new journalist friend I said, “Then, based on what you say … there are many more Watergate level stories that will never be told.”

He old British Gentleman agreed.

And I had to ask, “Everyone here has to ask permission to write a story, to make a move, to join a club, to run for office?”

His answer; “If there is a Third Rule it would be that. No one rises without first having permission from someone, and often someone means more than one person. For some things there must be a consensus. We have an editorial board. Companies have a board of directors. In politics, there are committees and of course, the parties. Permission is required.”

These lessons were given to me more than thirty-five years ago. That these Rules are very much still in practice today is evident in how Washington D.C. Insiders react to the presidential candidacy of Mr. Donald J. Trump. The existence of the “Never Trump” movement proves that this is the case, and the Rules explain why. 

Trump didn't follow the first two rules, obviously. Nor did he ask permission to run for office, as everyone knows.

Thomas Jefferson wrote,

Man has no greater pain than that which he inflicts upon himself, from which there is no escape.

I quote Jefferson not because it applies to Mr. Trump, but because that is pertinent to those in the Never Trump Movement, especially Washington Insiders in both government and the Mainstream Propaganda Media. 

Try to imagine yourself as a careerist in Washington. For thirty years or more you have had to suck up to countless people, not good people at all, but rotten people, and you've had to do this to survive in that cesspool. That is who you've become, one who routinely sucks up to rotten people. Now along comes this guy who has refused to play that game, who has refused to swim in the same muddy waters that you live in, and he wins.

So you have this network of people in Washington, who go to the same parties, go to the same bars and restaurants, who hear the same gossip stories that are provably true but cannot be publicized, and everyone in these overlapping circles knows which rotten people to suck up to. Everyone knows that the rotten person, in government or Propaganda Media, that they suck up to has to also suck up to someone just a tad bit more rotten than the ones you must suck up to. Small consolation there. 

But it's enough to explain, in objective terms, how so many people, Washington and Democrat Party Insiders given a status of “Superdelegate” were able to nominate the Queen of Rottenness, Hillary Clinton, to become president. It also explains why the Mainstream Propaganda Media is so adamantly intent on blocking Trump and a Truth Movement that elevates him to a unique status: slowly, incrementally he has been exposing the rotten truth kept buried for so many decades. 

If it seems as though these rotten people hate the American Public you are most likely right. By their actions one can discern that they do hate us, but just a bit less than they hate themselves.