LA County Supervisor Votes To Ban Outdoor Dining, Hours Before Dining Outdoors
Why are so many among the political elite engaged in incomprehensible, even suicidal, behavior?
The Wuhan coronavirus lockdowns and mask orders are purportedly intended to protect people from getting and spreading the virus.
However, the trouble with this is the long (long) list of lawmakers, governors, mayors, and others in power who are issuing these job-killing, soul-destroying orders and then carrying on their own lives as if there is no deadly plague sweeping the planet. Are they suicidal? Homicidal, even potential serial killers? Or do they know something we don’t?
The latest of these was an LA County supervisor, Sheila Kuehl, who voted to ban outdoor dining, only to be seen hours later . . . dining outdoors at a restaurant.
Protesters gathered outside the home of LA County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl on Tuesday after a FOX 11 report revealed hours after she voted to ban outdoor dining she dined outdoors herself.
Just hours after Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl voted to ban outdoor dining at L.A. County’s 31,000 restaurants over COVID-19 safety concerns, she visited a restaurant in Santa Monica, where she dined outdoors, FOX 11 learned on Monday.
During Tuesday’s L.A. County Board of Supervisors meeting, Kuehl referred to outside dining as “a most dangerous situation” over what she described as a risk of tables of unmasked patrons potentially exposing their servers to the coronavirus.
“This is a serious health emergency and we must take it seriously,” Kuehl said.
“The servers are not protected from us, and they’re not protected from their other tables that they’re serving at that particular time, plus all the hours in which they’re working.”
Kuehl’s office responded as follows:
A spokesperson for Kuehl provided FOX 11 the following brief statement:
“She did dine al fresco at Il Forno on the very last day it was permissible. She loves Il Forno, has been saddened to see it, like so many restaurants, suffer from a decline in revenue. She ate there, taking appropriate precautions, and sadly will not dine there again until our Public Health Orders permit.”
Watch the report:
In other words, she didn’t defy the order that she’d just voted to impose because outdoor dining is, in her words, “a most dangerous situation” . . . “a serious health emergency” that must be taken “seriously.” After all, it was “permissible” on that day, according to local edicts. Never mind, the dangerous serious health emergency that must be taken seriously, it was permissible at that time.
Setting aside the clear hypocrisy, the obvious question is: if dining outdoors is such a dangerous, health-threatening activity—a health emergency, why would Keuhl want to do it at all? Is it possible that she, and the many other politicians who defy their own lockdown and mask orders, aren’t worried? Not one bit?
What about San Jose mayor Sam Liccardo, who spent Thanksgiving with his parents despite the dire warnings that eating Thanksgiving dinner with your own family if they are not part of your household is a serious health risk? That grandmas the world over would be imperiled by such selfishness?
Mayor Sam Liccardo spent Thanksgiving at his parents’ home, apparently skirting health guidelines that urge the public not to gather with people outside their household. https://t.co/dc4Y6a4bOX
— NBC Bay Area (@nbcbayarea) December 1, 2020
He wasn’t worried about the WuFlu or his family. Weird, right?
Apparently, the many other political elites involved in such incidents since the lockdown hysteria began were not fearful, either. Here are just a few we’ve covered here at LI:
- Michigan Gov. Whitmer Accused of Hypocrisy After Husband Reportedly Traveled to Have Boat Put In Water for Holiday Weekend
- Denver Mayor Jets Off to Houston After Telling People to Avoid Thanksgiving Travel
- Add Democrat Fundraisers to COVID Lockdown Order Exceptions: NYC Mayoral Candidate Hosts Fundraiser At Restaurant
- California Lawmakers Defy Their Own COVID-19 Travel Warnings With Trip to Hawaii
- Entertainment Industry Exempted From Gavin Newsom’s California COVID Rules
- CA Gov. Newsom ignores his COVID lockdown rules, attending 12-person dinner party at The French Laundry
- Pelosi Caught On Video Breaking San Francisco Hair Salon Ban
There are many more such instances of the political elite actively flouting their own rules, orders, and advice. Even leftwing Newsweek called them out on their hypocrisy regarding riots (archive link).
At Powerline, John Hinderaker offers the following explanation for this otherwise incomprehensible, even suicidal (or homicidal!), behavior.
Gavin Newsom’s infamous dinner with lobbyists at the French Laundry is the latest example of a political leader who prescribes rules for the rest of us, and then flouts them himself. We have seen this over and over again, as Karol Markowicz reminds us (via InstaPundit.) She cites many examples of our supposed betters who hector us to wear masks, social distance, close down our businesses, avoid restaurants, associate with no one outside our immediate families, and so on, but who wouldn’t dream of limiting their own lives in such fashion.
Is this hypocritical? Of course. But that isn’t the most important point. The real significance of politicians flouting their own rules is that it shows they know those rules are unnecessary or useless. Take the case of Governor Newsom’s ritzy dinner. Newsom’s guests included the CEO of the California Medical Association, as well as that group’s senior vice president and head lobbyist. If these people–privy to all the latest scientific information!–actually believed that COVID is a deadly disease for people in normal health, and wearing masks indoors while social distancing and associating only with one’s immediate family would protect them from contracting it, you can be sure they would not have joined in the scofflaw dinner at the French Laundry. Not to protect you, but to protect themselves.
But they obviously don’t believe those things. Actions speak louder than words. The fact that our political leaders and other members of the alleged elite consistently flout the rules they lay down for the rest of us shows that they know those rules are bullshit. And if those rules don’t protect them, they don’t protect us either. That is the real point, more than the hypocrisy that is so obvious.
This seems far more likely than all of these self-absorbed politicos believing that they are putting themselves—and their families—at serious risk for a meal, haircut, or schmoozefest.
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“Why are so many among the political elite engaged in incomprehensible, even suicidal, behavior?”
Because there is no penalty for it. They don’t get voted out of office, the Joseph Goebbels media downplays or ignores it, and the Karens only care about Trump’s tweets.
“Why are so many among the political elite engaged in incomprehensible, even suicidal, behavior?”
Because you are a non-essential serf and she is an essential elite. “Some animals are more equal than others.” Know your place!
Shut up, wear you mask, and do as you are told!
PS – you are a nasty evil racist, too. And if you still do not get my point, you are NON-ESSENTIAL, and remember, not all lives matter.
Thanks. He needed that.
John Hayward on our loathsome elites [Buck Throckmorton]
This is a great essay tweeted out by John Hayward about our loathsome elites.
Privileged elites always want to assert their status by indulging in pleasures denied to the lower classes. This often leads them into immoral, deranged, and even criminal behavior. They’re desperate to flaunt their power by doing what lesser folk are forbidden to do.
This is one of the reasons for the wave of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and pedophilia among the richest and most powerful. They indulge increasingly depraved appetites to savor the sweet, sweet high of doing what ordinary people cannot, feasting on the food of the gods.
It’s also one of the reasons high-living elites are drawn to puritanical secular pseudo-religions, like the Church of Global Warming and now the Church of Covid. They have a deep appetite for making aspects of modern life forbidden to the Little People, but not to themselves.
You’ll notice that high acolytes of the Church of Global Warming have absolutely no intention of compromising THEIR extravagant lifestyles. They jet set, they have yachts and huge cars, they buy beachfront mansions on property they claim to believe will be underwater soon.
But they have a deep desire to make planes, cars, and accoutrements of the First World lifestyle forbidden to the proletariat. They love how their ideology elevates them into a superior overclass, reaffirming their importance by asserting they “need” or “deserve” so much more.
These elite appetites are useful to the Left because they fold neatly into its endless war against the hated middle class. The perversions of the elite inspire them to attack the morality that would otherwise help lower and middle class people improve their station in life.
Meanwhile, the fanatical puritan and luddite ideologies of the elite inspire them to restrict the resources and technologies that improve middle-class life and help people become more productive, which helps them earn more money and amass more capital.
Thus we have a culture that teaches young people to reject time-tested moral codes that would help them build better lives, instead making clumsy efforts to imitate the debauchery of the elites in ways that lead them to misery and ruin.
And our young people are taught to hate their own ambitions, to hate themselves for desiring lives that have big carbon footprints, to hate and distrust everything that could bring them prosperity and narrow the gap between their lifestyles and those of the elite.
Take a broad look at pop culture, political culture, and increasingly corporate culture as we head into 2021. Almost every bit of it has been crafted to make middle class people abandon their ambitions and program their children to fail… making Mount Olympus ever higher.
And then the political elite will demand even more control over our lives, to “fix” the ever-widening “inequality” gap their own policies and cultural programming made worse!
It’s no wonder that some who dwell on the highest slopes of Mount Olympus are tempted to go even further, to indulge in dark appetites that would land lesser men in jail – a temptation that seems especially acute for male members of the extreme upper class.
They reach for the fruit that no other hand could pick, to remind one another that they are gods, even while loudly posturing as champions of socialism, feminism, and the Little Guy. The difference between what they DO and what they SAY is part of the rush.
Via Ace of Spades
That doesn’t answer the question. Why would they need a penalty to deter them from doing this? Most normal people don’t need any incentive to avoid suicidal behavior besides the fact that it is suicidal. If they know that it’s dangerous they don’t do it. If these people actually believed that what they were doing was too dangerous to allow the public to do it, then they wouldn’t do it either no matter how easily they will get away with it.
The point is that their behavior shows that they don’t believe what they are saying. So nobody should take them seriously.
It’s the same as with glowball warmening. If they behaved as if they believed their own words, then maybe more people would take them seriously.
People willingly and knowingly do dangerous things all the time. For quite a few people, danger is not the inhibitor, but, rather, the attraction.
There is a difference between danger and being punished. People will expose themselves to all manner of danger, but punishment….
Social approbation or condemnation is a much stronger driver of individual behavior.
Don’t waive hundred dollar bills in front of poor people and make a criminal out of an otherwise honest person too tempted to not steal one of them.
The corrupt media in our country has protected these embezzling criminals (the media gets their cut of the loot), so the temptation is overwhelming, and a protected criminal class known as ‘democrats’ attracts morally bankrupt people and tempts borderline cases into criminality – or eating out during pandemic shutdowns and exposing themselves.
The left is probably furious with this dumb bint, not for her act of risking infecting others, but for her being so dumb as to expose the game.
Money. Easy money. No work required, other than spreading the poison. And, of course, kicking back some profits to your handlers.
Do liberals think it shows something impressive when they look and sound like first-grade kids?
I never met a first grade kid willingly promoting communism.
How about a third grader?
I went to a Catholic elementary school run by nuns. In third grade, we had a superannuaated homeroom nun who, as a prod to our charity. was fond of quoting, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his need.”
At one juncture, one of my classmates quoted this back to our “science nun,” a younger spitfire who had spent years doing missionary teaching in Honduras. She looked shocked, and replied, “That’s communism!” (And we knew she had had personal experience with it in Central America).
This was unsettling to us on many levels: first, it evidenced a crack in the usual orthodoxy within the convent; second, calling someone (especially our homeroom nun!) a Communist in the early ’60s was tantamount to calling her a national traitor; and third, it planted a seed toward our own eventual realization that the order’s “vow of poverty, vow of obedience” convent was in fact a literal communist society.
“Why are so many among the political elite engaged in incomprehensible, even suicidal, behavior?”
Because Liberaiism and those who practice it are INSANE!
Hey…. Didn’t La County Supervisor Kuehl play Zelda Gilroy on “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis ??????
Yes, you are correct.
Even then she was insufferably bossy.
I revisited Dobie last month on Hulu, after 60 years. I decided that Dobie was a fool, and that all his girls were insufferably bossy.
Yes, but isn’t La County Supervisor Kuehl played by William H. Macy? He’s in a bit of slump these days and needs the extra cash to pay those college bills.
Yes, she did. She looks sort of the same.
“Why are so many among the political elite engaged in incomprehensible, even suicidal, behavior?”
Answer #1: They are the ruling class. They set rules. You little people follow the rules.
Answer #2: Perhaps they are telling us that they know these controls are simply an application of a public health fear appeal that leads to more power and money for the elite?
“Answer #2: Perhaps they are telling us that they know these controls are simply an application of a public health fear appeal that leads to more power and money for the elite?”
For the win (FTW).
The only thing I would qualify is that they DON’T want us to know; the press is supposed to keep this stuff under wraps. The problem is that much of the media–and some of the elites themselves–are not in on the Great Reset game (thus Chelsea Clinton, for example, expressing outrage over Pelosi’s planned Freshman Dinner–she, Chelsea, has probably been clued in now and taught not to jump in like every other useful idiot in the WuFlu hysterical Democrat clown car).
I took ‘da boat’ over to Edmonds (20 miles N. of Seattle) yesterday morning for a doctor’s appt. and was shocked to see so many parking spaces on the main drag barricaded off for eating spaces. Up to half the parking spaces surrendered to the eateries who are just trying to survive without indoor dining.
Not one person was in any of the open-air seating. And something like a Prius had skillfully managed to parallel park between 2 water-filled barricades – that divided the space between 2 adjacent eateries.
Because that’s what everyone wants to do – drop $30+ for a meal and eat it in the gutter. In the cold. While it rains/mists. And cars drive by and parallel park 6 feet from your table. With delivery trucks idling in the road while vendors wheel supplies into the restaurants.
One just popped up here in our town – a white tent spanning 2-3 parking spaces – outside a ‘tasting room’. Appropriate I suppose – drunks don’t have far to go for passing out in the gutter.
I’m generally a mild-mannered sort with little tendency toward violence – still – some of these government overlords need to tarred and feathered or meet their personal Phinehas (Numbers 25:6-9).
Mr E…
Outdoor Dinning…Winter Time Covid Edition
Waiter: Welcome to Che-Outdoors, may I take your order?
MrE: I’ll have the Spaghetti and Snow Balls, please…
Waiter: And to drink ?
MrE: Just water….and ah….No ice…!
Down in Lacey/Olympia today(rural-ish outskirts) a guy had INSLEE in 8 ft letters on his roof laying down on the slope side and a giant inflatable santa above it standing on the peak.
I’m pretty sure he’s setting Inslee up for a golden shower from St Nick.
So do ya think Culp got defrauded, too? He sure had a lot of support in Clallam co.
As observed above, these actions by mostly democrat officials are conditioning steps. Getting the masses used to the idea that we have a tiered system. They are the new politburo, a class more equal than than others. If we don’t eliminate election fraud, they have a good chance of getting away with it, until they go a step too far, which people like these invariably do.
I agree that might be part of it, CK, in some inchoate form. We’re talking about a bunch of Democrat tyrants, though, who are not only not the brightest bulbs on the Holiday tree but who are focused on “building back better” destroying enough of our economy to sweep in the “Great Reset,” so this is all probably self-inflicted damage unintentionally done to the message.
Either way, though, the key here is to start calling them murderers and serial killers and selfish maniacs. That, the leftist minions will hear. 😉
They are tyrants for profit. These people are thugs trying to intimidate the exploited (us) from calling them out on their criminality. Just look at that psycho Whitmer:
RGA Submits FOIAs On Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Partisan Contract Scandal
https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-truth-squad/michigan-truth-squad-gretchen-whitmers-role-larry-nassar-case
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/25/purported-northern-michigan-boat-request-fuels-controversy-gretchen-whitmer/5254889002/
It’s one thing for these tyrants to do this BS. It’s another for there to be no mass uprising.
So pathetic how accepting the citizenry has become of having a boot on their throat. And not just for “two weeks, be patient, only to flatten the curve!” back in March but for the rest of this entire freaking year.
There have been uprisings, lots and lots of lockdown protests, and how many business owners fined even jailed for their defiance? Plus, so many who come out to support businesses that defy lockdowns, so many people forming curfew busting groups to start the minute after a curfew is set to take place, so many sheriffs refusing to obey lockdown/mask/Thanksgiving Day gatherings, businesses calling themselves CHAZ zones, hanging ‘French Laundry’ signs and on and on. All of this is happening all across the nation every single day.
There are at least 73 million of us out here saying, “Hell to the no” to every lockdown and mask requirement.
I almost feel bad that I live in Florida where everything is perfectly normal. After the first couple months or so everyone stopped wearing masks, and everyone is just carrying on carrying on. Interesting side-note, stores like Walmart don’t enforce mask and distancing and capacity caps in our state (or maybe just my Trump country county? Not sure about that part since I hear that Dem-run cities are a bit more strict); the big chains did at first, but now, not at all.
If I lived under lockdown tyranny, you can bet your last dime that I’d be out there protesting, frequenting businesses owned by anyone flouting them, backing any and every recall effort, and generally being very annoying to the powers that be.
Do you personally go out and protest? Attend anti-lockdown tyranny rallies? I think you must since you seem upset that no one else is doing anything (even though many people are). Maybe start organizing locally so that more people show up for your protests? Just a thought. Ooh, or maybe think about a way you can work with your Rep. or Sen. or local LE to get things back on track where you live? People are itching to push back, so it shouldn’t be hard to get something going wherever you live.
As an addendum, there are MANY people who swallow the whole thing and believe the lie about lockdowns and masking and social distancing, etc. That part IS disgusting, but we chip away at that by calling out the Democrats who flout their own orders not as hypocrites but as murderers and selfish lunatics who don’t care how many people they kill. Their rules, our game. 😛
Hey, Fuzz…
I think it was Shakespeare who said…
“To wear or not wear a mask ? That is the question….”
DATING…COVID EDITION…
Girl: Do you use protection…?
Guy: Yes….I always wear a mask…!!!
The whole “Mask Question/Social Distance” has become just another thing for people to argue about…
(as if we needed more stuff to argue about) 🙂
The other night I did a U-Tube search for: Mask Songs.
There are many songs about how “Great it is to Wear a Mask!” But NO songs about…”Hey, Screw You and Your Mask !!!”
(weird….)
BUT…..In only two videos did the performers wear a mask while singing…Everyone Should Wear a Mask…
If the performers were mask-less, I posted the obvious question…
“Hey…where’s yer mask..??? How can you sing about wearing a mask…When ya ain’t wearin’ yer mask…???” “Huh…????”
Surprisingly, I got quite a few responses…
Got a lot of, “Sorry…I should have worn a mask…”
Got a few…”I was by myself when I made this video.”
Got a couple…”Ha, Ha…Very Funny…”
According to Dr Fauci, we need to be patient and wear the masks just a little longer…10 or 15 more years…20 years at the most…no more than…30 or so years…45 yrs at the outside…really….
Sorry, but as of 2020, imagination can never out-satire real life.
Almost everyone I know is petrified. I have tried, since March, to push back (politely) every single chance and nothing works. It’s disheartening to see the ones I care about, even those I don’t know, who just sit here and take it. Going to a rally would probably give me a boost, it wouldn’t do anything for those who have been told to be scared to death.
For example, how do we convince an entire nation that masks simply do not work? It cannot be done without fundamental changes to the government, media and pop culture. I was in the desert of Nevada last week and I saw individual rock climbers, alone, climbing while wearing a mask! The amount of stupid out there is overwhelming.
I won’t give up, it makes me more determined to try to persuade.
” I have tried, since March, to push back (politely) every single chance and nothing works.”
You cannot reason with people ruled by fear. Eventually, when the dear subsides, they ones ruled by fear will not admit the fear was unreasonable, because it will make them out to be unreasoned cowards. They will never admit what they did was wrong.
Oh, and next up is “Climate Change.” If you notice, the Democrats have said Climate Change is an “existential threat” to all humanity, and all things that live on this planet. So if you see what these evil dictators and their unreasoned mobs will do to combat a virus with a 0.026% death rate for humans, what will they do to fight a threat they assert will destroy the ENTIRE PLANET and all things that live upon it?
Obey! If not, they will excommunicate you from society. If that does not work, they fine you. If that does not work, then they will jail you. If that does not work, they will beat you. If that does not work, they will kill you. Many will want to skip all the in between stuff and jump right to kill you, being both more efficient and better for the environment.
Well, the dude rock climbing while wearing a mask is just lost to us. Anyone that ridiculously un-informed cannot be saved, nor should he be. Nothing we can ever say will change anyone that completely brainwashed by the media’s panic porn.
When I do see someone in a mask where I live, they are always tourists (who have doubtlessly flouted travel orders but wear their mask in their car. Alone). Again, lost causes.
I had an interesting conversation with just such a woman in the check-out lane of a local grocery store (she was not local, the mask was a dead giveaway, but she also confirmed as much as we spoke). So, in short, she had a totally cute cloth mask that matched her outfit. As someone who used to buy sunglasses to match my every outfit, I knew immediately that she didn’t care about protection and was only interested in the fashion statement/look she had so carefully put together. (it was cute, but it was a bit of cloth fabric stuck to her face with elastic, not exactly top-drawer PPE).
Anyway, I commented on how cute she looked, and she smiled (I could see it through her very cute and totally ineffectual mask). I told her that I already had WuFlu so wasn’t a threat, and she asked if I knew that for sure. I admitted I didn’t, but I also noted that there’s no surety about anything related to WuFlu except that healthy people have a 99% chance of surviving it. She asked me if I was making lasagna (I had lasagna pasta, ground beef, and tomato paste in my cart). We had a nice conversation about comfort foods.
Here’s the thing that many years of teaching taught me: planting a seed will, often enough to make it worthwhile, one day yield a bountiful crop.
I don’t need her to rip off her cute little fashion mask in the Winn Dixie check-out aisle, but I do want her to think about that 99% survival rate thing. And she might. She might not, of course, but if she does, there’s a win for our side.
So in your determination to persuade, keep it cool and understated. No one is ever swayed by a hammer to the head or by someone banging the same drum over and over (these cause people to tune you out–“oh THAT again, lalala”), just say something meaningful, plant the seed of doubt, and let it grow over time. It works for me anyway. 😛
Every time someone asks (tells) me to put on my mask I ask
“snot side in, right?”
I always get very mixed reactions.
Well said. As always, thanks for what you and everyone else at LI do.
You must not be in SE Florida, because down here all the counties keep indefinitely renewing, in clear abuse of the state’s 30 day limit, their “emergency” mask and business restriction orders. Businesses like Publix and CVS have door monitors to keep out the unmasked. Businesses won’t serve you if unmasked, even if you claim to have a medical exemption. They simply don’t care. Want to order a burger at Five Guys? Sorry, they’ll just ignore your attempt to order food until you obey their demand to leave. I’ve even had a door monitor threaten that the other patrons might attack me if they let me in, so they’re kicking me out for my own safety.
We should treat these Democratic politicians as role models and emulate how they believe, not what they say.
The good part of this is that the vote was 3-2 approving the new restrictions instead of the normal 5-0. That means that Fake Doctor Barbara Ferrer is one vote away from being fired. She also admitted that she doesn’t have the manpower to enforce these rules.
Also, one of the two votes against admonished her for always citing science but never presenting the science and instructed to consult with real doctors and bring the science next time.
So supposing I’ve had Covid, and a few of my employees have had Covid, so I open up inside dining to ‘Survivors’ of Covid, i.e. people who come in and identify themselves as already having Covid and therefore as immune as I and my staff are. (or those who have received the vaccine).
Can we tell the Control Cops to F- off when they come around?
–We are only doing this to protect you!
++Against something we’ve already had and can’t get again. Buzz off.
–B-b-but our power? You must respect our authority!
++Begone! I have not passed through fire and death to bandy crooked words with a witless worm!
Having been to Il Forno when it first opened, she may be a total hypocrite, but she has good taste in food.
This is exactly what we should expect from our ‘elite betters’ in leadership positions. Biden voters get ready. As Mencken said ‘the public voted for this and they deserve to get it…good and hard’.
As a personal observation; Sheila Kuehl presents the image of a lonely and unhappy person. Perhaps she simply votes for propositions she believes will make others as unhappy as she appears to be?
Contrary to what these fools/tools continually spout: we are not in this together!
They cannot be penalized by the law that they impose and enforce. They cannot be penalized electorally, because every sign is that the Left has stolen the electoral system and there is no way to get around that.
That leaves only one remaining alternative to deal with TWANLOC. We are just waiting for the trigger.
Subotai Bahadur
That trigger is coming when they come door to door for our guns.
We’ll find out what police or federal agents are loyal to their oaths and which are not worth grieving for.
What a swine, huh?
So when the vaccine for the China Virus becomes available, will we have to show our ID and give other information, or will the procedure for being given the vaccine use the same “How to run an Election” playbook?
My new favorite superhero is SniperKaren.
Here’s another one caught red-handed: https://www.statesman.com/news/20201202/austin-mayor-stressed-residents-lsquoneed-to-stay-homersquo-he-was-vacationing-in-cabo-at-time?template=ampart&__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR3o3IEVJJWh-5hwnOUm9FRStHTk9Jcqqa9Qx1ZtptGvEZ7ZVG1Ek-HYPr0
“Why are so many among the political elite engaged in incomprehensible, even suicidal, behavior?”
They aren’t.
The rules simply don’t apply to them, and they know it. There is nothing incomprehensible or suicidal about it.