US Senator Dianne Feinstein (D, Beijing) has died at the age of 90, still holding office, still representing her state until the last hour.
As obituaries flood the media in the days to come, she will be championed for being so tenacious, respected for being a reliable vote in an evenly divided Senate until she could no longer draw breath.
And in many cases, such diligence would indeed be something to respect. But perhaps not in this case.
In her final years in office – not days, not weeks, but years – she was often lost, her mind largely gone, from the sad destruction wrought by those familiar ailments of old age.
We would like to feel sorry for her; we would like to feel compassion. It is human nature to feel sorry for not only those suffering from this awful illness, but also for their families and friends, their inner circles, who must suffer the pain along with them, reminding them who they are – and where they are – on a daily basis. Their families and friends are their helpmates, their nurses, seeing them through this awful stage of life.
Normally, these helpmates especially deserve our love and appreciation.
And this is the challenge in writing an obituary for Senator Dianne Feinstein. Because we cannot feel that way toward her heirs and her inner circle.
We know, if we take off the rose-colored glasses for a moment and admit it to ourselves, that Senator Feinstein has been a clear case of elder abuse for years. She should have retired; she should have spent her final years in a nursing home (and, truth be told, her case is hardly unique in today’s Washington).
And she most certainly should not have been casting votes in the United States Senate, making determinations for America and our allies, for our citizens and our descendants, when she no longer knew who she was or where she was. Every day she sat in the chamber as a full member of that body, her mind gone, was a crime.
But she was a Democrat in the legislature. And that means she was just a warm body to cast a vote, nothing more, from the perspective of her party and her inner circle.
We are told to not speak ill of the dead. It offends people.
But the modern Left – and their servants in the media – hides so much truth that the only time you can be sure that people will read in detail about politicians is when their obituaries are published. So this is the time to tell it like it is.
Dianne Feinstein will be championed for having stayed in office so long; she should be condemned for it.
She will be heralded for her solidly left-wing voting record. She should be detested for it.
She spent nine years on the San Francisco city board, then a decade as San Francisco’s mayor, presiding over that once-great city’s slow decline. She then spent thirty years in the US Senate, one of the most utterly partisan, most reliably leftist attack dogs against America’s founding principles throughout her long tenure.
As Washington Democrats go, she was not the worst of them… and considering how bad a Senator she was, that fact does not speak well of her party.
For most of us, she will be remembered best for two things: staying in office long after she no longer knew what she was doing there, and having employed a Chinese spy as her personal driver for years and years.
But there are many other signatures to her time in the Senate: the ad hominem attacks on every conservative nominee, the dogged commitment to serving as Planned Parenthood’s chief advocate for abortion on demand in the Senate, her horrible record of consistently voting for unaffordable spending and unconstitutional government expansion.
But that has all become common in her party too. Such irresponsibility as hers doesn’t stand out.
Whether in a published obituary, or in person, a decent American wants to at least say condolences to the deceased’s family and friends… but how can you, knowing that it was her inner circle who propped her up, keeping her in office for years and years, long past her expiration date, in order to retain that proximity to power.
It’s an odd thing, but important to note: there is a great deal of power in Washington, when you are in the orbit of an incumbent congressman or senator – legislative aides, issue experts, appointment secretaries, lobbyists’ contacts, personal drivers, etc. – and that’s just when your employer is healthy.
Now think of how much more power there is in such positions, when your employer is incapacitated for the short term. And think of how much more still there is, when your employer is incapacitated for a long time, even permanently.
Being in that inner circle, you get to run the office, you get to decide on policy, you get to control a vote yourself, without even being the person in the public eye who could be subjected to scrutiny. You are nameless and faceless – except to the people who depend on you as you proudly wield that undeserved, unelected power.
Why do we have so much trouble getting the infirm to retire in the Senate?
Because all the people who would be there to give the incumbent that gentle advice now benefit more – much more – from the person staying in office and becoming more and more dependent on their aides.
If you wonder why Dianne Feinstein didn’t retire over these recent past years, it’s because of the self-serving personal avarice and ambition of her inner circle, the very people to whom we would normally offer our sympathies after her death.
One final note: Just in case you were wondering if this is a problem inherent in our political system:
You might want to keep in mind that our Framers designed a very different system than this. The state senates and governors were supposed to be able to choose the senators, and did, until Amendment XVII came along in 1913. Before that, Senate candidates could not build such a personal war chest – and such overwhelming name recognition – that they would ever be undefeatable. When it was time for them to go, the wise elders of the states would simply call them home.
Government was never supposed to be so powerful that staying in office at any cost would be an irresistible temptation for an aging legislator’s aides.
In this, as in most things, we are reminded that our Founding Fathers had the right idea all along, and we have been fools in departing from their plan.
copyright 2023 John F Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009. His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I and II) are available only on Amazon
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA