A Thought Experiment

Or maybe not

Illustration generated by Gemini AI

We’ve all seen the movies and TV shows where someone is pulled into a van and kidnapped while parents or business associates wait anxiously by the phone for the ransom demand. A few hundred times, right?

Well, what about the seedier side of that programming coin where the gullible diplomat gets caught in a honey trap or a spouse is videoed walking into a hotel room with a flight attendant.

A real cold war thriller or a made-for-TV potboiler about infidelity.

Dirty secrets have been used for centuries to leverage people into doing what they normally would not do.

Blackmail demands agreed to. Money wired into offshore accounts or a company’s secret plans copied and exchanged in a park somewhere.

Then we watch the victims slowly unravel.

Secrets make people do crazy things. Things they would never normally consider if they weren’t being coerced.

I can’t help but think that what’s been unfolding lately in our political world follows one of these storylines.

The sudden changes in alliances. Old enemies befriended; old friends cast aside,

Does any of this read like a movie we scheduled on Netflix, filled with intrigue, and betrayal, or perhaps the plot of a John Le Carre novel, or is it me?

Just a thought.