A Tennessee Congressman warns that fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives have been lured into honeytraps with sex workers and drugs changing the way they vote, he said this week.

“If it’s women, drugs, booze, it will find you in D.C. and in most elected offices,” Rep. Tim Burchett told podcaster Benny Johnson. “That’s what people, power and influence do.”

As Burchett tells it, Republicans aren’t backing important efforts, such as Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s crusade for Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs, because they’re being bullied by big backers and Russians.

  • NounsAndWords@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    72
    ·
    11 months ago

    Funny thing about sex workers and drugs: neither are implicitly bad to use. It’s only when you create an entire identity around villifying them that they are.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      31
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      11 months ago

      The latter part is not the issue here. The issue is these Republicans are being swayed by the sex workers and drugs. Sure, maybe if there was no stigma, that wouldn’t happen, but the stigma is there regardless of their own Republican identity. There are plenty of people on the left who could be bribed by sex or drugs too, and then get exposed for doing so. I would not be at all surprised if Democrats in congress had the same issue. I’m not trying to be an enlightened centrist, I’m on the left, I just have very little faith in humanity’s ability to resist being bought, especially when it comes to men thinking with their dicks.

      • MagicShel@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        11 months ago

        Even if it was 100% legal, we are a long fucking ways away from zero stigma to where you can tell your wife “Hey I’m going downtown for a dick in the ass / that thing you don’t want to do / two chicks at the same time. Don’t hold up dinner for me. You want me to book you an appointment with that Puerto Rican again?”

        If these people are getting compromised, legalizing prostitution isn’t going to really fix it.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          11 months ago

          Right. The lure of sex or drugs, followed by the threat of exposure is enough to buy the vote of a lot of people, not just Republicans.