"But the technology was accessible, which suggests incompetence on the part of our counterintelligence community and the Clinton Administration, and may in fact rise to the level of treason"
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Accessible technology is the most damning kind of scandal because it collapses the alibi of complexity. Bass’s line is built to make that collapse feel inevitable: if the tools were readily available, then failure can’t be blamed on “hard problems” or unforeseeable novelty. It has to be either bureaucratic ineptitude or something darker. That framing is the intent. It drags the listener from the safe, familiar outrage of incompetence into the electrified territory of betrayal, then dares opponents to object without sounding like they’re minimizing the threat.
The sentence is also doing partisan jujitsu. By pairing “our counterintelligence community” with “the Clinton Administration,” Bass fuses institutional lapse with executive culpability. “Our” creates a brief illusion of shared ownership and national concern; “Clinton Administration” snaps it back into a target. The subtext: the state apparatus exists to protect you, and when it doesn’t, you’re entitled to suspect not just failure but motive.
The rhetorical kicker is “may in fact rise to the level of treason,” a phrase that functions less as a legal claim than as a political accelerant. Treason is an old, heavy word in American life, one that signals existential stakes and invites moral sorting. Bass uses the conditional “may” as insulation while still planting the most radioactive possibility in the room. In the late-1990s/early-2000s ecosystem of espionage fears and Clinton-era scandal politics, that move turns a technical vulnerability into a loyalty test: were they incompetent, or were they against you?
The sentence is also doing partisan jujitsu. By pairing “our counterintelligence community” with “the Clinton Administration,” Bass fuses institutional lapse with executive culpability. “Our” creates a brief illusion of shared ownership and national concern; “Clinton Administration” snaps it back into a target. The subtext: the state apparatus exists to protect you, and when it doesn’t, you’re entitled to suspect not just failure but motive.
The rhetorical kicker is “may in fact rise to the level of treason,” a phrase that functions less as a legal claim than as a political accelerant. Treason is an old, heavy word in American life, one that signals existential stakes and invites moral sorting. Bass uses the conditional “may” as insulation while still planting the most radioactive possibility in the room. In the late-1990s/early-2000s ecosystem of espionage fears and Clinton-era scandal politics, that move turns a technical vulnerability into a loyalty test: were they incompetent, or were they against you?
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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