The idea that being politically affiliated = never being able to be fairly neutral observer about anything is incredibly damaging to our democracy because such a view is incredibly cynical in its view towards people who care about the public good. If you believe that partisanship trumps everything, then you don't believe that (1) true public servants exist (they are all partisans in this view), or (2) that any government program/investigation could be in the public interest rather than in narrow partisan interest.

To compound this problem, once you stop believing in the idea of public good is possible, YOUR actions start to be based solely on partisan advantage. It is a race to the bottom.

This de-legitimatizing of public service and public servants bothers me.

In terms of Mueller, his appointment himself could have set off partisan flags. He is a life-long Republican, and was appointed by Jeff Rosenstein who was himself appointed by Donald Trump. This seems like a possible conflict of interest in the abstract that Democrats could have pushed if they wanted. But they didn't.

At his hiring, Mueller was seen as a public servant first-and-foremost and a partisan (Republican) a distant second.

Now, because he has hired some people who donated to Democrats his whole investigation is tainted. These people have political beliefs (who doesn't and good luck having any investigation where people don't have political beliefs) but the common denominator in all of them is that they are public servants.

Seeing partisanship everywhere is a twisted world view that is damaging America.
[Post edited by Hoepner at 06/13/2017 10:06AM]