Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner says his six months in Afghanistan in 2018 as a State Department security contractor revealed how America’s wars had become “a corporate money-grab.” He clarified he never worked for Erik Prince’s Blackwater but for a hedge-fund-owned successor that inherited its State Department contracts. “They used guys like me with these backgrounds to meet the contract requirements so they could pay us bare minimum and walk away with the balance.”
Platner said his job mostly involved driving for the U.S. ambassador’s security team. “We were barely leaving the Green Zone… All I did was lift weights and play video games. I got huge and I played a lot of Far Cry,” he said.
He quit after six months and went home to farm oysters.
Personal growth. You never went through it?
I don’t judge my policians with the same criteria that I would a personal friend. I think this is a problem with modern social media and media in general. It’s given people the delusion that we should consider political figures by the same means we do our friends.
If I want to help a personal friend overcome their racism and bigotry. I will make that decision because I have a personal connection to them that I can influence.
We’re talking about a representative though. Why would I give benefit of the doubt to someone ill literally never sit down with?