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I want to look back at the Finnish PM Sanna Marin affair because beneath the luridness, I think there's an interesting political discussion. As I understand it, here's what happened:
Sanna Marin has been the Prime Minister of Finland since 2019. Politically, she's lefty and environmentalist, popular with young people. But outside of Finland, she was only really known for being young (37) and hot. Not "hot for a politician," but objectively straight-up hot for anyone.
In August, a video of Marin partying leaked to the public, seemingly by a dumb friend who put it on a private Instagram page. The video showed Marin being very drunk with her friends in a house, singing and dancing the night away. There was speculation that Marin was on cocaine in the video. She denied it and took a drug test which she passed, but IIRC, it's plausible the drugs would already be out of her system by then.
A few weeks later, another video leaked of Marin at a night club in Helsinki. It shower her dancing with (or arguably, grinding on) a man in a fairly intimate manner. Marin in married with a kid, and the man in the video is not her husband.
About a week later, a picture came out (on Instagram? I'm not sure) of two Instagram models kissing while they flashed the camera. The models, who are friends with Marin, are standing in front of desk in her home that she uses to make official public announcements on tv. Marin admitted that she had them over her house to hang out and sauna when they took the pic.
Throughout the affair, Marin both apologized, but also defended herself on the grounds that she is an ordinary human being who simply likes to party, and that's no one else's business. This culminated in her crying on tv during a speech. A few days ago, Marin was officially cleared of any legal wrongdoing by the Finnish government.
I think Marin's case brings up interesting questions about what we should expect from politicians, specifically, how much we can expect them to avoid engaging in normal but potentially unsavory behavior.
I don't think Marin's defense is without merit. Yes, she's a politician, but she's also a person, and apparently a person who likes to party with her friends. I see no reason why she can't be a good prime minister and occasionally go to night clubs or get drunk with Instagram models. It's also relevant that we are talking about the head of Finland, a minor country of little international importance, so maybe we shouldn't be holding its leadership to such a high standard. If we punish behavior like Marin's too much, we end up with the opposite problem, which IMO is far more prevalent in the US. We end up with Clint Webbs (https://youtube.com/watch?v=EvU3QQH2b2Y [Side note - how do I embed links?]), or rather, a political environment which requires successful politicians to be so bland and boring that it selects for the uncharismatic and psychopathic.
On the other hand, maybe our politicians should be held to a standard of being above reproach. I don't think there's anything morally wrong with getting wasted at a club, but maybe it's a sign of immaturity? Or carelessness? Especially for a 37 year old with a kid? Especially for someone who is in an important position, like... if I had to choose a heart surgeon to operate on me, all else equal, I'd prefer one who doesn't get regularly drunk in clubs. I most certainly wouldn't want the president of the United States or Germany or the UK or a very important country in such a position. Finland isn't super important, but it's still a country.
(Also, though this is somewhat tangential, I think Marin's conduct in the video where she is dancing with the guy doesn't quite constitute cheating, but it crosses a line and shows a moral error, assuming she's in a standard monogamous relationship.)
I'm split between the two positions, but leaning toward, "if you're a politician of a small country, it's ok to party a little, but don't do it too much, and for god's sake, don't let videos of you partying leak."
We don’t hold regular people to such standards because regular people don’t have to deal with a myriad of interest groups and intelligence agencies eagerly looking for blackmail material on them. Furthermore, a regular person getting blackmailed usually has limited affect on anyone except their most intimate social circles. The situation and the stakes are very different for a prime minister. Especially the prime minister of a country which abruptly reversed course on the country’s long standing and well formulated policy of not picking sides and decided to join the NATO.
If she casually and often hangs out at social circles with a lot of alcohol, drugs and loose sexual bonds the chances are that some people already have some material on her.
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It's bad. 20 pct. of the bad is what she's actually doing, especially dancing with another man in a night club. 80 pct. of the bad is that what she's doing is being made public. So much of politics is image — what kind of image do these activities create? It's just not a good look. Sure, Finland doesn't really matter, but I'm thinking if this were my leader.
I mean how do you prevent this though? Only go to fancy expensive clubs with other politicians?
Every other female politician seems to manage. They either don't do it or are capable of doing it discreetly.
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-- Drinking song set to "Yankee Doodle" attributed popularly to Thomas Jefferson as the "sage of Monticello"
This is indeed a very amusing statement, considering that Claudius married his niece.
Swings and roundabouts. The Romans considered it fine to fuck men (as long as you didn't marry them) or your niece (as long as you married her). Gibbon considered it disgusting to fuck men (married or not), and fine to fuck your niece (as long as you married her). Modern blues consider it fine to fuck men (or marry them) and disgusting to fuck your niece (especially if you marry her).
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The thing is, while there's a public image that Marin is going out clubbing a lot, at least her own explanation is that she actually does it quite rarely and these instances are an expection - which might also explain why she's been so bad at infosec while doing it. An amateur drinker's problem, so to say.
At this point in Finland, the whole scandal is now at the level that if you're a leftist or even a centrist, you've probably moved on, but of course many right-wingers will keep bringing it up at various points. So very much a typical (minor) political scandal and ways to treat it tribally, in essence.
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Embed links and other formatting tips here: https://www.themotte.org/formatting (specifically see row 7 of the first table).
You could make a case that Finland is unimportant probably any other year; but as there is a war waged by its next door neighbor right now, and it is applying to join NATO, I'd say Finland is among the top 20 countries in terms of strategic importance right now to the US.
Without being very informed about this scandal, I'll say that I personally find it substantive. Hobbies and passions confer risk. It would be destabilizing for a head of government (or a senior general, or a CEO of a large public company) to be an avid adrenaline junkie partaking in activities with high micromorts. That's an extreme example, but it illustrates that openings exist for bad actors or simply bad accidents. I presume most people who enjoy clubbing like the element of novelty with meeting new people, and that opens Marin up to Russian spies who may gain blackmail material or simply access to her phone, laptop, etc. if people are partying at her home.
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This is clearly just a foreign blackmail op, because truely un-Finnish crime is totally unmentioned: being so close to other human beings on a voluntary basis, touching even? I recall that when Finns were told they had to maintain 2m social distance, the response of the entire country was "why so close?"
But in all seriousness, i actually like the human sides of politicians coming out in a non-stage managed way. The flawless veneer so many of them build up is unnerving to me, and i think hampers judgement when at the voting booth.
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Really? You don't have a prior that someone with this disposition is ipso facto an unserious person and therefore temperamentally unsuited for high office? Because I certainly have that prior.
Finnish government investigates itself, finds itself innocent. Imagine my shock.
The actual clearing authority is this guy. As the link says, he's independent from the Council of State, ie. the executive, and is appointed for life by the President.
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"prior" is obviously from bayesian statistics, where you update a "prior" distribution with new information, producing a "posterior" distribution. The "prior" may be that most people who go to night clubs or get drunk with models are unsuited for high office. But that's just a prior - she already is PM, her actions and history tell you enough about how good of a PM she is that that prior distribution doesn't matter much. In bayes-terms, you have enough new information about her, instead of her being one of the hundred million people who go to clubs or get drunk, that the "prior" doesn't mean much and bears little resemblance to the posterior - but even that's kind of a distraction.
But even that prior doesn't really make sense, tbh, can you try to justify it more?
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I thought the controversy was partly because her country was supposed to be locked down during her socializing activities. So it was more of a hypocrisy problem, "lockdowns for you but not for me."
I’m pretty sure that was more a UK thing with Boris Johnson.
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Nah, not really. There was an earlier incident in 2021 where Marin may have given Covid to a minister after catching it in a club (Marin was vaccinated and was told that she couldn't spread it), but the video leaks were in 2022 after all the restrictions had ended.
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