Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Thursday, August 6, 2020

Grifters All The Way Down

Democrats are perfectly capable of commiting graft and corruption. They can cough up a Rod Blagojevich or a William Jefferson. Human nature being what it is, there will always be someone willing to exploit people's trust for personal gain.

What's extraordinary about the GOP is how much corruption is part of the culture of their party. The fact that the NRA (basically a subsidiary of the Republican Party) was committing massive amounts of fraud to enrich its directors is about as surprising as discovering that ice cream makes you fat.  

The defining aspect of Trumpistan is that of rank corruption. It's everywhere. The only reason it hasn't led to the arrest of Trump or his family members is that the DOJ says you can't indict a sitting president and no one wants to have a Roger Stone situation, where you convict a guy and Trump corruptly pardons him or her. 

It's always helpful to keep a tally of the corruption. The following campaign officials were found or plead guilty in a court of law: Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Flynn,  Roger Stone, George Papadopolous, Richard Pinedo and Alex Van Der Zwann.  The Brookings Institute keeps a record of officials who have "Resigned Under Pressure." There have been 16 members of the White House Staff who have had to leave under pressure. This includes Steve Bannon, Rob Porter (accused of domestic abuse), Sebastian Gorka who failed his security clearance, Omarosa Newman who had to be escorted from the building. Cabinet secretaries who have left under a cloud, include Rick Perry (Energy), Tom Price (HHS), Ryan Zinke (Interior), Alex Acosta (Labor), and David Shulkin (Veteran's Affairs).

When - God please God - Biden gets inaugurated, there can be no "turning the page" on all this.  It is an essential reckoning. When corruption becomes acceptable, it is incredibly corrosive of the ability of the country to function.  As someone who has spent some time studying countries with rampant public corruption (Russia, China, Mexico, Nigeria, Iran and 19th century America), I can say that it is arguably the biggest threat to self-governance.

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