Whataboutism

 The current iteration of the GOP - especially the Chaos Caucus in the House - is remarkably corrupt. It runs from potential pedophilia to supporting January 6th to the more mundane conflict of interest to the esoteric insanity of whatever the hell George Santos is.

However, the rule of government are many and varied, so we have instances like Biden having some classified documents in his office after he left the Vice Presidency. As many have noted, this is both common and a little troublesome. There is, of course, a major difference between having these documents and hiding these documents - as Trump did. There is, of course, a major difference between the nature of these documents and the secrets they contain. 

That won't matter to the howler monkeys in the Rightist media establishment and their collaborators in elected office. They will point to the fact that Biden (and really all presidents and vice presidents) have had classified documents found improperly in their possession as a false equivalency to what Trump did and therefore excuse Trump and accuse the DOJ of a political witch hunt.

I ate at the local dinner (I know, I know) where they had a story about Ned Lamont's swearing in as governor. Unsolicited, the guy next to me began to rant about how much money Lamont had made as governor and how "they're all crooks."

No. They aren't. Lamont's money is old and substantial. He makes money because he has money. He almost certainly has not abused his office to enrich himself. However, you have to be at least a little rich to run and hold office. The idea that all elected officials are crooks works because, yeah, a few of them are. This allows people paint all politicians as fundamentally the same. There is no difference between Jim Jordan investigating Hunter Biden's laptop and Adam Schiff investigating Trump's efforts to blackmail President Zelensky. There is no difference between accusing Anthony Fauci of creating Covid in a Chinese lab and accusing Trump of personally enriching himself with Federal funds. The absence of evidence for one set of accusations and the abundance of evidence for the other is irrelevant.

I'm not sure how we move beyond a political landscape where we indulge in constant Whataboutism. It's a direct line to Trumpism.