I have an odd perspective on the election of Donald Trump: a warped kind of déjà vu. For the past decade, I’ve worked on the issue of corruption around the world. In particular, I’ve spent a lot of time explaining that people who live in structurally corrupt political and economic systems are sometimes driven to extremes. I have always understood that the analysis was relevant in the United States — just maybe not how relevant.
In the past 10 years, populations have rejected “rigged systems” that had stood for decades. They have risen up in mass protests in Brazil, Guatemala, South Africa, and South Korea. They have overthrown their governments in open insurrections like the Arab Spring and Ukraine’s Maidan. Or they have fallen in behind self-proclaimed Robin Hoods such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. Occasionally, they have joined violent religious movements like the Islamic State or Boko Haram.
With Trump’s election, the United States just joined this list.
It might make his voters uncomfortable to hear that they’ve behaved much as my former neighbors in Kandahar, Afghanistan, who re-embraced the Taliban in their disgust at the corruption of Hamid Karzai’s government. Hillary Clinton voters might be equally upset to consider the degree to which the United States has come to resemble that regime or those of other corrupt countries I have been studying.
We Americans may not be subjected to shakedowns by the police, the judge, or the county clerk. But consider current realities: Networks that weave together public officials and business magnates (think the food or energy industries, pharmaceuticals, or Wall Street) have rewritten our legislation to serve their own interests. Institutions that have retained some independence, such as oversight bodies and courts, have been deliberately disabled — starved of operating funds or left understaffed. Practices that, while perhaps not technically illegal, clearly cross the line to the unethical, the inappropriate, or the objectively corrupt have been defended by those who cast themselves as bulwarks of reason and integrity.
How many of us have said — in any meaningful way — “That’s a red line!”? Who among us refused, in the end, to take the money or make the excuses?
For me, the seminal moment came on June 27, when the Supreme Court overturned former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s conviction on corruption charges. A businessman had lavished luxury travel, designer clothes, a Rolex watch, and tens of thousands of dollars on McDonnell and his wife, apparently in return for their help persuading public universities to perform clinical trials on his company’s tobacco-based anti-inflammatory supplement.
The Supreme Court’s decision was unanimous. Not one of the eight justices could come up with a reason why such behavior might violate the law. None even thought the matter significant enough to warrant separate comment or a cry to our collective conscience: “Given the wording of the statute, I had to vote this way. But the legal definition of corruption has grown too narrow. These statutes had better change if America as we know it is to survive.”
Subsequent commentary was signally lacking in outrage. On NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show that day, for example, the guests (two legal scholars and a journalist) practically skipped over the McDonnell decision. Rehm had to push them to grapple with it. Their consensus seemed to be that if the standard enshrined in the lower court’s decision to convict McDonnell were to prevail, every politician in Washington would be liable.
Well, exactly.
These are moral issues. And the very laws we depend on to enforce what should be bedrock standards have sometimes undermined them. Do we reject corruption? Of course we do — just as we refuse to countenance torture. But then come the legal definitions. What counts as torture? How bad does it have to hurt? What do you mean by corruption? The head of an Egyptian business association once told me: “That’s part of the brilliance of corruption in Egypt; they make it legal!” The United States is going down the same road: The laws we hold so dear have narrowed the definition of corruption almost to the point of irrelevance.
Two candidates — Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump — made the word “corruption” central to their campaigns. Together they drew easily more than half of votes cast. Yet to use this word to describe America remains almost taboo in polite circles. In the hundreds of pages of post-election commentary, how often has it been emphasized?
One remark from 2013 says a lot about what has befallen America. When then Salon writer Alex Pareene described some of JPMorgan Chase’s practices as corrupt, CNBC host Maria Bartiromo slapped him down. “Should we talk about the financial strength of JPMorgan, at this point?” she wondered. “Even with all of these losses, the company continues to churn out tens of billions of dollars in earnings and hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue. How do you criticize that?”
Indeed. How do you criticize money these days?
In a country full of sophisticated lawyers and lobbyists and rationalizers, it is now urgent to ask whether we still understand what corruption is. To say it’s what is proscribed by law is to fall into a logical sinkhole.
What does corruption mean when a senior public official receives gifts from foreign leaders, via an institution bearing her name, while she is making decisions regarding these same foreign leaders? How should someone like me talk about corruption overseas when five different police departments use force against peoples whose lands were stolen through repeated treaty violations, on behalf of a private company pleading the letter of property laws?
What is the definition of corruption when a bank defrauds millions of customers without losing its license? When 2 million American adults are behind bars for trivial offenses, their lives permanently derailed, while no legal institution has punished any executive for bringing about the collapse of the world economy?
It’s time to see past the rationales and the rhetoric. No matter who won our vote, we must come to grips with these questions.
Whatever our affiliation or walk of life, we must also, each of us, discover and hold on to that dividing line that marks off the reasonable compromises from the unacceptable.
For, like the people of Mosul in Iraq or northern Nigeria, who traded intolerably corrupt regimes for Islamist crusaders who were worse, Americans will wake up in January under a system that is more corrupt than the one that fueled their rebellion. That is the irony of resorting to a wrecking ball to bring down a corrupt regime. Too often, the kleptocratic networks prove resilient, while those who revolted end up with crushed heads.
Already, President-elect Trump’s questionable affiliations and potential conflicts of interest — as genteel vocabulary would have it — are making headlines. The issue is not one of technical legality or poor vetting. His actions and associations are deliberate. While tweeting out distractions to disguise the fact, he will unleash a feeding frenzy. Our laws and institutions will be bent to the purposes of personal enrichment. Industry lobbyists will draft the bills. He will negotiate business deals with foreign counterparts, confusing his personal interests for the good of the nation. Agencies that try to hold the line will see their budgets slashed, their officials belittled in public. Law enforcement will be even more selective than it is today. The labor of human beings, the land, and what’s on it or under it will be converted to cash as efficiently as possible. And what can’t be converted will be bulldozed out of the way.
And what will Americans do in the face of this exacerbation of our own brand of corruption? Will we further relax our standards, shrugging our shoulders and referring to the letter of ever-changing laws? Or will we reach for a definition of corruption that is in line with common sense and rebuild our foundations upon that bedrock?
Our answer to that challenge will determine whether this is a crisis the United States survives and from which it emerges renewed — or whether we lurch into some more violent and damaging cataclysm.
Comments(13)
The writer raises important points, but makes so many unsupported conclusions about the new administration, it is difficult to appreciate the good points she does make.
Yet no mention of the DNC?...
There was no corruption from the DNC. That was the Sanders campaign, the Trump campaign and Russian propaganda. They were projecting their sins on to the Democrats. The GOP, Ted Devine, and Trump Campaign all have connections to the Russians. The Russians were helping them rig the election for the GOP, and Trump through hacks and targeted propaganda. The GOP were rigging it through voter suppression efforts in 19 states. Ted Devine's role was to weaken the Democratic Party and turn Sanders's supporters away from supporting Hillary in the general election. It worked. You were manipulated. Of course you could just be another Russian bot.
Hands down, this is the best article, the best articulated article on corruption and on how the peril of corruption is minimized (strangled) by the hands of legal analysis in a property rights society where corporations have the same rights as an individual. That legal analytic weed should never have been planted back in the day! Your explanation of how the US is aligning itself with other nations whose governments trample basic human rights is spot on. I am a federal officer, a trainer of refugee, asylum, and international operations officers, and the nature of what we do for a living involves constant review of country conditions. I am so saddened to be living in a country, my country, as it devolves perhaps first into anarchy and then some morbid hybrid of an autocratic plutocracy. Thank you for your wisdom. I started a Facebook account called WARPED-- We (the People) Against the Republican Party Ending Democracy. I just posted a reminder of why I started this group, a mission statement of sorts, and I share and reshape your article with the comment "hands down the best article on America."
Good points Laurenviti. As someone who lived in the USA 18 years I loved the open discussion. It is sad to hear Sarah say how there is very little but I can assure you it is less here in Australia. Just last year our Gov't passed law saying the anyone who works with asylum seekers as a "Federal Employee" will go to jail if they publicly question the government's actions etc. This has silenced many doctors and nurses who cry out about our miss-treatment of children (and adults) in our jails for refugees who can be there for many years as a deterrent to others who dare to try and come to Australia. Somehow our Government even has the power now to prosecute journalists who talk about "boat people" arrivals to Australia that the government deems a mater of national security -(AKA embracing). The medical lobby here (I was told this by a reliable insider) put a "no testimonial law" for health professionals that does not affect MDs here as everyone here have a medicare card that bills the Government but alternative health providers such as myself - a chiropractor- are profoundly suppressed by this law. My income dropped $25 000 within 6 months. I get people well and need to use testimonials from happy customers to spread the word. I just resolved another case of colic in 3 visits (a baby screaming in pain for many hours a day). A few good studies exist supporting this, including a randomised study where 50 babies were sent for chiropractic care and 50 to MD's in the UK. The chiropractic largely resolved it in an average of 4 visits and the medical group made little to no difference. The study estimated £150 million saving for the British Health Service per year if all 160,000 children with colic was sent to a chiropractor. Yet, such is the power of big pharma and due to medical political media efforts, the Federal Govt of Australia has just written to all chiropractors to say we cannot advertise that we can help colic. Reminder- this is Australia I'm talking about not china or Russia. Corporate control of government is thriving here.
The article is right about this being a corruption election, but wrong about the source of the corruption. I believe Trump won, not on his merits, but because of the rage of voters who saw the corrupt media ignore countless lies and mistruths by Obama and Hillary while furiously pursuing those told by Trump. The media was so partisan and dishonest in pushing for Hillary and against Trump that people were fed up and simply ignored gaffes and mistruths that would have destroyed other candidates. Watching the "Post" and the NYT cast about in desperation for other reasons for the Trump win and their failure to see it coming is like watching the surviving French aristocrats sitting around after the Revolution and deciding that if there had just been more sugar in Marie Antoinette's cake everything would have been ok. The media's abandonment of impartiality and inability to act in its traditional role in opposition to the administration actually drove Trump's win. The corruption the voters reacted to is the echo chamber of the media.
I can understand the points you make and your frustration at the place the United States is in. I believe that there is frustration, disappointment, and growing anger at the federal government in equal amounts by Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, and Independents. As a fellow American I stand with you in your frustration. As a professional that looks at cyber security, privacy, social engineering, and things called "trust attacks" (among many other issues) my concern is about fake news coming from servers hosted in Eastern Europe and other geographies known for cybercrime and collaboration with the Russian FSB. Propaganda is a powerful thing, which is why the Third Reich had so many resources devoted to churning it out. It's also why DARPA issued a RFP during the Arab Spring to researchers to help them develop algorithms that could help predict social movement uprisings and develop messaging to incite, or suppress social movements. Russia also understands the impact of well designed propaganda and they have been actively involved in shaping opinions in during the election. So, when one perceives that the mainstream media is not impartial we have to remember that there are other factors at play that could be shaping our opinions. It's our responsibility as citizens to be more analytical and less emotional so we can more effectively sort the facts from the propaganda chaff. This is important because it is human nature to gravitate to sources of information that validate how they perceive the world around them. Social media compounds this effect. Only by opening our minds to other uncomfortable points of view can we start to see what the truth is. If Americans aren't up to the challenge, then the nation will fall deeper into the mindset of every man, woman, and child for themselves. We will fight and argue with each other instead of looking for common ground that we can agree on. This will further divide us as Americans and make it easier for career politicians from all parties to rule a country of sheep on behalf of a corrupt, ultra-wealthy, 1%.
Who exactly do you mean when you say "the media"? I agree that we no longer have an impartial media, but why is that? It's because the vast majority of people don't actually want to hear impartial news -- they want to have their preconceived outlooks reinforced by partisan media, or in some cases they just want to be entertained. I think the only option currently is to assume all media is biased and do your own research. But the worst thing people can do is hear the claims of "liberal media bias" by extremely partisan outlets like Fox and Breitbart, and actually believe that they are any less biased. Listening to-- or worse -- clicking on biased stories exacerbates the problem. Internet advertisers pay by the click, so by merely looking at a story on a biased site you have just encouraged that purveyor to continue spinning its news. Think of your mouse as a stamp of approval -- because that's what it is. If you find an unbiased and honest publication or individual journalist, support it or her/him! Pay for a subscription, or write a letter to the editor where the journalist's work was published asking for more of the same. Until we each make an effort to turn this ship around, the media is only going to get increasingly biased, leading to portions of the population being even more firmly entrenched in vastly different universes of facts.
For decades, we have been defining downward corruption and criminality in general, to borrow the esteemed late Senator Patrick Moynihan's comment on deviancy. With habitual acquiescence, there comes a sense of normality, even with regard to the most unseemly and grotesque abuses of power. This is how we have arrived at this moment in our history.
The article is right about this being a corruption election, but wrong about the source of the corruption. I believe Trump won, not on his merits, but because of the rage of voters who saw the corrupt media ignore countless lies and mistruths by Obama and Hillary while furiously pursuing those told by Trump. The media was so partisan and dishonest in pushing for Hillary and against Trump that people were fed up and simply ignored gaffes and mistruths that would have destroyed other candidates. Watching the "Post" and the NYT cast about in desperation for other reasons for the Trump win and their failure to see it coming is like watching the surviving French aristocrats sitting around after the Revolution and deciding that if there had just been more sugar in Marie Antoinette's cake everything would have been ok. The media's abandonment of impartiality and inability to act in its traditional role in opposition to the administration actually drove Trump's win. The corruption the voters reacted to is the loss of what used to be believed was an independent and impartial media.
God bless Sarah Chayes and the Carnegie Endowment for their uncompromising stand against corruption. The US certainly suffers from an unpardonably high level of corruption.and it is eating in to the vitals of the country. It could affect the very survival of the US as the world's sole superpower. I am particularly saddened that many people in the US have their lives wrecked through heavy-handed sentences for comparatively trivial offences, while the "big fish" go scot free. It is also sad to reflect that the American people, who voted out the previous administration for its ethical sins of omission and commission, may have jumped "out of the frying pan and in to the fire". The world looks up to the US as an example to follow. That certainly does not extend to fighting corruption.
The article is right about this being a corruption election, but wrong about the source of the corruption. I believe Trump won, not on his merits, but because of the rage of voters who saw the corrupt media ignore countless lies and mistruths by Obama and Hillary while furiously pursuing those told by Trump. The media was so partisan and dishonest in pushing for Hillary and against Trump that people were fed up and simply ignored gaffes and mistruths that would have destroyed other candidates. Watching the "Post" and the NYT cast about in desperation for other reasons for the Trump win and their failure to see it coming is like watching the surviving French aristocrats sitting around after the Revolution and deciding that if there had just been more sugar in Marie Antoinette's cake everything would have been ok. The media's abandonment of impartiality and inability to act in its traditional role in opposition to the administration actually drove Trump's win. The corruption the voters reacted to is the loss of what used to be believed was an independent and impartial media.
Both those candidates Sanders & Trump that used the term "its rigged" were spewing Russian propaganda. The Russians played both sides of the political spectrum to get their desired outcome. Trump's ties to Russia are all but obvious to his hard-line supporters. Sanders's campaign manager Ted Devine who started the lie about the election being rigged for Hillary by the DNC worked for the same ex-Ukrainine leader and Russian puppet as Paul Manafort. Ted Devine started the "its rigged" talking point after the Sanders's campaign got busted by the DNC for hacking into Hillary's database in December of 2015. In the months to come he continued that lie about the primaries being rigged by the DNC as if : 1. The party runs elections and not the state and local governments, and 2. He ignored the GOP voter suppression efforts that created long lines, or knocked people off the voter rolls. Sander's supporters and Russian bots spread the its rigged lies. The Russians selectively leaked DNC e-mails to make it seem as if the DNC was favoring Clinton. They were not. They were helping all Democratic candidates, but the Russians never released those e-mails or re-wrote e-mails to back up the "its rigged" lies. The Russians exploited the concerns of Americans who know the system is rigged for the economic elites, but they lied about who was rigging the election. The Russians and Republicans were rigging the election for Trump. Sanders, and his supporters helped by being both willing and unwilling foot soldiers in their propaganda machine. This was an election about the powerful effects of propaganda. Of course the Russians would not have been so successful had the Republicans not weakened the political process for many decades (i.e. a right wing propaganda bubble, voter suppression, deregulating campaign financing, destroying education). The problem in the US is the Republican Party's destructive behavior. Now that destructive been exploited by a foriegn government.
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