How Power Corrupts

I don’t think anyone not a part of politics in Washington can comprehend the intensely corrupting influence that money and power has on the elected representatives and senators. They are deluged, more like immersed, in expensive dinners and private-plane trips to exotic locales where they stay in lavishly appointed suites, and other inducements, including high-priced "escorts."

At these dinners, hotels and private resorts they meet with the wealthy and their associates, where they’re greased and oiled with the idea that they’re part of the elite, a "smart player," and "someone we can trust." It’s all legal, comes under the label of "access," and is thoroughly not in the best interests of the majority of Americans.

When people think about what corruption in high places actually constitutes, I think many of them think in terms of illegality. But the ugly fact is that most corruption is perfectly, if insidiously, legal. Countless examples abound, from these free trips and expensive meals for elected officials (provided by those looking for favorable legislation) to people serving on commissions overseeing drug and product approval who receive money as "advisors" from the industries they’re supposedly being objective about.

I’ve long wondered why more of these sorts of things didn’t end up in the mainstream media, instead of just the alternate press, until I did some research and found out the logical explanation. It’s the same reason that Democrats and Republicans shy away from accusing each other of this kind of corruption; the mainstream media has itself become totally compromised in a very similar way.

Besides the elephant-in-the-room fact that the corporations finance the mass media with their advertising (let me repeat that: The corporations finance the mass media), influential journalists and executives are co-opted by being given huge fees as advisors by corporations or as speakers at their gatherings. To ask what the solution to this endemic, pandemic epidemic is ... is to elicit a howl of laughter from those at the top of this diamond-encased dung heap.