Politics: The Corruption Curve

“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Fantastic men are almost always bad men.” (Lord Acton)

Honest, we all prefer to consider ourselves as kind, and flirty. Within our hearts, we’re convinced that should we ever attain personal skill, whether by building our own business, increasing to the corporate office, getting extraordinarily powerful in our field of experience, or in decreasing public office, we will continue to be honest and ethical, incorruptible to the finish.

The act of wielding power varies greatly with the individual involved and the level of electricity obtained. We’re all acquainted with the petty tyrant at work who rules a business empire that is small with greed and self-indulgence, bullying underlings with no sense of fairness or mercy. We’ve seen the research scientists who have forged a standing over a lifetime collapse into disgrace through subverting results to support their theories and their sponsors.

Since the extent of power rises, we see exactly the Enron and Lincoln Savings brand of tableaux unfold. Does that greed and self-indulgence hold sway, but the idea of being over trust and responsibility and the law arises are jettisoned in the boardroom. The more esoteric the lifestyle becomesthe larger the disconnect between the remainder of the world and the strong. People who lack electricity are manipulated to be cheated, and drained of their possessions surely desserts for their failure.

In a universe in which hereditary monarchies are an anachronism, the absolute power lies in the political sphere whether wielded with a military-backed dictator or from people who were so repeatedly elected to office they no longer find themselves as public representatives but as qualified oligarchs of a system they command.

The presumptuous ambition of a single person, Julius Caesar, led to a republic that had led Rome to the heights of civilization’s destruction. The empire he made held that the seeds of its own destruction in its own descent into the autocracies of a string of over illustrious pioneers who wielded their absolute ability with caprice and personal whim.

The Constitution’s framers had a vision of a government because of the checks and balances inherent in the method they devised in which no unconstrained power might arise. Since the principle of law was paramount, no one may be above the law. The counsel and consent assured a large number of voices and notions were involved in any major decision.

But people who drove the evolution of our law were in their own right. Washingtons refusal to take the name of king suggested his rejection of an excessive amount of power concentrated in one individual. His peers Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Madison, and many more followed exactly the identical course: divide ability to guarantee the requirements of those many could be met through an assortment of voices.

Over the centuries have retained the ship of state afloat. Listing to starboard or port, the absolute multiplicity of participants in the political process have been able to pull it back to an upright middle class. Certainlythere have been lots of periods of incompetence and corruption. We face such a darkness today: individuals in office for too long, with too much power within their grasping fingers; too many officials who’ve forgotten they are public servants, creating a mindset of entitlement as well as the certainty that they knowbetter than anybody else, what’s good for those who, after all, elected them.

The rule of law, thus carefully crafted will keep them. The lawful prosecution of some congressman accepting millions of dollars in bribes, of a contingency leader who used election money as he saw fit rather than the law required, and government officials who ruined a womans profession and jeopardized the lives of covert operatives all over the world, restores equilibrium in a world rife with corruption, greed, along with overweening pride.

Ongoing investigations into the honesty of leaders at evoking the demand for military intervention and the increasing voice of dissent against monetary favors to the rich and powerful in the cost of cutting services to the helpless poor, provide a glimmer of hope that the corruption is going to be suppressed along with the hubris of our leaders exposed.

The embattled defendants cry foul, claiming that the transgression is that the political dream of their critics. They’ve moved up to now beyond the pale of the common citizen that misdeeds and their own corruption seem ordinary and acceptable.

Thankfully, without danger of bodily injury we could confront our Caesars unlike the rubber-stamp Roman senators and we could cast them from their comfy nest.