That's a slippery slope thinking - if the average citizen is low quality and easy to manipulate why would the bureaucrats and politicians avoid stealing bits and pieces of the common good - leading to corrupted societies like Russia and many/most African countries where no progress is made/can be made.

Obviously the West is not there yet, but if the majority of the elite thinks the masses can't defend their interests and are not worth fighting for, we'll get there.

Perhaps I'm misreading, but are you implying that politicians and bureaucrats in the US aren't currently stealing bits and pieces of the common good? I'd agree that it's not currently as bad as Russia or some African nations, but obviously American politicians are already doing this.

How many senators, congressmen, and presidents have made tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from their "government service"? Why, I can think of a president off the top of my head who used his earlier position heading US anti-corruption in a country to get his son paid millions of dollars by corrupt people in that country.

Yes we will. So far the institutions that have been built up have continued on cruise control avoiding much in the way of large scale or persistent corruption. But, the 4 years of Trump demonstrated that our institutions are currently pretty helpless against brazen corruption. Many millions of our citizens will shrug their shoulders at, or even cheer on corruption so long as their side is winning the all important cultural trolling wars.

Hmm. You think the 4 years of Trump proved the institutions broken? My perspective was always that they were quite resilient during that time. I mean, he literally tried use all of his power to do a coup - and it didn't work.

> But, the 2 years of Biden demonstrated that our institutions are currently pretty helpless against brazen corruption. Many millions of our citizens will shrug their shoulders at, or even cheer on corruption so long as their side is winning the all important cultural trolling wars.

> But, the 8 years of Obama demonstrated that our institutions are currently pretty helpless against brazen corruption. Many millions of our citizens will shrug their shoulders at, or even cheer on corruption so long as their side is winning the all important cultural trolling wars.

> But, the 8 years of Bush demonstrated that our institutions are currently pretty helpless against brazen corruption. Many millions of our citizens will shrug their shoulders at, or even cheer on corruption so long as their side is winning the all important cultural trolling wars.

I'm sorry, I just really don't like statements like this. It literally tells me nothing except what political affiliation you have and it does not give any coherent argument for/against why "the majority of the elite thinks the masses can't defend their interests and are not worth fighting for".

I strongly disagree with this characterization. I am a registered Republican. There has never been overt corruption like there was during the Trump administration and it was horrifying.

I also respectfully disagreed with a lot of things about the Bush, Biden, and Obama administrations but they were in no way comparable to the transactional corruption of Trump.

He had massive conflicts of interest from day one and refused to step back from his business interests: https://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/313864-government-et...

I'm genuinely curious how his presidency was a conflict of interest. All the other presidents in this list happily took their salary of $400,000 a year, while Trump donated his salary to various government projects[0] (at least until the last 6 months).

>> In business, a conflict of interest arises when a person chooses personal gain over duties to their employer, or to an organization in which they are a stakeholder, or exploits their position for personal gain in some way.[1]

I fail to see how giving your paycheck away results in any sort of personal gain other than some tax write offs. In that article you linked, it also said he handed his business over to his sons. I recall our current president had his son making business deals in China based on his dad's name and reputation[1].

>> But the new documents — which include a signed copy of a $1 million legal retainer, emails related to the wire transfers, and $3.8 million in consulting fees that are confirmed in new bank records and agreements signed by Hunter Biden — illustrate the ways in which his family profited from relationships built over Joe Biden’s decades in public service.[2]

How is that not the same level, or greater corruption than what you posted? Seriously, I don't get why people believe any administration is not corrupt.

[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-donation-salar...

[1]: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/conflict-of-interest.as...

[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/30/hunter-bi...

I don’t believe those three statements can be reasonably supported.

And no, it doesn’t tell you my political affiliation. It tells you that I believe Trump to be a brazenly corrupt individual and that I hate brazen corruption.