A Tsunami of Corruption

Of course I would like to give credit where credit is due.  The title came from somewhere in the cluster of news reports I've watched and to which I've listened over the past eight or nine days since the election.  More than likely, I was doing something else when I heard it, it caught my attention and I wrote it down and went on with what I was doing.  

A Major Flaw in the "System" 

I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent person.  Oh, it took a while to stop goofing off, settle down and earn the kind of grades I was capable of getting, recovering from my freshman year in college during the last three years, and then finally hitting my potential in graduate school.  But it really doesn't take good grades to measure intelligence, and to come to the conclusion that there are some serious flaws in our democratic republic when someone who celebrates his corruption and flaunts his ability to get away with criminal activity that is out in the open can gather a group of people together in the ballroom of the luxury hotel where he lives and make a public announcement that he is, once again, running for the Presidency of the United States.  

As Americans, we've always thought, and we have been taught, that our constitution is the best bulwark we could possibly have against the threat of dictatorship and extremism.  We have naively thought that we are the model democracy, so much so that our approach to foreign relations involves the imposition of our kind of democracy and our values on other people of the world.  We've found all kinds of excuses to explain why it didn't work in some places.  But we've never really backed off of that view.  And so, we have been brought to the precipice of a cliff, closer to losing what we have than at any other point in our history, in my opinion, closer even than we were in the 1850's and 1860's before and during the Civil War. 

When Donald Trump first started muttering about running for President, few people took him seriously.  I must admit, I didn't either.  But the Republican party, which has lost a considerable amount of its constituency since the turn of this century, got desperate to win elections and turned to this corrupt, flamboyant, loudmouthed, arrogant, boasting narcissist to get the White House back under their control.  They were willing to pay just about whatever price it cost to get it.  They knew his background, the corruption, manipulation and the lies he used, time and time again, to scam for money.  He bragged about cheating the government out of taxes and cheating his debtors out of their money.  

He is well characterized by his now famous, or infamous statement, "I could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and nothing would happen to me."  Up to this point, he has been 100% right about that.  And that is exactly the problem.  In spite of everything we would like to believe about being a nation of laws, and a country of law and order, for enough wealth and influence to avoid obedience to the law, one can get away with just about everything.  

The crimes this man has committed are as well documented as is possible, in thousands of pages of a special investigation conducted by Robert Mueller, and in thousands of pages of testimony and investigation conducted by Congress about his instigation and incitement of the insurrection on January 6th, 2020 and now, in his criminal removal of top secret documents from the White House following his presidency.  That doesn't count the multiple cases of fraud and sexual abuse he has settled or for which he has had to pay fines and penalties in his business dealings.  

So, in this country, with our pride in our constitution, our democracy, and our idealism, how is it possible that this man is free to announce yet another run for the Presidency?  How is it possible, riding a "tsunami of corruption" with evidence in hand, that he is even free?  

There Are Two Americas

The wealthy and privileged are the politically powerful in this country and they live by a different set of rules than those found in the constitution, or, in fact, those of any entity that has law-making authority.  Those are for other people, not them.  They know how to game the system, how to avoid accountability by using their wealth and influence and for the most part, it works well for them.  It does not even take a reasonably intelligent person to figure this out.  

Trump played the "presidential immunity" card following the Mueller investigation.  I read that report, by the way, every page of it.  Less than a third of the way in, the conclusion that Attorney General William Barr had lied through his teeth about every single aspect of it was easy to conclude.  Don't be surprised if the news eventually comes out that the document theft which occurred following the former President's departure from the White House, along with what was destroyed while he was still there, had a whole lot to do with the whole Russian connection. And don't think that's over, because it's not. 

It is this "Other America" that has made it possible for a criminal to stay out of prison, away from accountability and have the freedom to announce that he is running for President, which is a proclamation from him that the tsunami will continue and that if he wins, it will move right back into the government.  The fact that there are members of the media speculating about his chances and talking about this without much mention of the tsunami of corruption is a clear part of Other America. So is the lack of any effort at all on the part of the Republican party to prevent him from seeking their party nomination.  

In this same "Other America" exists the promise that something will be done about it, that there will be accountability and that justice will prevail.  For the subordinates, the "fall guys," the insurrectionists themselves, those who exist outside the circle of influence and power, there is some measure of accountability. For everyone else, including the perpetrator and inner circle of cronies who planned and conducted it, we will have to be shrill and loud in our insistence that something be done.  The best time for doing it has passed, and now "the Republicans control the House" will be yet another obstacle to overcome. 

Will we see justice?  The strength of the Constitution and the American Democratic Republic depend on it.  "Tetering on the precipice" is not tolerable. 

No Surprises Here

The fact that conservative, white, Evangelicals have been the tsunami's most reliable supporters should come as no surprise.  Most of the churches that fall under that category of American Christianity are set up to perpetuate the "Other America" system, not democracy or freedom.  And I know, because I was raised in a conservative, Evangelical church and belonged to one for most of my life.  I know how they operate, most of them, in their own wake of a tsunami of corruption.  

Among the wealthy, powerful and influential de-facto leaders of American Evangelicalism, scandal is just part of the culture.  There have been multiple, high profile falls of well-known leaders, including those politically connected to the extreme right like Jerry Falwell, Jr.  Most of those who are out in front and considered to be the spokespersons and leaders of the movement are all heads of ministries that rake in massive amounts of cash, or of churches which do the same.  They are, for the most part, completely disconnected from the Christian gospel.  You know, that conversion experience and the virtues and values that go along with the lifestyle which Jesus preached.  Jesus has been thrown under the bus in American Evangelicalism.  

But even among the smaller churches, it's easy to see how the tsunami gains wide acceptance.  While many churches claim to be organized democratically, the fact of the matter is that in almost every single Evangelical congregation, a few influential and prominent men run the church, no matter how the congregation votes or conducts its business.  These are individuals who, for the most part, don't have the social skills or the financial standing to be "somebody important" in the real world.  So they step into a church where there's a leadership vacuum, act like an expert, gather a group of people around their influence and cause all kinds of havoc.  In some churches, they're called "deacons," in some they're called "elders," and in some, regardless of who the pastor, elders or deacons are, they call the shots.  

They get their way by creating straw men enemies to knock down and set on fire.  Somebody is always after them, to take away their rights, to shut down the churches, to tax their property or to subvert their membership.  And that justifies setting aside the gospel to take up arms against the windmills that are represented by the slogan, "Make America Great Again" which represents looking back, not forward, regression instead of progress, racism instead of unity.  

We Got the Right Person for the Job

I voted for Joe Biden because I believed he had the experience and the knowledge of politics to stop this tsunami.  Beyond that, I believed he had the desire and the will do do it.  I still believe that, and that's the thought that I have on days when it seems like nothing will change.  In some sort of off-beat, strange way, I almost look forward to the "investigations" the new House leadership is jabbering about starting into President Biden.  I expect they will find as much as they did on Hillary Clinton, so get prepared to listen to the crickets chirping. 

To be honest, if we'd have elected anyone else, I would not be this confident.  Even as we speak, it seems that bringing charges against Trump, bringing him to trial and convicting him of the crimes he's committed, both on January 6th and with the document stash at Mar-A-Lago, might have been too high a hill for anyone else, except, perhaps, Kamala Harris or Nancy Pelosi.  But I think Biden has the will and the motivation, along with the ability and discernment, to get us there.  The only political tsunami down the road is the blue one that will flood the swamp and wash the trash out to see.  

I love those analogies.