Cor•rup•tion

1.) Dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power, typically involving bribery.

2.) The process by which something, typically a word or expression, is changed from its original meaning to one that is regarded as erroneous or debased.

I’ll be the first person to admit that I overreact when people don’t follow rules. Part of my personality style (C for those who speak DiSC) is a high regard for structure and irritation when rules are broken, particularly when they are done so flagrantly or in a way that puts people at risk. I’m famous for ranting at teenagers riding scooters without helmets or inconsiderate drivers racing through our neighborhood. Yes, completely in my grumpy old man stage.

That’s probably why the corruption in the Trumpist era bothers me perhaps even more than the twisted disregard for human life, petty vengefulness, and gobsmacking ignorance and supplication by cult members. Today’s entry was a ridiculous statement by Trump that “We have a corrupt country”. Which he repeated and amplified based on his brain foggy belief that Musk has uncovered millions of dead people taking social security. Needless to say, that is not true and reflects both an inability to understand how things work and a complete lack of interest in actually trying to learn how things work to correct your insanity.

As with nearly everything he says, it’s a mortifying combination of true (his openness to bribery and active grifting are historically criminal), misdirected (he’s the one doing corruption, not the people he targeted with the statement), and false (no, the country is not corrupt nor is the system that he’s actively allowing to be torn down by a bunch of Christian Nationalist ideologues).

Much of the “work” Trump and Musk engage in conveniently meet both of the definition of corruption that came up in my first Google search. Both are daily lying about things consequential (Ukraine started the war) and insignificant (it is law to call it the Gulf of America), but they’re also involved in bribery in too many places and cases to count or keep track of. Perhaps the most egregious this week was suspending Eric Adams’ (Mayor of New York) indictment and certain conviction for, yes, corruption, in return for him agreeing to do whatever Trump says. Trump’s border czar on Fox News literally said they would hang it over Adams’ head and come down on him (let the conviction proceed) if he didn’t follow along with Trump’s script. Textbook example of definition 1.

Then there’s definition 2 - the process of changing something from its original version to something wrong or debased. That’s what the extremists are doing to the entire post-war experiment in the Pax Americana. We formerly were seen by much of the world as the guarantor of peace and security in the post-World War II era and instrumental in developing an international system of alliances that has largely benefitted the world. We have done some terrible things along the way and there are chapters about which we should be ashamed, but the net effect of America’s role I think was largely positive. Billions of people moved out of poverty, massive conflicts often avoided, international economics systems developed, and new experiments in democratic, representive governing planted and cultivated (though also often failed).

Idealistically, the idea of America for a lot of people was about openness to others, a chance at prosperity and safety, and a potential for a life not possible in other places. For all of our flaws (and there are many), there have not been too many other places on the earth to which you could move and become fully a part of the citizenry. I could never be considered French by the French, for example. Not everyone in the US buys into that and there are obviously large pockets of resistance to those ideas. We have treated indigenous people and African descendants horribly. And yet, we had some aspirational values that billions of people found worthy of following. As an aside, we provided the default global currency and the most secure investment vehicle in the world in the form of US Treasury bills.

We are well down the path, in just barely a month, of corrupting all of that and it has the stink of the form of corruption that describes meat left out to rot. It’s a little shocking how fast it has happened, and it’s hard to discern what exactly this new America stands for, but we have definitely changed the original thing (the idea of what America could be) to a new thing that is “erroneous or debased”.

The values we seem to prioritize now as a country are greed, deception, mindless loyalty, persecution of enemies, bullying to dominate for the sake of domination, gleeful infliction of pain and suffering on people we don’t like, disregard for anything other than our self interest, and uplifting of White supremacy/Christian Nationalism as our vision for greatness.

I’m not sure “Upside Down” is strong enough to describe that, but here we are. On the very bright side, there are inspirational stories almost every day now of people we would not expect acting as heroes. I’m going to remain optimistic that there are more of us who care about turning the ship right side up and doing the good work to return to our imperfect but aspirational historical arc towards justice.