Trickledown corruption

"You, who are on the road
Must have a code that you can live by
And so, become yourself
Because the past is just a goodbye
Teach your children well."
          Graham Nash, 1968, "Teach Your Children," released by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, 1970

Corruption corrupts.

I responded to a recent comment to this blog from a Medford-area businessman who had defended our congressman, Cliff Bentz, saying he was a good friend and a great Oregonian. Bentz is a Republican. He has been nearly invisible and undistinguished so far, serving as a quiet yes vote in the Republican majority, which has accepted everything Trump asks of it. That majority offers no check-and-balance, separation-of-powers pushback to Trump, even when he openly flouts Congress' role on tariffs, on going to war, on creating and operating federal agencies, and more.

I cited in my response to that comment a mathematical principle I remember from junior high school: the "transitive principle":

If A is equal to B, and B is equal to C, then A must be equal to C. 

The principle allows algebra to work, as one redefines and simplifies terms, but it is an idea that also operates in the messy world of real life. It underlies our moral sense of equality and fairness. It informs our sense of patterns and consequences. "What's good for the goose is good for the gander."

Even the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal is offended and troubled by Trump's open grift and self-dealing. The GOP majority that controls Congress could express disapproval of it. But its members do not. 

The grift continues. Yesterday Trump announced that he will give people who pay a fee advance notice of market-moving Trump posts. He isn't fighting the rigged system. He is legitimizing it and making it a profit center for himself.

Trump has a strategy, and it is working brilliantly. Don't hide self-dealing. Don't act guilty or embarrassed. People take their cue on what is wrong by Trump's lack of guilty feelings. Define self-dealing as normal and good and people go along. 

The problem is the transitive property: one thing leads to another. The behavior of a leader trickles down.

The commenter who wrote that he liked Bentz is a car dealer and property owner with a long history of public service and philanthropy. A good guy. 

But on reflection, if I brought a car in for an oil change at one of his dealerships, and was charged a hundred dollars for new oil and a filter, I would have no way of knowing that the service personnel actually drained old oil and put in new oil, and that the filter they put on was in fact new and not my old one wiped clean. The dealership would get away with it. 

Do they do that? I am sure they do not. I trust him and them.

My rational response in a corrupted economic and cultural system is to demand to watch oil be drained and to count and watch cans of fresh branded oil be inserted. Their rational response where corruption is the norm is to presume that any credit card I present is fraudulent, so they demand to see currency before inserting oil, and they count and hold the currency while the transaction is taking place. 

We aren't there yet. Moreover, my assumption is that there has not yet been such thorough corruption of the consumer-protection systems that the National Association of Car Dealers has successfully lobbied Congress and Trump to disallow any lawsuits or consequences, in the event that fake oil change theft takes place in the U.S. I assume some protection of the law.

But the window of acceptable behavior, and selective enforcement of the law, has moved under Trump because he is openly protects people who pay to play. Trump protects his donors and friends. He directs what laws will be enforced and which will not. Currently his executive departments are punishing some news networks and rewarding others; the firms of some lawyers are threatened and others get business; some contractors are rewarded, some not; some protesters are shot and some are pardoned and offered taxpayer money. We see a pattern and he is normalizing it. 

Representative Bentz has failed us by tolerating self-dealing grift from our president. It sets a norm. With a Congress this closely divided, he and two or three other Republicans could put a stop to Trump's behavior by announcing that they would support impeachment if he does not stop. Bentz has power and leverage, if he used it. He isn't doing so.

Good people should not tolerate Bentz doing nothing. Corrupt practices and norms trickle down, as does the responsibility to refuse to accept it as normal and good.

[Note: Democrats, too. Democrats should have told Joe Biden to demand Hunter get off that Burisma board. It is small potatoes compared to what Trump is doing, but it was wrong and it provides permission for Trump to complain about thousands and grift himself billions.]

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