Absolute Government Corrupts Absolutely

A "moldy oldy" letter to the Trib from November 2006, dealing with the tag-team corruption contest between the two major parties, which continues unabated:

Ralph Reiland (“'Election-proof' hubris”, Nov. 13) asks whether the Republicans are “faster learners” than the Democrats, vis-a-vis the fine arts of sleaze, uselessness, and corruption. Well, no one has ever accused the Republicans, AKA the “stupid party”, of being fast learners before, so I don't think that's the answer. I think it has to do more with two factors. One is the obvious increase in information flow in the age of the Internet and 24-7 news. This means that no one has to wait for “feedback” for more than about 15 minutes. Say one off-color or non-PC word while sitting on the toilet during a hurricane and it goes worldwide by sunset. The result is an acceleration – for good or ill – of not only communications, but of all the processes which depend on it, including most, if not all, political processes. A plot to steal, bribe, or be bribed can be conceived, hatched, acted out, and rewarded or punished in the time it took to just start thinking it over in the old days.

The other factor is corruption – and by that I don't mean corruption on an individual basis, which has always been with us, but corruption by power – and again, not in the traditional sense of kings or dictators. There is a baseline of institutional corruption in the government, by which I mean that as government intrudes more and more into our lives, and soaks up more of our wealth and labor, those in charge (or who think they are) become more and more grandiose and delusional. It has to do with what is called cognitive dissonance. A man is elected to high office. This gives him a certain degree of authority and clout. But seriously, is anyone really prepared, psychologically, for the enormous level of power even a modest position in a highly-collectivized state provides? So the person thinks, on some level, “If I don't really deserve this much power, and really don't know how to handle it, why do I have it? I must be – somehow, and mysteriously -- special.” So the reasoning brain switches off and the delusional, hubris-prone brain switches on, and he lives from that point on in a kind of fantasy world that has little or no relation to economic or social reality, and from which there is no turning back. Can anyone doubt that many of our elected officials suffer from this syndrome?

To put it more plainly, power not only corrupts; it drives men mad – and some much madder than others. Of course, we can all admit that politics is designed for politicians, and that they are a special breed. Like – for example – time-share salesmen and carnival workers, it's difficult to picture them in any other line of work. But I don't think this political trait necessarily makes people more vulnerable to the temptations of power. I think it really is the sheer enormity of it all – that no one person can get his brain around – that is key.

So I offer these two factors – which function in a kind of infernal symbiosis -- as the basis for the accelerating rise-and-fall cycle of our dominant political parties, if not their actual ideas, which seem to simply move underground like locusts until it's time for next generation to hatch and spread destruction across the land. The situation will not be changed by changing people, because that cannot be done. It will be change only if the current system is radically reformed.