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The dictionary definition of "corrupt" is "Marked by immorality and perversion; depraved". The generally accepted definition when applied to politicians is tha

by lisper 3y ago

The dictionary definition of "corrupt" is "Marked by immorality and perversion; depraved". The generally accepted definition when applied to politicians is that they use their power and influence to some unfair advantage. Enriching yourself at the expense of your constituents qualifies. Doing legal things that are required under our current system to get elected doesn't. Words are only useful insofar as they allow you to draw distinctions between different concepts. Your definition (and it is yours -- you may not have invented the word, but you did advance one particular definition) isn't useful because it applies necessarily to all U.S. politicians since Citizens United. On your definition, calling a politician "corrupt" adds no more information than calling them "human".

lapcat 3y ago
> The generally accepted definition when applied to politicians is that they use their power and influence to some unfair advantage. Agreed. > Enriching yourself at the expense of your constituents qualifies. Agreed. > Doing legal things that are required under our current system to get elected doesn't. That's where I disagree, and again, "legal" is irrelevant if the lawmakers themselves are corrupt. There's a massive difference between legal and ethical. That's the whole purpose of corrupting lawmakers, to get them to write the laws in your favor. > it applies necessarily to all U.S. politicians since Citizens United You appear to misunderstand Citizens United, which applies to independent expenditures, not to direct campaign contributions. [EDIT:] Besides, Joe Biden joined the US Senate in 1973. The Citizens United decision in 2010 is not temporarily available to him as an excuse and has nothing to do with whether he was a paid tool of the financial industry. > On your definition, calling a politician "corrupt" adds no more information than calling them "human". You can not run for office. I don't run for office. Not all humans are corrupt.
- lisper 3y ago
  > You appear to misunderstand Citizens United You appear to misunderstand how the world actually works if you think that there is a substantive difference between "independent expenditures" and "direct campaign contributions." Money is fungible. (Just out of curiosity, do you think Clarence Thomas is corrupt?) > I don't run for office. Not all humans are corrupt. That's true. But if you are not "corrupt" on your definition, you will never win a contested election. I don't like it any more than you do, but that's the world we currently live in.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > You appear to misunderstand how the world actually works if you think that there is a substantive difference between "independent expenditures" and "direct campaign contributions." Money is fungible. Aside from allowing vastly more money into the process, which is of course bad in itself, how do you think Citizens United changed or changes the nature of the corruption of individual politicians? As I mentioned, Biden joined the US Senate in 1973, decades before Citizens United. Legalized bribery in the form of campaign contributions has been around forever. Unless you're claiming, implausibly, that politicians somehow weren't corrupted by campaign contributions until 2010, I'm unclear why Citizens United is relevant to our (semantic?) disagreement. > Just out of curiosity, do you think Clarence Thomas is corrupt? Deeply. > But if you are not "corrupt" on your definition, you will never win a contested election. I don't like it any more than you do, but that's the world we currently live in. Agreed. Perhaps the only real difference here is that I'm willing to admit the unfortunate, inconvenient truth that most of our representatives are corrupt. It feels to me like there's a kind of excuse being given here, like, "You have to be corrupt in order to win, so it's not truly corruption". But I don't buy that. You certainly have to raise money to win, but there are different ways of going about that, and also different ways to handle it after you've raised the funds and won the election. There's a common refrain among Democrats that the Democratic politicians are always just doing the best they can under the political circumstances, they mean well, but they can't actually do significant things to help the people they represent, because of... reasons >mumble< >mumble<. And I don't believe that junk for a second. Politics tends to attract a certain type of ladder-climber who is willing to throw away any principles, if they had any principles in the first place, to achieve power and notoriety. It's not necessarily a route to great financial fortune (though sometimes it can be after leaving office, see for example Bill Clinton), but it's a route to great power, and money is power anyway, so those are just two different ways of achieving fundamentally the same goal.
    - lisper 3y ago
      There are people who profess to believe that taxation is theft. Even if I grant for the sake of argument that their position has merit (it doesn't, but I'm willing to suspend disbelief) I still think there is a worthwhile distinction to be made between being held up at gunpoint in a dark alley and being audited by the IRS. Likewise, there are people like you who profess to believe that acting in the interests of campaign donors is corruption. Even if I grant for the sake of argument that their position has merit (and it very well might) I still think there is a worthwhile distinction to be made between voting for a bill because someone donated to your campaign, and voting for a bill because someone flew you to their hunting lodge in their private jet. There is a broad range of activities that can be labelled "corruption" but using the same word for all of them means intentionally discarding important information and nuance. There is a line -- not a sharp one, but a line nonetheless -- between "corruption" that is acceptable, even necessary, under our current system, and "corruption" that is not, and I choose to reserve the word "corruption", with its pejorative implications, for the latter and use some other word to refer to the former. There isn't really a good word for the former kind of "corruption" because it's not corruption, it's just the Way Things Work, for better or for worse. But fine, if you insist, I will refer to the former as "type 1 corruption" and the latter as "type 2 corruption". Type 1 corruption may be distasteful, but it is clearly legal. Type 2 corruption is nominally illegal, but rarely prosecuted, in no small measure because the line between the two is blurry and it's hard to prove that a given act was in fact type 2 corruption. This has gotten even harder since Citizens United because it moved the line that delineates the two kinds of corruption, making things that were once unacceptable now acceptable or even necessary. AFAICT, Joe Biden has never engaged in type 2 corruption, which IMHO is the kind that matters. I don't like type 1 corruption any more than you do, but the only way to get rid of it is to change the law, not to cast aspersions on those who engage in it -- because that includes every democratically elected official in the country.

by lisper 3y ago

lapcat 3y ago

> The generally accepted definition when applied to politicians is that they use their power and influence to some unfair advantage. Agreed. > Enriching yourself at the expense of your constituents qualifies. Agreed. > Doing legal things that are required under our current system to get elected doesn't. That's where I disagree, and again, "legal" is irrelevant if the lawmakers themselves are corrupt. There's a massive difference between legal and ethical. That's the whole purpose of corrupting lawmakers, to get them to write the laws in your favor. > it applies necessarily to all U.S. politicians since Citizens United You appear to misunderstand Citizens United, which applies to independent expenditures, not to direct campaign contributions. [EDIT:] Besides, Joe Biden joined the US Senate in 1973. The Citizens United decision in 2010 is not temporarily available to him as an excuse and has nothing to do with whether he was a paid tool of the financial industry. > On your definition, calling a politician "corrupt" adds no more information than calling them "human". You can not run for office. I don't run for office. Not all humans are corrupt.

lisper 3y ago
> You appear to misunderstand Citizens United You appear to misunderstand how the world actually works if you think that there is a substantive difference between "independent expenditures" and "direct campaign contributions." Money is fungible. (Just out of curiosity, do you think Clarence Thomas is corrupt?) > I don't run for office. Not all humans are corrupt. That's true. But if you are not "corrupt" on your definition, you will never win a contested election. I don't like it any more than you do, but that's the world we currently live in.
- lapcat 3y ago
  > You appear to misunderstand how the world actually works if you think that there is a substantive difference between "independent expenditures" and "direct campaign contributions." Money is fungible. Aside from allowing vastly more money into the process, which is of course bad in itself, how do you think Citizens United changed or changes the nature of the corruption of individual politicians? As I mentioned, Biden joined the US Senate in 1973, decades before Citizens United. Legalized bribery in the form of campaign contributions has been around forever. Unless you're claiming, implausibly, that politicians somehow weren't corrupted by campaign contributions until 2010, I'm unclear why Citizens United is relevant to our (semantic?) disagreement. > Just out of curiosity, do you think Clarence Thomas is corrupt? Deeply. > But if you are not "corrupt" on your definition, you will never win a contested election. I don't like it any more than you do, but that's the world we currently live in. Agreed. Perhaps the only real difference here is that I'm willing to admit the unfortunate, inconvenient truth that most of our representatives are corrupt. It feels to me like there's a kind of excuse being given here, like, "You have to be corrupt in order to win, so it's not truly corruption". But I don't buy that. You certainly have to raise money to win, but there are different ways of going about that, and also different ways to handle it after you've raised the funds and won the election. There's a common refrain among Democrats that the Democratic politicians are always just doing the best they can under the political circumstances, they mean well, but they can't actually do significant things to help the people they represent, because of... reasons >mumble< >mumble<. And I don't believe that junk for a second. Politics tends to attract a certain type of ladder-climber who is willing to throw away any principles, if they had any principles in the first place, to achieve power and notoriety. It's not necessarily a route to great financial fortune (though sometimes it can be after leaving office, see for example Bill Clinton), but it's a route to great power, and money is power anyway, so those are just two different ways of achieving fundamentally the same goal.
  - lisper 3y ago
    There are people who profess to believe that taxation is theft. Even if I grant for the sake of argument that their position has merit (it doesn't, but I'm willing to suspend disbelief) I still think there is a worthwhile distinction to be made between being held up at gunpoint in a dark alley and being audited by the IRS. Likewise, there are people like you who profess to believe that acting in the interests of campaign donors is corruption. Even if I grant for the sake of argument that their position has merit (and it very well might) I still think there is a worthwhile distinction to be made between voting for a bill because someone donated to your campaign, and voting for a bill because someone flew you to their hunting lodge in their private jet. There is a broad range of activities that can be labelled "corruption" but using the same word for all of them means intentionally discarding important information and nuance. There is a line -- not a sharp one, but a line nonetheless -- between "corruption" that is acceptable, even necessary, under our current system, and "corruption" that is not, and I choose to reserve the word "corruption", with its pejorative implications, for the latter and use some other word to refer to the former. There isn't really a good word for the former kind of "corruption" because it's not corruption, it's just the Way Things Work, for better or for worse. But fine, if you insist, I will refer to the former as "type 1 corruption" and the latter as "type 2 corruption". Type 1 corruption may be distasteful, but it is clearly legal. Type 2 corruption is nominally illegal, but rarely prosecuted, in no small measure because the line between the two is blurry and it's hard to prove that a given act was in fact type 2 corruption. This has gotten even harder since Citizens United because it moved the line that delineates the two kinds of corruption, making things that were once unacceptable now acceptable or even necessary. AFAICT, Joe Biden has never engaged in type 2 corruption, which IMHO is the kind that matters. I don't like type 1 corruption any more than you do, but the only way to get rid of it is to change the law, not to cast aspersions on those who engage in it -- because that includes every democratically elected official in the country.