Your definition of corruption is too narrow. The government is systemically corrupt because it is not doing what we the people authorized it to do. It is not p

Your definition of corruption is too narrow. The government is systemically corrupt because it is not doing what we the people authorized it to do. It is not protecting everyone's basic rights equally. It is favoring particular special interests (which include politicians themselves--Congress has single digit approval ratings but incumbent reelection rates in the nineties). This kind of corruption does not involve obvious violations of the letter of the law like overt bribery. But it's still corruption--and indeed it's worse than simple violations like bribery because it involves the entire system, using a process that was intended to do one thing to actually do other things that go against that one thing.