How Most Americans Favor Corruption by Eric Zuesse!
(2019-10-06 at 10:09:20 )

How Most Americans Favor Corruption by Eric Zuesse

United States of Americans do not do it voluntarily, but mainly because they do not understand the way the United States system works. Part of that is the nations legal system; part of it is not, but is instead international.

Regardless of whether or not todays United States is a democracy, our legal system possesses two features that make corruption especially difficult to prosecute to conviction, and this difficulty is extreme and makes such convictions extremely rare at the top, amongst members of the United States Congress, and Presidents, and former federal officials, and billionaires, so that people at that level need to be extremely stupid in order to be convictable for whatever corruption they might do. (And such extreme stupidity is virtually non-existent amongst that elite, most powerful, group. So, they get away with it. There is absolutely nothing to stop them.) Consequently, corruption is rampant at the top in the United States of America.

Both of these two domestic, United States, features apply also to some lesser extent in every other country; and, at the end, I will describe the exacerbating factor that makes the situation especially bad in the United States - the international factor, which intensifies the United States of Americas corruption-problem.

Reason Number One why United States of Americans favor corruption is that (especially at the top) corruption is, to a large extent - and very unlike lower-class crimes of direct violence - a judgment-call, largely political, and therefore specifically a partisan matter to judge.

Anything that is "partisan" is especially difficult to produce a unanimous verdict, which is what would be required for a conviction. Consequently, an individual of high status within the elite will be granted by his group or "party" every benefit of every possible doubt. This is likely to protect any elite person from being convicted.

Take, for example, the latest "CBS News poll: Majority of Americans and Democrats approve of Trump impeachment inquiry". On the question of impeachment, 87% of Democrats approve, while 77% of Republicans disapprove.

There is nothing even approaching unanimity. However, since impeachment is not entirely an issue which is based solely on the possibility of there having been corruption, a better indicator here is the polls other main question, of whether President Trump deserves to be impeached over Ukraine.

That question concerns not only the possibility that President Trump might have acted corruptly in this matter, but also the questions of whether Hunter Biden did, and of whether his father Joe Biden did.

Consequently, it measures only on corruption (abuse-of-office), not at all on other impeachment-issues; so, this is an ideal measure, for our purpose.

Of course, Donald Trump is a Republican but the latter two are Democrats, and Joe aims to replace Trump if Trump does not become impeached by the House and then convicted in the Senate, and Joe aims to replace Mike Pence if Trump does become convicted in the Senate and replaced there by his Vice President.

Though corruption is the issue on both sides (Republicans versus Democrats), it is an extremely partisan issue and therefore plays extremely to each sides political prejudices. 75% of Democrats believe that President Trump deserves to be impeached over the issue of Ukraine, and 8% believe that he does not. 70% of Republicans think that he does not deserve to be impeached over Ukraine, and 16% believe that he does.

Consequently, the single issue of Ukraine accounts for almost all of the beliefs on both sides regarding whether or not President Trump deserves to be impeached, and this issue of Ukraine is virtually 100% an issue about corruption.

In a court of law, whenever a particular issue is politically charged, unanimous verdicts are virtually impossible to attain. Neither impeachment nor removal from office requires anything even close to any such unanimity as judgment in a court-case does, because neither the House nor the Senate would be voting anything like jurors do in a courtroom, and the rules are extremely different; and, so, any corruption trial that is in a court of law faces an almost impossible barrier against conviction (because the standards of evidence and the other rules in a court-case are far stricter). So, this is one way in which most United States of Americans favor corruption. (Like everywhere, United States of Americans are prejudiced - i.e., partisan.)

Reason Number Two for this almost invulnerability at the top in the United States of America is that Americas elite, even more than in other countries, normally possess the financial wherewithal to hire enough lawyers of enough excellence in order to crush the prosecutions case.

Furthermore, there are a multitude of fine points in our laws that were written precisely in order to enable almost any of these people to be able to avoid being convicted.

That is one of the main things they buy politicians for - to get those types of "fine points" into the laws. It is how the United States of American system functions.

So: not only are the laws full of "loopholes" that were placed there especially in order to get such people off any hook, but, on top of that, these are the people who can and do hire the "best lawyers that money can buy" - and all of the lawyers and investigators that they need - in order to get off scot-free or else with only slap-on-the-wrist fines and "community service" in order to avoid legal perdition, no matter how corrupt they might actually be.

As regards the non-legal reasons why corrupt individuals in our system almost never go to prison, just consider what those "loopholes in the law" really are: they are expressions of cultural values.

Each loophole is argued for on the basis of some cultural values.

Whereas those particular values obviously disadvantage the homeless and minorities and uneducated and inarticulate and ugly and poor (since few - if any - of those people hire lobbyists), the flip side of them provides advantages to the successful and the educated and the beautiful and the articulate - the very types of people who are the likeliest to be corrupt.

You do not find many of the elite people in prison, but you do find them in executive suites and Ivy League campuses and on Capitol Hill and in finance and in think tanks and in lobbying firms - the places where power is wielded for the people who have the most money (who hire these people as their agents).

Whereas individuals who are homeless or minorities or etc. might elicit more sympathy than the rich and powerful do, they really do not have the laws on their side nearly as much as the elite do, and the elite are also vastly likelier to have the most competent legal representation - and the legislators and judges - on their side.

But if ever a non-elite person is corrupt, that person is extremely likely to "have the book thrown at him" and to get no sympathy at all from the public.

This exemplifies the core principle of conservatism: all praise goes upward, all blame goes downward.

And, so, anyone who supports this system is actually favoring corruption.

They do it not voluntarily, but instead because there are things they believe and do not even question - such as that the elite are superior - but that are actually false.

So: corrupt people almost always get away with it.

The reason, why the above-stated reasons apply increasingly and especially in the United States, has been that after Russia ended its side of the Cold War in 1991, United States of Americas elite - the most corrupt part of society - increasingly and especially acquired global immunity for its violations of international laws, such as by increasingly invading countries that had never invaded nor even threatened to invade the United States.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq made especially clear, to the entire world, that the United States of America would even go so far as to order United Nations weapons-inspectors out of a country in order to bomb it.

That brazen and effective termination of the applicability to the United States (and to any of its allies, Americas vassals), of any international laws, constituted the making-public that the United Nations has been diminished to being little more than flapping mouths, at least since 20 March 2003.

Consequently, with no international body to restrain the United States of American elite, the lid is now entirely off to corruption in the United States of America; and, the lower that the global public esteem the United Nations, the worse that the United States of Americas corruption will become (if it is not already entirely free of restraints). The restraints of international law (such as whatever restraints had previously existed) are now perhaps totally gone. Consider, for example, what happened to Gaddafi, and to Libya, in 2011.

A big change in global public opinion toward the United Nations occurred as a direct result of the United States-and-allied 20 March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The only periodic polling that was done internationally on the publics esteem for the United Nations, and that covered the period both shortly before and shortly after the United States of Americas invasion and destruction of Iraq, was by Pew.

It sub-headlined "United Nations Less Popular", and reported that in the 15 countries where public opinion was sampled both in 2002 (before the invasion) and in 2003 (after it), the favorability rating of the United Nations declined in 14 of the 15 nations, and the decline was sharp in each one of them (declining typically by a third, during just that one year).

Only in Pakistan did the public rate the United Nations more favorably in 2003 than in 2002. Only in Pakistan did the public approve the United Nations becoming effectively nullified, and the United States Government and its allies thereby taking over the world as not only the lawmaker, but the judge, jury, police, and executioner, for all nations - the government of the world (a dictatorial government outside the United States, since the United States Government cannot even claim to democratically represent any of those foreigners). And yet, only 13% of respondents in Pakistan approved of the United States in 2003, which was exactly half of the 26% there who approved of the United Nations.

The solution, when there is no legal government that stands above the nations of the world, is not so much to make the most powerful nation (the United States) less effective, as it is to make the United Nations more effective.

The problem here is not actually the United Nations failure, so much as it is the United States regimes freedom to violate international laws - especially the United Nations Charter.

There is - clearly, now - no legal government of the worlds nations.

The United Nations is less of a world-government now, after 20 March 2003, than it ever was before.

So, international bullies such as the United States Government reign with impunity. Look, for example, at what such bullies are currently doing to Iran and to Venezuela - and, to Julian Assange. Ever since 2003, the international law-breaking has become blatant, and unashamed - sometimes even bordering on boastful.

The longer that this international immunity of the United States and its allies continues, the more corrupt the United States of America will become.

FDRs intentions for the United Nations were correct; Trumans have by now failed utterly; as a consequence of which, the United States is effectively lawless at its top.

A country like this, where the courts effectively trash its own United States Constitution, and the nations executive sometimes even flaunts his flouting of the little that still exists of a Constitution for the world, stands in sharp need of an international force that can effectively say no to its government.

FDR was correct about international law, and not only about the United States Constitution.

One of the reasons why the United Nations has failed is that it has never clearly defined even the most dangerous international crime, "international aggression" (the invasion by one country against another country that had never invaded nor seriously threatened it), much less established penalties for it.

The Nuremberg Tribunals after WW II were supposed to start the process, but the effort just faded soon thereafter (under Truman).

Furthermore, existing international law is totally irrelevant to non-state aggressors, such as Al Qaeda, which should be allowed no protection by any government. Nor does international law address under what conditions a nation whose government protects terror-groups (such as Afghanistan, prior to 9-11-01) may legitimately be invaded (such as by the United States after 9-11-01), nor what limitations ought to be placed upon such a retaliatory invasion.

"Terrorism" itself is undefined.

In other words: the United Nations, to date, is almost a total failure.

When the United States Government steps into this legal void so as to impose its will in flagrant disregard of what international law does exist, this reflects not only the failure of the United States, but the failure of all of human civilization, at the present stage.

That is where we now are.

Almost every international institution that the United States set up after WW II needs to be replaced.

We have been on the wrong path, since FDR died.

And the United States of America has been leading the world on that wrong path.

It is therefore no surprise that United States of Americans approve of this path - Mr. Obamas "the one indispensable nation", or Mr. Trumps "America first, last, and always" - more than the worlds other nations do. (Of course, Hitler, Hirohito, and Mussolini, also held that view, which is not patriotism, but instead nationalism - specifically, supremacist nationalism.)

This has nothing to do particularly with President Trump. President Obama was perhaps even worse. It has to do, instead, with what the United States of America has been, ever since FDR died.

Reprinted here from the "Strategic Culture Foundation" provides a platform for exclusive analysis, research and policy comment on Eurasian and global affairs. We are covering political, economic, social and security issues worldwide. Since 2005 our journal has published thousands of analytical briefs and commentaries with the unique perspective of independent contributors. SCF works to broaden and diversify expert discussion by focusing on hidden aspects of international politics and unconventional thinking. Benefiting from the expanding power of the Internet, we work to spread reliable information, critical thought and progressive ideas.