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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28005 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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I expect to see counters about how the entire government is corrupt, and I don't even disagree with all of it. But he is so incredibly blatant about it that he doesn't even try to create plausible deniability.

Is this a criticism of Trump? Because I see this as a great positive. Would you rather have a public servant who is good at hiding corruption from the people?

Perhaps if you think that brand of corruption is a good thing?

What good will come from public servant being blatantly corrupt? When everyone knows that corruption is against the public mores and generally not done --- some people will choose to do evil anyway, covertly, but the effort not to get caught in public is a tangible cost. Some people on the margin will be uncertain of the cost and choose the public mores. When everyone knows it is permissible and can be done out in the open, within a generation it is becomes the definition of public mores. The rare few who don't do it are those who are weird enough to have their own moral code for no visible benefit. Others will call it prudishness, or soon call them opponents to public mores.

Happens to be one of conservative arguments against licentiousness that I find persuasive.

What you live in a world where corruption is already rampant and the norm? One where you are going to have to bribe your way through no matter what. Consider yourself in that situation.

Do you prefer to deal with the man who is upfront about what he wants, or with the one who obliquely implies it, forcing you to guess what the price may be or if you are ever going to get what you ask for in the first place?

Do you prefer to deal with the man who is upfront about what he wants, or with the one who obliquely implies it, forcing you to guess what the price may be or if you are ever going to get what you ask for in the first place?

I don't think this a useful way to think about the situation. It won't come down to choosing between dealing with two different men, but one man in either of hypotheticals. Keep track of the rest of the society where these hypothetical men can operate, too. If you get a corrupt official who keeps up the pretense that s/he won't take bribes, s/he wants to avoid getting caught. This means they may still process your paperwork, only slower. The official who is openly corrupt will expect a bribe for anything favorable to happen. More open the expectations, more sure there is nothing you can do about it. It would suck when dealing with a low-level clerk. You won't deal directly with POTUS, but openly corrupt POTUS won't likely cause less corruption in the government.

The only good thing about a publicly known corrupt guy is not the public knowledge, it is that public knowledge can be acted on. There is nothing good about a known corrupt authority when everyone knows them to be corrupt and everyone also knows that everyone knows they won't be successfully prosecuted and stopped.

If your argument for voting for Trump comes down to arguing he is publicly corrupt, where does this leave you?

You are not engaging with the core argument here, which is that from this standpoint society is already far too corrupt for overtness to matter except as predictibility.

where does this leave you?

Accelerate.

What you live in a world where corruption is already rampant and the norm? One where you are going to have to bribe your way through no matter what. Consider yourself in that situation.

What if you don't live in that world, but want an excuse to act like a bandit, so you claim that you do?

I'd condemn it in that case. If the US wasn't run by scoundrels me saying this would be evil.

But we do live in that world and you need only look at the headlines of the past few weeks to convince yourself of it.

We have long transitioned to the "loot the treasury" phase of this civilization. If you can't bring yourself to act accordingly, you're not a bastion of virtue. You're a sucker.

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