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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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I don't know what you'll take for proof, but let's break it down:

  • Despite it being very obvious, Adam's corruption is hilariously trivial: some nice plane tickets and hotel stays for fast tracking a building.
  • Chicago is an incredibly corrupt city, you don't have to go too far into the past, look at whatever the hell this casino thing is.
  • Chicago is dominated by democrats to an even greater extent than New York City
  • Therefore, while we may not be able to pinpoint who exactly is responsible for each individual instance of corruption, it is rather safe to assume that for the vast majority of cases, they are a democratic politician.
  • So, any of these unnamed but real Chicago democratic politicians could be reasonably considered more corrupt than Eric Adams

This is, of course, not definitive proof, because you might dispute the following assumptions:

  • That this Adams' only instance of corruption: I don't know about only, but it is probably the worst, because nothing else seems to have come out after the indictment.
  • That Chicago is very corrupt: I admit I haven't provided a lot of evidence for this; I am, after all, but a simple terminally online foreigner, but by all accounts, it does seem to be true. Would you dispute this claim?
  • That this instance of corruption is not particularly bad. Maybe you're working with a different assumption from mine: that a very obvious, but small, instance of corruption is worse than diffuse and opaque networks of favors and beneficiaries.

I don't know what you'll take for proof, but let's break it down:

  • Despite it being very obvious, Adam's corruption is hilariously trivial: some nice plane tickets and hotel stays for fast tracking a building.

...

This is, of course, not definitive proof, because you might dispute the following assumptions:

  • That this Adams' only instance of corruption: I don't know about only, but it is probably the worst, because nothing else seems to have come out after the indictment.

I don't know of another allegation of prior corruption, off the top of my head, but committing a second quid pro quo changing mayoral policy in exchange for the Feds dropping the charges for the first quid pro quo, as seems to be the case, would be pretty fucking corrupt.