|
Corruption:
-
impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle
-
to decline from a sound or prosperous condition; to decline in health, strength, or vigor
-
inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery)
-
a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct
I have been unable to find one member of Congress or even one elected official who is willing to stand up and say in public that George W. Bush and others in his administration have committed high crimes and misdemeanors and ought to be impeached. This, even though a significant fraction of the electorate believes he is a criminal and ought to be removed from office.
Republicans and Democrats alike, are willing to lie to themselves and others,
refusing to acknowledge Bush’s infidelity or the damage he/they
have done to the Constitution and the rule of
law. Bush, of course, is not the only problem or the
only criminal... the entire system and structure that supports
his ideology and/or methodology is corrupt. Our
entire political system is corrupt now and no longer works as intended.
In fact, it is not only politicians, but citizens themselves who are corrupt.
The political reality in which we find ourselves could never
have matured in a country of responsible, honorable, vigilant
citizens. Of course no one likes to think of themselves as corrupt… our politicians don’t and you don’t. But our politicians are corrupt and so are you if your attitude and behavior fits the definition.
You know you are corrupt…
...if you are willing to lie to get elected to office or to stay in office.
...if you hold elective office and are unwilling to defend the
Constitution to the best of your ability.
...if you call yourself an honorable citizen and yet are willing to vote
for people who you know will not defend the Constitution to the
best of their ability, thereby allowing it to become compromised
and corrupted.
...if you regularly and consistently betray your own ideals.
...if you pretend to know, or be, something you really don’t, or
aren’t.
...if the things you do, have to be done in secret because
they
can't stand the light of
day.
Religions and religious leaders are
as prone to corruption as any other institutions or
individuals are. After all, who goes to church and synagogue… you do. And who encourages you to be and think the way you do… they do. Religious leaders, for the most part, pretend to know more about God
and what is right and wrong than they really do, and therefore
are no different than any other pretender. That pretense is the desire for political power and it is
often misused… the same way Bush misuses it. He uses the words God, Religion, Democracy, Freedom, Truth,
Honor and Decency to accumulate power for himself and then uses that power to
deceive, betray, and/or exert his will over, or otherwise take advantage of,
you and others.
Fortunately, the state of being corrupt is not necessarily a permanent condition, although the longer this state of being persists the farther away from a state of integrity things are likely to get. By definition, a state of corruption implies a steady decline, and if you look at some places on the planet where people are poor, uneducated, hungry, and disenfranchised you will see that the decay has persisted for a long time, and it can deepen until human beings are brought to a state of total vulnerability and dependency, and some to a state of total depravity.
The hypocrisy, of course, is overwhelming if you look closely… we, for example,
put ribbons on our cars that say we support our troops, when in fact what we have done is send our children off to war, telling them to muster the courage to risk permanent lifelong debilitating injury, insanity, or death in defense of freedom, when we
ourselves are unwilling to even muster the courage to tell the simple truth to defend freedom here at home...
and all we risk is maybe our job, our standing in the
community, or the approval of people we
care about. Neither they nor we are defending our
freedom... we are instead betraying everyone — ourselves...
the people who suffer under the hubris of our unconscionable
and illegal interventions... and
our own posterity.
The fact is, many of the people we portray as terrorists are correct when they
characterize the United States as being in a state of corruption and decay. The fact that they are right about us, of course, does not mean they are right about themselves.
Many are themselves corrupt… surely no better than we are. But their observations are accurate enough to convince their followers that the world would be better off if we were brought down. Surely our domestic and foreign
policies now betray more People in the world than they
support.
So if you have allowed yourself to read this far and can bring yourself to a place where you essentially agree with my
general assessment, the question then becomes… well now what? How do we get on track?
Well, only to the extent that we acknowledge, explore, and understand the truth of where we are, will we be able to take responsibility for this state of
affairs and begin to bring ourselves and our country into alignment with our
professed ideals. The problem, of course, is that even as we come to understand
how things are, it won’t necessarily mean that others will
too, at least not right away. I can assure you of this though: that until
we each come into alignment with our own truth and take responsibility for where
we are in
life and how we participate, it is possible that we will
continue to contribute more to the problem than to the solution. In
any event, if we make the decision to move forward and in the direction of
our own integrity, more truth will be revealed to us, until one day,
we will each know
precisely what to do without needing anyone else to tell us what that is.
On Citizenship
www.gpln.com/citizen.htm
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights
www.gpln.com/udhr.html
Reply to Rep. Sam Farr
www.gpln.com/samfarr.htm
Return to
Commentaries
|