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Comment by legerdemain | Hacker News Reader

The hardcore political establishment is corrupt head to tail. It is corrupt in Silver Spring Township, Pennsylvania, it is corrupt down in the good town of Mechanicsburg, PA, it is corrupt in the whole of Cumberland County, and I swear it is rotten in these United States. Every day, I feel like we inch closer and closer to a rupture that will cannot be repaired without severe measures. The class of people who control Silver Spring Township are the same people who tell you what to think and how to vote nationwide.

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The United States is consistently in the top decile of least corrupt countries globally. Don't really care for your second to last sentence either, let's tone that kind of rhetoric down. (The author of the Twitter thread should absolutely sue- he'll probably get a pro bono attorney from a libertarian or good government nonprofit after his thread gets attention)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

This list measures how corrupt people think their own governments are, which is not necessarily the same thing as a measure of actual corruption.

That’s a very important difference. US corruption especially at the local level is well hidden in part due to a recent drop off in investigative reporting.

It’s also been institutionalized via regulatory capture etc such that things often go unnoticed by the general public. On top of this trying to bring up how corrupt other countries are perceived is pure whataboutism.

It's not corruption when you call it lobbying

As it relates to this story, it most certainly isn't caused by lobbying.

Heh I see lobbying as equal opportunity corruption.

You don’t need to be from the right family or even have gone to the right school. As long as you can pay, you can play.

It's not, though, according to your own source. Also, you may also want to look at the assigned not-corrupt index rather than only a ranking, in which the US scores only 67 out of 99.

You probably meant quintile. It is not in the top decile.

Indeed. The methods mentioned make it quite clear that we do not know how bad it really is very corrupt countries.

Number 27 - a bit more corrupt than United Arab Emirates, Bhutan, Uruguay and Chile. How on earth could someone read that as a good position for the USA to be in? The US is constantly touted as some great leader of the world but it is never in the top of any statistics of Good Things. The US should be compared to the best (Denmark) not just be like "yeah 27 out of 180 is great" or "#25 on the Democracy Index, marked as a Flawed democracy, is amazing!"

And the same people who count the votes.

Counting the votes is currently less important than deciding who can vote, and what they can vote for. Over 1% of the US population lives in non states. The majority of the US population lives in areas gerrymandered into irrelevance.

Beyond that the vastly expanded definition of felon has eroded the ability for at least 5.1 million Americans to vote. Immigration is almost more a question of voting than anything else. Add in various forms of voter suppression and frankly Americans politics has almost completely been separated from the “will of the people.”

Your attitude is much more "corrupt" and corrosive than you accuse the "political establishment" of being

Kinda curious as to why you think so.

It's a pessimistic, lazy critique that corrodes faith in necessary institutions.

Your critique reminds me of colonial British complaints against the colonies’ complaints.

Source?

“It was essential to the maintenance of order and hierarchy that the colonies acknowledge the supreme authority of Parliament.”

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-men-who-lost-america-an...

I don't think a potentially valid complaint about something should be accused of "corroding it", especially when there is very blatant and obvious problems with the political system in the US in general. Respond with substantial counter evidence if you want to be persuasive

What evidence did legerdemain provide that needs to be countered? They made sweeping but unsubstantiated claims amounting to "all government is corrupt at all levels" and vague warnings about "a rupture that cannot be repaired without severe measures," whatever that means.

A comment lacking in substance doesn't really warrant a more substantive rebuttal than was given.

> Every day, I feel like we inch closer and closer to a rupture that will cannot be repaired without severe measures.

What is valid about this hyperbolic statement? We live in the most peaceful and productive time in history.

The past 100 years of history have shown us the horrors of what happens when things rupture.

Are you telling everyone we should be happy with corruption?

Necessary does not mean spotless. When they are necessary, corruption is even bigger problem.

That's a false choice. We don't have to accept corruption.

Since when are these institutions owed my faith?

I think the chain of logic in support of the idea is supposed to go like this:

Faith in necessary institutions is needed to keep them running. The institutions are deemed necessary because they keep #6734 and people like them safe. You owe #6734 et al. safety as part of the social contract. Therefore the institutions are owed your faith.

The assumptions beyond that I think are:

-The institutions actually keeps them safe (and not just feeling safe)

-The institution only really keeps them feeling safe, but feeling safe is the actual value here worth preserving.

AND

-This social contract is in your best interests because it will be upheld for you too.

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