Sometimes people think that if corruption (including lies) shows up in small doses or seems to be just a little bit, or happens just a few times or maybe even only once, that it is acceptable, forgivable, and is no big deal. Yet corruption and trust are exact opposites and should always be treated as such and the meanings of each should never be forgotten or confused.This newspaper has observed a trend over the years whereby if our community leaders step on it, as it were, and nobody notices until much later, or if they believe that the incidents didn’t appear to hurt anybody directly or hurt anybody of importance, then it goes unnoticed and hopefully is soon forgotten and will have no bearing on the suspect attaining political status, power, recognition, awards, medals, or such, and their name can be attached to a park, airport, street, parkway, or statue. That is the beauty of our unique community, in that just about everything is for sale, including (unfortunately) the Law.
But in order for the Law to be up for sale, there has to be a greedy untrustworthy salesman or greedy despicable broker to make the deal, which is usually accompanied by some kind of victim, usually the general public.
The fly in the ointment for these types of scams is usually some obscure little guy that nobody notices, who usually is in the background, who has reached the boiling point of not being able to accept this type of activity any more — that of allowing the big boys to get away with this type or any type of corruption continually without an end in sight. The word accountable comes to mind and it can start with the skimming from the crap tables, manipulating business licenses, manipulating voting box results, malfeasance, embezzlement,
human trafficking, drugs, progressing all the way to infecting our law enforcement administrative officers and our court administrators and judges, even just a little bit and only once in a while.
You see corruption has many faces, but the bottom line is everybody knows or should know the difference between right and wrong. And no matter how you perceive corruption, it is always “equal” for all and it matters not how much is illegally obtained or how many times it has occurred or to whom.
That is the beauty of a fair and equal society — the only thing that most of us have to do is “remember.” If any of these “holier than thou” types who scream the loudest at any crisis that comes down the pike want to further their own cause, they must understand that their past dirty laundry may be subject to exposure to the public; as long as they know that, then all is well and good and fair and equal in love and war. “Remember the past, as we may be doomed to relive it continually, again and again.”
In the past several months there have been some horrific incidents involving the deaths of children and adults. We can thank the mainstream media for keeping up to date and reliving these particular incidents that are really not all that new to our society. We have been plagued by these types of incidents for decades and much to our surprise, have not been subjected to a complete rundown and list of every school shooting that has occurred in our country.
It is amazing that way back when those past school shootings occurred and students of various ages were needlessly murdered by crazed gun- and knife-toting maniacs that usually take their own life in the process, the anti-gunners were not as vocal or as anti-Second Amendment then as they are today. We guess maybe the students and adults murdered back then are not as dead as the ones that just occurred recently and didn’t deserve then the same attention as they are getting today. Maybe politics wasn’t as dirty as it is today, now that the politician’s creed is “Never Let a Crisis go to Waste.”
Beware of hysteria; don’t forget the Patriot Act was passed overwhelmingly by emotion, which shredded our amendments and has not eliminated or even slowed down terrorism.
Follow