Absolute power, corrupts absolutely

When we talk about the pernicious implications of authoritarian governments, our natural instinct is to think of the intimidation, harrassment, and persecution of critics, the deployment of state sanctioned violence upon their own people, and their corrosive impact on democratic institutions.

But when you listen to those that have endured through these far too common historical chapters, you'll often hear most about something far more suffocating than the political repression... the corruption.

Even the most ideological regimes on earth are unable to avoid this trap because any political system which establishes power without accountability will eventually see that power exploited, abused, and monetised.

It is not only tolerated by the leadership, but actively promoted, because it ensures the most powerful people in the country have a personal interest in maintaining the status quo. It's a way of forming trust in the knowledge of a shared fate if the man who controls everything loses that control.

It is the reason economic decline almost always follows in the shadows of democratic decline. International investors start to recognise the risks, the corporate establishment can pay to ensure their monopolies are preserved, the need for businesses to innovate, or improve efficiency, or care about their customers, become imperatives overcome through other means.

The illusion of democracy remains on paper, even North Korea has elections. But when a single political party becomes so powerful that it can change the rules to rig the system, the party takes over the state. Every appointment within government is determined by loyalty more than competency, complicity more than effectiveness, and obedience more than merit.

It is insidious, it is a cancer that mestacises through the bones of a country, weakening every limb, eating itself from the inside...

In most instances, the corruption becomes more powerful than any political or religious ideology that once validated the need for the consolidation of power. The state becomes defined by corruption, it becomes the point of the state.

Look at the fury of Indonesia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Madagascar, even Iran. These were uprisings fuelled almost exclusively by public frustration over corruption. Those that live within state capture are often prepared to risk their lives in the pursuit of the reinstatement of the rule of law; this precious concept that we foolishly believe is the natural order of a state... but it is not.

The rule of law is an ideological conviction that must be subscribed to with absolutism. The rules need to apply to everyone in the same way, regardless of your political or financial power. The rules are either breakable or their not.

The only defence we have is broad bipartisan intolerance for it. The moment we ignore the impropriety of those we ideologically align with is the moment we accept it indefinitely.

$1,430,390,415...

That's how much Trump made last year, just from Crypto. No one really knows who paid him. No one really knows what they got in return. But we know that no one invests without expecting a return.

Of all the pejoratives that will come to define the MAGA movement, this will be the word that historians record most prominently: corrupt... staggeringly, shamelessly, and relentlessly corrupt.