Flavors of corruption

In the Trump era, one of the most common terms in political writing is some variation of "corrupt" or "corruption." I've been jarred by a sense that there are multiple meanings behind this powerful word and concept and that we're not necessarily aware that every usage is not quite the same as the last one. Maybe this doesn't bother others as it does me, but I decided to explore it here.

Some examples, some thoughts, and some recourse to very basic dictionary definitions of "corrupt" and "corruption" follow:

Mike Pompeo, still implicated in Trump's impeachable acts, doesn't care if you know he's corrupt
"Prior to ex-House Republican Mike Pompeo becoming Trump's secretary of state, it was generally understood that U.S. secretaries of state were not allowed to use the tools of their office for rank partisan politicking. Using government resources to campaign is illegal; turning the top diplomatic job in the country into a tool of partisanship damages U.S. credibility abroad by signaling, to world counterparts, that the U.S. diplomat is In This For Themselves." This usage conforms to the very first, common, definition: "to destroy the integrity of; cause to be dishonest, disloyal, etc., especially by bribery."

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne: "... corruption is a dagger aimed at republican government. It turns what is supposed to be an institution devoted to the common good into an instrument of private gain." This usage goes to corruption of wider scale than individual crimes, pointing to systemic institutional harm such as "dishonest practices, as bribery; lacking integrity; crooked."

Reporter Josh Kovensky describing a legal argument: "The Justice Department’s move to drop charges against Michael Flynn 'reflects a corrupt and politically motivated favor unworthy of our justice system,' the court-appointed attorney arguing against the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss stated in a Friday filing." I don't know if "corrupt" has a precise meaning in law, but here the word seems to indicate "debased in character; depraved; perverted."

7 ways Trump and his cabal are using government to corrupt the election
"Trump isn’t trying to persuade a majority of U.S. voters to support him. Instead, he’s trying to get within what you might call cheating distance of pulling another electoral college inside straight even while losing the popular vote, just like last time. He’s not there yet. But many top Trump officials and congressional allies have placed their official duties and the levers of your government at the disposal of Trump’s reelection effort, which depends on closing that gap." This usage comes nearest to "mar; spoil."

Peter Wehner at the Atlantic: "But what’s different in this case is that Trump, because of the corruption that seems to pervade every area of his life and his damaged psychological and emotional state, has shown us just how much people will accept in their leaders as a result of 'negative partisanship,' the force that binds parties together less in common purpose than in opposition to a shared opponent." Here the writer is telling us there is something broken about Trump, something about him that amounts to "debasement or alteration."

Former National Security aide Alexander Vindman: "So Trump was putting the squeeze on this leader [the Ukrainian president] to conduct a corrupt investigation." This is a usage I find confusing. There is self evidently, to me if not to Republicans, something very wrong with a president using the powers of the country to extort a political favor from a foreign leader. But the closest I can come to applying any of the definitions of corruption to this act is simply "dishonest" because, in truth, there was not an honest predicate for what he was asking. And Trump either has no moral compass or he knew that.

Peter Beinart writing about the Republican base: "This isn’t because they don’t care about corruption. It’s because of the way they define the term: less as the violation of America’s laws than as the violation of America’s traditional hierarchies. Thus, so long as Trump promotes “Republican values,” he can’t be corrupt. ...  etymologically, [corruption] is also linked to contamination, debasement, and impurity. And throughout American history, Americans have often labeled as “corrupt” people who undermined not the rule of law but the preexisting racial or gender order. ... That racialized definition of corruption remains very much alive today. Consider the presidency of Barack Obama. Obama’s supporters look back on his presidency as admirably scandal-free. But to many Republicans, Obama personified corruption. After all, a majority of Republicans, as late as 2017, told pollsters they believed that Obama had been born outside the United States." We're getting into deep human psychic strata here. When our species was more intimate with the reality of death than we are in modern societies, "corruption" was above all what happened to our bodies when we died. (See also Psalm 16:10 per the King James Bible: For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.) Corruption evoked worms and maggots. This lingers in modern dictionary definitions as "putrefactive decay; rottenness."

"In a 2018 White House planning meeting ..., Trump asked his staff not to include wounded veterans, on grounds that spectators would feel uncomfortable in the presence of amputees. 'Nobody wants to see that,' he said." Though he doesn't use the word, Trump seems to be moved by a revulsion at the presence of defiling impurity. In the dictionary's terms, this is the corruption that is "putrefactive decay; rottenness." Most of us might call wounded vets something like those who gave their best -- but to Trump's psyche, their bodies are corrupt.

ProPublica reporter Dara Lind on the Weeds offered her understanding of how Trump's corruption set the parameters of his disastrous coronavirus response, prioritizing the needs of red states. She contended (with plenty of evidence) that for Trump and the Republican Party. "it is a function of government to provide favors to people who put it in office." Here we're back to the deep corruption by which particular corrupt decisions pollute a society. As the dictionary puts it: this is "perverted; wicked; evil: a corrupt society."

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Some of the deepest, most subtle insights about corruption I've encountered anywhere are in Sarah Chayes' Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security. My write up here. Her observations derive from unhappy experience with Afghanistan's kleptocracy. We aren't quite in that condition yet, though a second Trump term might get us there.