The immoral state of Washington D.C.

When you see writing this good, you should share it. This article by Thomas Frank, “How Conservative Greed and Corruption Destroyed American Politics,” perfectly captures my frustrations and fears regarding the corruption that abounds in Washington DC. Here’s a small excerpt of the article, which was published by Salon.com:

The truth is as obvious as a slab of sirloin and yet so obscured by decades of pettifoggery that we find it almost impossible to apprehend clearly. The truth slaps your face in every hotel lobby in town, but we still don’t get the message.

It is just this: Fantastic misgovernment of the kind we have seen is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society. This movement is friendly to industry not just by force of campaign contributions but by conviction; it believes in entrepreneurship not merely in commerce but in politics; and the inevitable results of its ascendance are, first, the capture of the state by business and, second, all that follows: incompetence, graft, and all the other wretched flotsam that we’ve come to expect from Washington.

How bad is the damage?

Its leaders laugh off the idea of the public interest as airy-fairy nonsense; they caution against bringing top-notch talent into government service; they declare war on public workers. They have made a cult of outsourcing and privatizing, they have wrecked established federal operations because they disagree with them, and they have deliberately piled up an Everest of debt in order to force the government into crisis. The ruination they have wrought has been thorough; it has been a professional job. Repairing it will require years of political action.

Really, it will be worth your while to go read every word of Thomas Frank’s article.

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

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    Erich Vieth

    You can watch a video of Thomas Frank on DemocracyNow here. He admits to Amy Goodman that he was a Republican when he was younger. That was before the new version of conservatism took root. The new version is both a movement and "an industry." It is the triumph of lobbying–a way of making a lot of money. It is the "application of the market principle to government itself." Further, modern conservatives don't want talented people in government because that might mean that government could actually function.

    You can also read a larger excerpt of his work in Harpers Magazine, here.

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