https://spectator.org/the-corruption-of-the-biden-administration-is-now-in-plain-sight/
EXCERPTS
Corruption has been around for a long time.
The problem is when we detach power from benevolent responsibility.
So, it should not be surprising that our government of the people, by the people, and for the people could and has at times become the playground of corrupt people. Even in the cabinet of Abraham Lincoln, an exceptional politician in any age, there was corruption. Carl Sandburg writes of how Rep. Thad Stevens complained that Secretary of War Simon Cameron was so dishonest that the only thing he wouldn’t steal was a red-hot stove. Cameron, of course, took offense, and Lincoln tried to calm things down by asking Stevens to retract. “All right,” goes a version of how Stevens replied, “I will retract. He would steal the stove, too.”
In the words quoted, Amos skewered the use of power to obtain sex as well as money. History confirms that this too is a proclivity of powerful people. Whether we speak of the constant parade of women through the bedchambers of such monarchs as Charles II of Britain or Louis XV of France, or of similar parades through the chambers of the Kennedy White House or of wherever Bill Clinton went, or the line of the powerful who flew on the Lolita Express, there is much evidence that power is a supreme aphrodisiac. In grimmer governments, force was used instead (which was made the object of very dark cinematic humor in the British masterpiece The Death of Stalin).
Implicit in Amos’ words is that there is an inevitable price to pay for tolerating corruption. Skilled politicians, adept at feeling the pulse of the people, lose their sharpness through their indulgences. As their corruption increases, competence decreases. Managing the many pretenses that hide its ill-gotten benefits takes up more and more time and energy. Lies need more lies to hide them and so the story keeps getting more and more complicated and less and less plausible. Leaks spring in the dike that quickly become controllable. The collapse can come very quickly.
