Lies, Cheats and Scandal

At a meeting I go to regularly we answer a question as we introduce ourselves, this week the question was what Super Bowl team did we think would win and what would the score spread be?  The teams, the Patriots and the Rams.  The consensus whether a person was a Patriots’ fan or not was that the Patriots are cheaters.  Now that the Patriots won Super Bowl LIII there seems to be no doubt from trusting fans that the Super Bowl was won honestly. 

What amazed me was the fact that whether the Patriots were cheaters or not didn’t sway hard core fans from supporting them.  This phenomenon seems to extend to politicians too.  We question politicians at certain times and at other times give them a free pass.  If you’ve been in politics and have been caught in a lie, like Jeff Sessions, or stolen money from a government organization you were in charge of, like Ruby Giuliani, you still have fans and your career at this time in history is booming just like the Patriots.  All the lies, cheating and scandals have been forgotten.

This hasn’t happened for felons that want their voting rights restored in many states.  There is a long history of “Criminals” never being able to shake their mistake even after they paid their debt to society.  Back in the day I remember George Jackson an activist icon of the 1970’s.  In 1960, at the age of eighteen, George Jackson was accused of stealing $70 from a gas station in Los Angeles. Jackson maintained he was innocence but took the advice of his court appointed attorney and pleaded guilty in return he was promised a light sentence.  Jackson spent the next ten years in Soledad Prison, seven and a half of them in solitary confinement.

Instead of succumbing to the dehumanization of prison existence, George Jackson transformed himself into a brilliant writer and leading spokesman for prison reform. Soledad Brother, a book which contains the letters Jackson wrote from 1964 to 1970, is his testament. In his twenty-eighth year, Jackson was again falsely accused this time of murdering a white prison guard. The guard was beaten to death on January 16, 1969, a few days after another white guard shot and killed three black inmates. Jackson was brought in chains and shackles to two secret hearings in Salinas County.  George Jackson was one of the criminals Republicans claimed in their get tuff on crime campaign, they protected us from.

Now let’s look at Mayor Giuliani’s crime of stealing from NYC while he was in office.  His mistress, now wife, Judith Nathan used the NYC police force as her personal taxi service.  This took thousands of tax dollars from public funds paid by tax payers.  That’s you and me. Giuliani hid these expenses initially billing them to obscure NYC agencies such as People with Disabilities. This didn’t come out until his presidential run in 2007 and as far as I can tell he never was prosecuted for steeling thousands of dollars from the government, never spent time in prison and his political career has boomed to high offices today unlike George Jackson who stole $70.  Giuliani’s known for his get tuff on crime policies while he was mayor but that get tuff on crime didn’t seem to extend to himself or other government officials.

Is there a chance we could see a tuff on crime campaign that included government officials who lie, cheat and steal from us the people? It’s time that we should no longer take for granted our political system will police itself based on informal norms and the good faith of politicians.  We can no longer depend on old assumptions that elected leaders will be constrained by a sense of decency and a respect for basic liberal democratic customs.  I for one no longer depend on any of this including a moral system with checks and balances through the three branches of government that should protect America against corruption.

In this era, where any public comment, or past shady act can be called up somewhere on the internet and be rebroadcasted makes me wonder why people aren’t more encouraged to call for the prosecution of government officials who lie, steal and manipulate the public. Is Mueller’s investigation the start of a get tuff on crime for government officials?  I hope so. This seems like the time when corrupt politicians, like other ugly aspects of our society such as child abuse, rape, and lynching, are being exposed.  We didn’t do much to prevent corrupt politics after Nixon, we didn’t do much after the Iran Contra scandal during Reagan’s presidency, and it’s hard for me to think we will do anything significant after Trump’s Russian fiasco. But I can’t lose sight of hope

If we can sustain this energy of resistant started a couple of years ago, maybe there will be change.  This kind of change will take all of us to participate in our democracy for decades to come.  The message is don’t get discouraged, take vacations but come back to action.  Keep the faith that things will change.  Our Democracy depends on every person, citizen and noncitizen to make where we live a great place.