Anders Taylor

Our politicians, corporate leaders, and media hacks became so corrupt over the years that this latest turn towards brazen corruption has followed naturally. Each decision to put their own self-interest ahead of the national interest has hollowed out public trust and set ethical standards ever lower. No one has been held accountable. Instead, those responsible have been rewarded—sometimes with tens, hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars for their behavior. It’s now every person for themselves. As trust in the nation and the collective national project disintegrates, people will retreat into tribal units. Meanwhile, where are the Bushes? The Obamas? The Clintons? The political families and their enablers who preached unity and sacrifice, yet whose actions contributed, step by step, to the crisis we now face. Are they quietly provisioning their lifeboats while the rest of us make do with an America that increasingly resembles a patronage system rather than a meritocracy? Think about how rotten the system must be that there's no one with credibility and a platform willing to speak out against the larceny and destruction of our values. Some are attempting to justify what's happening or to spin it as “not so bad” or chalk it up to “TDS.” Perhaps they’ve never lived in a low-trust society, where currying favor with the powerful is the only way to get ahead. They may not understand how political economies collapse. Of those who do understand, many have been co-opted, while others have resigned themselves to the decline. It’s hard not to feel resignation. I feel it more and more. How could you not? Many of today’s new political and corporate leaders and influencers in the media are so lauded and their views so popular that it’s difficult to see any appetite for meaningful change. Instead, token gestures and political prosecutions are the order of the day. Rather than get their house in order, the corrupt Democratic establishment and media machine spent 8 years between Trump's election and his re-election pretending he was the singular cause of America’s problems—choosing to prosecute him, in some cases for crimes that no one else would have been prosecuted for. And now, we have a new crop of overlords, grifters, and media hacks. Those of us who keep our noses clean can spot them everywhere. It's obvious who they are—they don't make any effort to hide it. But in a low-trust society, it probably won’t matter. Only the “suckers” play by the rules, act ethically, or seek the common good. Slowly but surely, corruption spreads, and everyone becomes complicit. This is something you can’t fully understand unless you’ve lived in a low-trust society, where every action is potentially criminal, and survival often means breaking laws that have become arbitrary tools of political tyrants and demagogues. That’s where this is headed. And Trump didn’t cause it—he’s simply a natural product of this environment, a survivor of social Darwinian selection.