Corruption Eats Like Rust Into Society’s Mettle

Crime and moral decadence, Americans tell themselves, are the worrisome signposts of social decline. You can launch a politician onto a soapbox or throw a neighbor into a tizzy at just the mention of the subjects. Curiously, the same is not true of corruption.

Even as it spreads and gnaws away at those things we supposedly hold dear, corruption is more likely to raise an acquiescent shrug. Oh well. That’s life. What can you do about human nature, anyway?

“As a people, we have an extremely high tolerance for corruption,” says Gary Nash, the distinguished professor of history at UCLA, now retired.

“I can’t explain why,” he tells me.

Neither can I.

But I agree with him when he adds: “It doesn’t augur well for us.”

Corruption? It’s in everyday things, small and large. Commercial product placement in movies, music, even novels, corrupts art and entertainment. We analyze the phenomenon but seldom denounce it anymore. We accept those ubiquitous advertising endorsements as signifying nothing more than a cash transaction with a pretty face -- a practice that once fell under the heading of “the oldest profession.”

Internet theft of music and movies is defended as a “right.” Sports and sportsmanship increasingly seem matters apart, whether it’s the corrupting influence of athletics on higher education or the corruption of performance-enhancing drugs on athletes.

In our public lives, the line between notable and notorious seems to have vanished. Those who debase our society end up hosting a TV dating show or a radio talk show.

What would have been scandalous not so long ago is now boilerplate in our political discussions: The presumption of a direct connection between campaign contributions and votes in government bodies. The unholy scandal of the Catholic Church plays out as a legal soap opera without the clergy facing how it could have happened. Even our elections system has fallen under a cloud.

And when it comes to business, is there any superlative that doesn’t understate the gross, wholesale corruption of basic values and integrity?

Something as simple as a bonus for a job well done has become a corporate perversion, destroying entire companies, defrauding investors and wrecking jobs.

The stuff of old-time scandals -- favoritism and kickbacks -- has become billion-dollar ways of doing business. Corporate bankruptcies are now examined as a competitive tactic to undercut rivals at the expense of employees and investors. Just recently, we learned that Wall Street is investigating whether traders routinely bought and sold stocks just ahead of transactions ordered by customers.

Congress and the president say they have moved to restore public confidence in business. Does any thinking person rest easy yet?

Egregious cases of securities companies misleading investors are settled with a fine -- no need to admit guilt, thank you. The IRS says it has identified 87,100 wealthy wheeler-dealers who cheated using just one type of tax shelter -- but the agency has resources to collect from only a fraction of them. The war in Iraq had barely started before the sinister smell of insider profiteering began to swirl around the powerful and well-connected.

Recently it was revealed that federal land managers gave a fat-cat Republican contributor a 50-year rent-free lease to develop a multimillion-dollar resort on federal lands. Rather than reacting with shame, a principal in the deal told a reporter that he was motivated by profit and proud of it.

This kind of undermining of our social compact is sure to worsen as a huge chunk of our federal Civil Service workforce, the government’s bulwark against corruption, is slated for “privatization” by President Bush. How many whistle-blowers can we expect from low bidders who have no employment security?

A hundred years ago, the U.S. went through a similar cycle of corruption in business and politics. It was called the Gilded Age, the era of the robber barons, and it resulted in a powerful political reformation known as the Progressive movement.

“Today we’re far better educated,” observes UCLA’s Nash. “Back then, hardly anyone had a high school education. You’d think we’d have a lower tolerance for these things.”

Not so.

Instead of a new progressivism, we seem to be ever more resigned, powerless, without champions in the chambers of power, our spirit and sense of fairness corrupted by corruption.