Unraveling Society’s Fabric: Corruption’s True Cost

Among the many serious concerns facing a troubled America, corruption is the most worrying. Democracy can survive an attempted insurrection. It can and has survived bad leadership, buffoons, and jaded politics. Our unique version of democracy even made it through a civil war. Corruption, though? That’s a cancer that can easily and quickly kill a democracy.

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Unfortunately, the cancer has already taken root, and in one of the most vital organs of the body politic—the nation’s highest court.

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We are currently burdened with the two most corrupt supreme court justices ever to sit on the bench. Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito aren’t even trying to hide it. They are leaning into their radical political activism that masquerades as judicial objectivity. They are offering no excuses, much less apologies for excepting the bountiful largess of billionaires with business before the court. This isn’t just the appearance of corruption; it’s bald-faced actual corruption playing out in real time.

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Another moment in our history, power players from both parties would quietly make it known through back channels that an obviously corrupt justice had to go. The unethical and self-serving jurist would quietly retire under pressure, and that would be that.

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That’s because, before this unique historical moment, leaders from both parties understood that a compromised judiciary serves nobody but the corrupt individual. As much as that individual might have served their short-term objectives, they were keenly aware that such an anomaly would critically undermine trust and faith in the entire system. They understood that trust and faith were the bedrocks of a free and open society like America.

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This, however, is a historical moment like no other. The radical far right—which is to say, the current iteration of the right–has decided that power and profit are sole guiding principles, and no cost is too great in the pursuit of consolidating their grasp on both. They are fine with corruption, as long as it’s corruption that serves their ends.

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Meanwhile, the left side of the aisle is moribund in a different way; they can muster no more than a shoulder shrug and a, “Watcha going do?” No wonder that they can come up no better a standard-bearer than a calcified octogenarian.

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Here’s the most important point, though. If you count yourself among that right-leaning cohort, and are rubbing your hands in glee because those same corrupt justices have delivered on issues of great import to you, I’d suggest that you think again. Before you send roses and attaboys to Alito for “owning the libtards,” understand this: corruption is capricious. It is unpredictable and mutable and usually comes back to surprise even those who originally fostered it. The reality?

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You have just as much cause for concern as the rest of us.

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Ethics and norms provide guardrails in which we operate with the knowledge that everyone is constrained in the same way. Corruption has no defined lines, no norms, no rationality.

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You may be pleased at Citizen’s United v FEC and comforted that Roe has been gutted, but be clear that that two corrupt justices won’t stop there.

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How will you feel when the water coming out of your tap is undrinkable because a sprawling multinational bought votes to overturn commonsense waterway pollution regulations? Or will your perspective change when you head on a hunting trip only to find a cluster of oil derricks smack dab in the middle of your favorite forest retreat, the game you were after long gone thanks to habitat rendered inhospitable to wildlife?

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Or will the moment of realization only hit you when your wife discovers she can’t refill the prescription for her birth-control pills because contraception has been outlawed by legislation upheld by those same justices. Maybe it will be when you’ve had enough of price gouging at the gas pump only to find electric cars are astronomically overpriced or no longer available because giant oil company execs made the trek to Mar-A-Lago, paid the hefty tithe, then organized an all-expenses cigar-and-brandy junket for a couple of amoral supreme court justices?

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The reality is that corruption only ever serves narrow self-interests. Even if those interests align with yours in the short term, they likely will not in the long run. Just ask the rash of millionaire and billionaire oligarchs—beneficiaries of an endemically corrupt Kremlin system—who dared complain about the fallout from the invasion of Ukraine as their yachts were seized in foreign ports, only to find themselves falling from tall buildings one after the other.

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The point is this. We all have much more skin in this game that we often think we do. Corrupt federal justices at any level cripple our checks-and-balance system. Corrupt political activists sitting in black robes on the supreme court? Those present an existential threat to American democracy itself. We should take the threat seriously and besiege our elected officials—on both sides of the aisle—to take action now. Because if not now, there likely won’t be a chance for course correction in the future. And there is only one outcome for a cancer left untreated.

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Chris Peterson is a ghostwriter and content developer with three decades of experience crafting powerful and compelling messages for diverse clients. He has worked on memoirs for personalities ranging from a 40-year Hells Angel president to the first woman fighter pilot to fly a combat mission as a Marine. Although he has focused on crafting well-received books, he also creates compelling social media posts and has written more than 100 SEO-focused blog posts. Chris lives and works in picturesque Ashland, Oregon.