Corruption tears us apart

Never trust anyone over 30.

That was the mantra of the last restive American generation, which organized in the era of Richard Nixon, Robert McNamara and other middle-aged scoundrels.

Today, now that those protestors are themselves well over 30, a new wave of protestors is cresting. It distrusts plenty of people over 30, too, but its aim is narrower: The 1 percent.

This idea of never trusting anyone above the 99th percentile of wealth sprang to life in September 2011 when the Occupy Wall Street movement coalesced in New York City’s Zuccotti Park.

Today’s protestors are organizing in the era of Bernie Madoff, Jon Corzine and other cartoonishly rich scoundrels. They are also organizing in the era of Citizens United.

Two years and two days ago, the U.S. Supreme Court came to a decision about Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC), protecting corporations’ freedom to “speak” about politics during elections.
 
The court’s majority ruling benefited Citizens United, a corporation with a $12 million annual budget and a stridently conservative message to spread.

It ruled in favor of Citizens United despite multiple countervailing precedents, because it was aghast that Congress had tried to limit corporate participation in democracy.

The since-retired Justice John Paul Stevens was in the court’s minority that day, but he did take the opportunity to pen the best line of his long career: “While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”

Stevens argued that a cascade of corporate money into politics would create an “appearance of corruption” that could undermine democracy.

Stevens was right about the deleterious “appearance of corruption.”

What once was mere suspicion has since become full-fledged belief that corporate interests control politics. Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United v. FEC are part of the reason why today’s protestors distrust not people over 30, but people of the “1 percent.”

Right or wrong, Occupy Wall Street started the very next year after the Citizens United decision, and now the country is awash in distrust and cynicism that is aimed in every direction.

Even reactionary politicians such as Rick Perry are decrying “vulture capitalism.” No one seems happy with the way things are.

“Never trust anyone over 30” was never going to last as a potent slogan. After all, most of us eventually turn 30. You can even ask a scientist.

You only have so long to condemn the over-30 crowd as villainous before becoming hypocritical. Suddenly, one day, you will have missed your chance. Twenty years later, the AARP will contact you unbidden.

Today’s distrust, on the other hand, actually has the potential to last.
Instead of adults, a group we inevitably join, it focuses on the cartoonishly rich, a group most of us never will.


— humphrey@indiana.edu