Your Dishonest Integrity

Dear George,

When future historians sift through the rubble that was your administration, they will discover that your tenure in office was one of the highest integrity. Oh sure, you floated a couple of white lies to advance our international standing, but other than that, yours was an oval office in which truth shone like a hissing flame.

It was you, and you alone, who freed corruption from the woodshed of dishonor in which it had been locked. For too long corruptions had been reviled and despised as if it were a lethal virus spreading its disease into every nook and cranny of society.

You had the vision to recognize corruption for what it was: an instrument of productivity. Both business and politics move with greater efficiency when corruption greases the skids upon which they slide. (Properly, I should say, “…upon which ‘it’ slides,” since the two are now one thanks to the efforts of Ronnie and his successors.)

It is progressives and reformers who try to muck up the works with layer upon layer of repressive regulations that attempt to fit the Corporatists State into a matrix of integrity for which it is ill suited. Corruption is part of its DNA. Modify that and you endanger the whole structure.

Our entire consumptive society is grounded on the lie that happiness is only possible by owning more stuff. It is imperative that we throw junk away as fast as we buy it. Today’s “must-have” is tomorrow’s flotsam. Landfills heaped high with our discards are enduring symbols of our prosperity.

Where would Wall Street be without corruption? How else could it have floated all of the SIVs, CDOs, and other instruments that magically transformed liabilities into assets? Our economy grows only if it is allowed an occasional orgy of self-destruction. Trying to regulate against these flameouts is like refusing to flush a toilet. After a while, it becomes downright unhealthy.

So, I salute you, Big Guy. You have shown America the painful price honesty demands. As their homes slip into foreclosure and as they sink slowly towards the poverty line, they will have the satisfaction of knowing all of this happened because you refused to compromise you principles by trying to reform the system.

Your admirer,
Belacqua Jones