History teaches that a small minority of people will follow corruption all the way down. They will excuse it, normalize it, translate it into partisan language, and eventually retreat into the laziest defense available: both sides do it. Examples abound, but the pattern is always the same: minimize, rationalize, compare, forget.
That kind of casuistry is not wisdom. It is evasion dressed up as balance. Of course every party and every institution is capable of corruption. That is why a conservative approach to executive power is crucial, and the expansion of the imperial presidency is an existential threat to our country’s wellbeing.
The question is not whether corruption exists somewhere. It always does. The question is how we define it, how quickly we recognize it, and what we do once it becomes too blatant to deny. The question is one of moral geometry.
For me, TЯump crossed that line long ago. When he built his political identity around the lie that Barack Obama’s birth certificate was fake, that was enough. It was racist, dishonest, and corrosive to the basic conditions of democratic life. As I said in 2020, “It started with lies about Obama being from Kenya. Never forget #Birtherism, racism & hatred of immigrants were the starting pistol for this whole sick joke of a ‘presidency.’”
For other people, the line may have been the Access Hollywood tape, where TЯump was recorded bragging about assaulting women sexually. Dozens of women literally said he assaulted them. Some people heard that and understood immediately: this was not merely vulgarity. It was entitlement expressed as domination, a form of evil common to the rich and politicians. But I repeat myself…
For others, perhaps the line is being drawn now. Reuters reported that the Justice Department has “forever barred” the IRS from pursuing audits into TЯump, his relatives, and his companies for past tax claims, as part of a settlement connected to TЯump dropping his $10 billion lawsuit over leaked tax returns. Reuters also reported that the agreement includes a nearly $1.8 billion fund for alleged victims of political “weaponization.” The Guardian described the fund as secretive and loosely controlled, noting that its administrators can be fired by the president and that public disclosure requirements are limited.
That is not normal government. That is the architecture of personal immunity and public payout. It is the state being bent around one man’s wounds, grudges, liabilities, and friends. The real danger is not only the venality itself. It is the obfuscation around it: the endless exculpatory fog machine insisting that nothing is ever clear, nothing is ever decisive, and no outrage should ever require a moral conclusion.
So yes, people will disagree about where the line should be. Some drew it at birtherism. Some drew it at sexual entitlement. Some drew it at the attack on the election. Some may draw it now, at a settlement that shields TЯump-world from scrutiny while creating a taxpayer-backed slush fund.
But the line has to be somewhere.
A republic cannot survive if every outrage becomes merely the previous outrage with a new date on it. There comes a point when neutrality is no longer prudence. It is surrender. There comes a point when “both sides” becomes not a moral argument but a hiding place.
That is the moral geometry of this moment. Corruption is not only a list of acts. It is an orientation. It bends power toward self-protection, bends institutions toward private loyalty, and bends public language until domination sounds like grievance. Dark apex politics is here:
Their power is derived from the consent of the governed. Never forget that. “In a democracy, the people get exactly the government they deserve.”
History does not only judge the corrupt. It judges the people who explained them away. It judges the people who saw clearly and acted. And it judges, with particular severity, where each of us finally decided the line had been crossed.
