After his last post, more than a couple on this blog trashed Alex Walker. It could not be done because he is black, so you did it because he is Green.
But really, I think that the trashing came because a few are not willing to accept that fact that those in power are open to corruption and that anywhere there is money, there is the power to corrupt.
More about Alex's latest framing of corruption hiding behind identity politics on the jump.
More than once, Alex has posted about the fact that those who are corrupted will hide like Polonius behind the arras, a veil of identity politics. It is not a problem of right or left, it is not a problem of Republican or Democrat. Rather it is a problem that our corrupted politicians will dissemble when it is to their advantage.
Today, Alex posted another diary on this theme, but chose to do so at Green Commons rather than here. I hope that some of you bother to read it without filters, because it goes to the heart of the question.
The awful truth is that the catastrophic failure of the system in New Orleans is indeed a bipartisan failure.
If there are those who wonder about how a righteous Democrat could have gone so wrong, I only ask that they read up a bit on the manner in which Dan Rostenkowski ensured the election of Newt Gingrich to Speaker of the House. It was Rostenkowski's personal corruption that cost Bill Clinton a Democratic majority in Congress.
At the close of the campaign against Richard Pombo, Pete McCloskey warned us that it was inevitable that the Democratic Congress would fall prey to the same money - power - corruption and hide it in the same manner with identity politics and large shovels from the pork barrel.
I am a bit more pessimistic about the time frame that was McCloskey (he said 3 years). I think it is there now.
Until we all learn to put truth before power and hold ethics to be more important than party loyalty, we will continue to have to live with the Rostenkowskis, the Gingrichs, the DeLays, the Oliver Thomases. That goodness that there are people like McCloskey, and like Alex Walker, who keep reminding us just how fragile our democracy really is.