David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

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Illegal bribes mean a politician is corrupt, but the legal things he does are just as immoral

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Every time an elected official is arrested for corruption, the media and other politicians point pious fingers at the individual, distancing themselves from the guy in the expensive suit taking the perp walk. That misses the point. It’s not just the individual who’s to blame. The statist system itself is immoral.

Let me be clear. Politicians such as Jack B. Johnson deserve scorn, but not just for the things they do that are illegal. The legal things they do are just as bad. Until he was arrested, Johnson was the chief executive of the county government in Prince George’s County, Md. During his eight years as the county executive, he took hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for steering development to favored companies. Nobody will ever know the total that he took.

When things such as this happen, the politicians supporters are hurt and feel betrayed. And newspapers go into overdrive to start covering the story after it’s too late. (In this case, the Washington post has quite a collection of stories documenting various aspects of the case.) But why does no one in these stories question the system that’s at the root of it? Why doesn’t anyone question why a government official has the power to decide who gets to build what?

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My utopia’s different from your utopia — and that’s just fine

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What’s the difference between an unrealistic utopian plan and a visionary but achievable plan? It’s simple. Your plans are unrealistic and utopian. My plans are visionary but realistic.

I’m kidding, but isn’t that the feeling some of us have at times? I’m certainly been guilty of it. I have ideas and plans that some would call crazy and utopian, but which seem to be worth pursuing from my point of view. Yet I see ideas from other people that strike me as utopian and unrealistic. So I’m acknowledging my biases right up front.

I don’t have any problem with people defining their own version of utopia. (I certainly know what mine definition of it is.) There’s a thin line between visionary and utopian, even if you accept the idea that there’s a difference between the two words. The thing that does bother me, though, is when people don’t understand that there are tradeoffs to be made. In the real world, when you gain one thing, you frequently give up another.

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When it comes to ideas, should we prefer complexity or simplicity?

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Take a look at this photo. Is it a picture of complexity or simplicity? Or is it something entirely different — an ordered complexity that creates simple beauty?

It’s become a truism today that complexity is bad and that we should strive for simplicity. I agree. Kinda. Sorta. I’m here to offer a qualified and narrow argument in favor of complexity. Of course, the people who hate complexity don’t read things such as this anyway, so I figure I know who’s still reading.

In almost every discussion, the complicated and nuanced position is at a disadvantage. The simplistic and emotional appeal is almost always going to win most people over. I know because I tried both in politics. The only thing that works is dumbing things down, because very, very few people are willing to take the time to understand a complex idea well enough that it seems simple to them.

In the first election I ever managed — when I still didn’t have a clue what I was doing — we consciously decided that we were going to talk about issues and not personalities and trivialities. We ran a full-page newspaper ad with more words on it than you’ve ever seen from a campaign in your life. We issued white papers recommending policies based on ideas from think tanks. We talked about what the issues really were — and we got something like 3 percent of the vote. A couple of years later, we took the same candidate and ran again (for a different office, but in the same city). This time, we didn’t mention ideas. We didn’t mention policies. We didn’t mention philosophy. We just talked about what a great guy the candidate was. We won.

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