How are we supposed to tell the illegal bribes from the legal ones

By David McElroy · August 12, 2011

It was big news in Alabama Thursday when federal prosecutors in Montgomery suffered a humiliating defeat in a public corruption trial. A jury returned not guilty verdicts on many of the charges, but were split on the remainder. There wasn’t a single guilty verdict.

It was a mix of gambling industry tycoons — including Milton McGregor, the guy on the right in this picture — plus state legislators and lobbyists who were accused of trying to give bribes or take bribes to influence legislation that would have legalized new forms of gambling in the state. (The legislation had passed one chamber of the Legislature, but the arrests spooked the politicians and the bill died.)

During the trial, federal prosecutors played tapes of conversations in which politicians, businessmen and lobbyists talked about what it would take to get the bill passed. The lobbyists and gambling people promised campaign contributions to legislators who supported their position.

But here’s the big question. If you can show that certain people wanted legislation passed and were willing to give money to support the politicians who were favorable to what they wanted, how is that any different from anything else in politics? Do people think that campaign contributions are given out of the goodness of people’s hearts? Of course not. Contributions are made to candidates who support whatever you want, whether you’re a business or union or representative of any other narrow interest. How else would you expect people to decide who to contribute to?

I’m not saying that I don’t believe the gambling industry was buying votes. I’m merely saying that’s the way the majoritarian system works.

After the verdict Thursday afternoon, I got an email from someone I’ve worked with in politics in the past. He said:

“…[N]one of the bingo boys did anything different from any other interest group. They were giving money to people who supported their cause and threatened to run [candidates] against ones who didn’t. The Eagle Forum [a religious right group] does the same thing, as does every other special interest group. If they sent Milton [McGregor, the biggest gambling figure] to jail, they would have to send the heads of ALFA [farmers lobbying group], BCA [state business interests], AEA [state teacher union], and Eagle Forum down the river, too. The entire system works like that.”

I understand that people don’t want to accept this, but the entire system is about special interests competing with one another for control over the money and power that the state claims over us. The one that uses its money and membership numbers most effectively to get favorable legislators (and presidents and members of Congress) elected is the one that wins the right to control your life. That’s the truth.

For me, this realization many years ago was among the first steps toward giving up on the majoritarian system. The second step was to realize that it’s impossible to end the corruption. The third step was to realize that if the state didn’t have the power to grant favors to special groups and hurt other groups, the incentive to bribe anybody would be gone.

The key isn’t stopping people from using their own money and time to get people elected. The key is to take away the power of those people elected to control people’s lives. That was what originally led me to become a libertarian. (I’ve moved quite a ways down the road past that by now, but it’s the realization that started the process for me.)

What these gambling industry types in Alabama were doing was absolutely vote-buying, but that’s what every serious campaign contribution is. (It’s also what groups with a lot of members do when they promise votes to candidates and threaten other politicians with having their members vote against them.)

The coercive state is going to collapse. But if you want to understand in the meantime why the two mainstream parties are so corrupt and why taking power away from the state is the only way to end corruption, think about this.

These gambling figures and legislators agreed to deals to support gambling in exchange for votes — but as my friend said Thursday, “The entire system works like that.” Most people just don’t want to acknowledge what’s going on.

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I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

Narcissists tend to turn their children into narcissists — and since a narcissist doesn’t realize he or she is a narcissist, there’s no bad intent. How does this happen? I watched a YouTube video over the weekend from an Australian psychologist who does a nice job of summarizing how it works. None of this is new to me, but I thought it was useful for those who haven’t spent years digging through books and articles about it. The same psychologist has an excellent summary of something which confuses a lot of people about narcissism. You’ve all seen examples of the loud, boisterous and overbearing narcissist, but what about the ones who are more introverted and vulnerable? This type is called a covert narcissist (or a vulnerable narcissist), and this is what my father was. In the first video, I strongly see myself in the ways my father treated me and in the second video, I see what my father was almost successful in making me become.

It’s National Dog Day in the U.S. and Lucy is here to remind you to go express love and appreciation to your favorite canine. Not only does your doggie friend give you love and affection, but he or she also protects your home from intruders — such as birds, squirrels, mail carriers and other undesirables who deserve to be barked at vigorously. Where would we be without that? And if you think this service is actually unnecessary, ask yourself how long it’s been since your home was the victim of a vicious squirrel attack. See? The doggie defense works. Keep barking at ’em, Lucy.

I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time over the last couple of years thinking and writing about love and connection. I’ve come to understand that this lack of love and connection is at the root of a lot of human tragedy and unhappiness, including addictions and depression. As I talked with others and researched the psychology behind the issues, I ran into the surprising fact that researchers are increasingly using psychedelic drugs to allow volunteers to have experiences which are giving them a sense of connection which they’ve lost — something that allows them to feel connected to love and God in a way they didn’t understand before — which is having dramatic effects in combating things such as depression and addictions. In this 15-minute TED talk — without an audience in the age of COVID-19 — Johns Hopkins researcher Mary Cosimano shares her experiences with guided psilocybin sessions being used to treat addiction, depression and end-of-life issues. One of her key observations is the importance of love and connection. She said that it seems love is literally part of the answer. In her role as director of guide/facilitator services for the program, Cosimano is responsible for training and supervising session facilitators.

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