Corruption Alert!
What is “corrupt?” Writers must know it to portray it.
In terms of people, a common synonym for corrupt is “crooked,” the comparative similes being “crooked as a snake” or “straight as an arrow.” Crooked suggests a corrupt person lacks symmetry, proportion and balance. In the same way that a crooked stream undercuts an embankment, crooked behavior erodes a person’s character.
Another word for corrupt is “debase,” meaning that a weakening agent has been introduced. What kind of agent? It can be money under the table, in the case of politics, or too much phosphorous in the making of steel. In each instance, a person or product is compromised.
Corruption always is bad, so… why does anyone abide it? It’s the distance. Corruption sometimes is too far removed from our lives for us to sense its impact. When a first cousin dies, we mourn him or her, but when a second or third cousin passes away, the loss barely registers. Why? Familial distance corrupts the experience, robbing us of empathy.
The sad truth is, society is way too ambivalent about corruption. We plainly see a cracked foundation under a high-rise building or aberrant behavior in a public official and… shrug. I don’t live in that high-rise, we say. I never was cheated by that pol. We’re complacent right up till the high-rise collapses or the politician spontaneously combusts. We’re like the lackadaisical frog being broiled in a pan of heated water, indifferent to the corrupting heat until it’s too late.
Writers are corrupted as easily as anyone. We prostitute ourselves to sell a book or capture an audience—even though we crusade for truth and light. Blue-collar tradesmen and white-collar professionals cut corners for self-gain, too. Preachers inveigh against that which they covertly practice. Parents maul the social contract to give their kids an advantage. We’re all corruptible, but that’s no excuse.
A Lutheran minister in World War II Germany learned this the hard way. The pastor, Martin Niemoller, equivocated during Adolf Hitler’s rise and later acknowledged it. “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me… and there was no one left to speak for me.”
Sometimes we even joke about corruption, which many Germans probably did about Hitler. Hundred-year-old Henry Kissinger’s joke is, “Corrupt politicians make the other 10 percent look bad.” Well, as my mother used to say, “Tain’t funny, McGee.”
We all should take corruption personally, even in the abstract. A thief is a thief. A lie is a lie no matter who tells it. The polluter who defecates in the stream corrupts the water for everyone, not just for the pants-dropper himself. Hate all corruption because… know this: It hates you.
