Corruption

"Corrupt" is a word like "terrorist" or "fundamentalist". You use it about people you don't like and against whom you want to stir up some passions. In normal usage, these words don't actually mean anything.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

But they do have fairly clear definitions, even if they are relative terms, and I don't think they are completely useless. 

For example, It's not that hard at all to make a case that our current government is, in some things, corrupt.

Yup just like there are some things that show that our current government is fascist partly because they claim that environmentalists are terrorists while appealing to the fundamentalists in their power base.

I haven't been following Ontario all that closely, but whether it is something the opposition parties are exploiting  is kind of independent of whether there is actually evidence of corruption.

That's all I'm talking about - the fact that corruption is a real thing, with a real definition, and one can make a case as to whether it is there or not. 

As I said, I fully agree that a lot of people mis-use the term, or apply it only to people they disagree with.

wage zombie wrote:

Unionist wrote:

"Corrupt" is a word like "terrorist" or "fundamentalist". You use it about people you don't like and against whom you want to stir up some passions. In normal usage, these words don't actually mean anything.

That was my suspicion.

Yeah, its never used to precisely define a political process used for illigitimate personal gain, through fraud, graft or other means of using political influence to steal, especially not by anyone on "the left".

Quote:

It is precisely in America that we see best how there takes place this process of the state power making itself independent in relation to society, whose mere instrument it was originally intended to be. Here there exists no dynasty, no nobility, no standing army, beyond the few men keeping watch on the Indians, no bureaucracy with permanent posts or the right to pensions. And nevertheless we find here two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends-and the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it.

Fredrick Engels 1891

Fredrick Engels: Right-wing populist?

What we really saw in Ontario in the last election, was an attempt to squash any language that impugned Liberal motives, by diveting the conversation away from the fundamentally corrupt practice of using public funds for private profit. Watching the Orwellian doublethink being applied to "define" the mere mention of "corruption" in regards to a political adversary as right-wing, was pretty corrupt, in and of itself.