alt Hacker News> but I also accept the reality that it is a more visible, and perhaps exaggerated, form of what has been ongoing forever
Thanks for sharing this. It's a deep insight for me. I did not understand how the same people that were deeply skeptical about the state, ended up being so quiet when the state's corruption became flagrant and blatant. But this line of thinking makes a lot of sense.
It sounds like equivocating nonsense to me. No one expects a society to be completely free of corruption, but there is a difference between at least putting up a veneer of working towards transparency, and unabashed pay to play corruption.
In fact, the corruption is what the voters want, to show that they prioritize their group (white, men, rural, rich, benefactors, whatever helps you identify with the “winner” etc) at the expense of others.