What the Hell Is the Difference?
TJIC has a great response to an article describing how Nigerian politicians take money from the oil industry and use it as payments to 10% or so of the voters in order to get re-elected in perpetuity. He says:
The difference between corrupt Nigerian democracy and glorious American
democracy is that (a) OUR government does not steal oil money, it
steals money from all sorts of industries; (b) closer to 50% of the
populace gets bought off with the loot.
What the hell is the difference, really, except we do it up front, within the "law", while Nigerians do it under the table. Based on this, I would add a third difference to TJIC's two: (c) at least the Nigerians treat the behavior as wrong and do it under the table -- our politicians are right up front about it.
