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Corrupt

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Clarissa

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People keep saying Ukraine is corrupt. Yes, it is. However, in Ukraine before the war the president and members of the cabinet would go on TV regularly and journalists would make beef stew out of them, attacking, criticizing, roasting them like suckling pigs over a fire pit. You wouldn’t get anything past these journalists, a real free press.

Now contrast this with Biden’s infrequent snoozefests of pressers. Look at the pathetic unanimity of US and Canadian journalism. Is that not corruption? Is what we’ve seen throughout COVID not corruption? Let’s start saying “corrupt Canada” and “corrupt US.” That would be braver than dunking on Ukraine which, absolutely, is corrupt but hardly alone in the world in terms of corruption.

6 responses to “Corrupt”

  1. cliff arroyo Avatar
    cliff arroyo

    ” journalists would make beef stew out of them”

    Ukraine is a country with a heritage of corruption that is slowly (and falteringly) trying to leave that behind.

    Russia is a country with a heritage of corruption that nourishes and treatsures its corruption and can’t imagine anything else…

    The US is a country that is degrading into corruption because of weakened nation state structures that mostly doesn’t even realize it.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      That’s a great way to put it.

      In Ukraine there’s a lot of daily corruption. Teachers extort bribes from students. Doctors extort bribes from patients. And so on. I absolutely detest that stuff. I hate it like a rabid dog hates water. I’m happy to live in the US where this doesn’t exist.

      But it’s also undeniable that I still have to get tested for COVID weekly because our governor invested money into the testing company. And people are in complete denial. At least in Ukraine it never occurs to anybody outside a mental hospital to suggest that there is no corruption. And here everybody thinks everything is fine when corruption has been exploding in the past several years.

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      1. cliff arroyo Avatar
        cliff arroyo

        “Teachers extort bribes from students”

        An early problem of Ukrainian students in Poland was related to that (I heard some hair-raising stories of on campus bribery in Ukraine) and it was realized they need some orientation into how the local system works.
        There’s some corruption in Polish universities (because corruption is part of the human condition) but nothing like students having to collect money to pay instructors to show up to administer exams…

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      2. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        This is like what we were seeing in Peru. Whose fault is a car accident? It’s the fault of whoever paid the policeman less. But… at the same time there was quite a lot of very public campaigning against the corruption, and aren’t the last three presidents in jail for it?

        In some ways I was a little jealous. Like, corruption in the US is at least not so overt (who knows if it’s as bad, at the higher levels of govt?) and doesn’t tend to affect regular people so directly, but… it’s also clear that we have a lot of corruption, and nobody wants to talk about it or arrest anybody for it. And there, they are willing to arrest the presidente for it! I think I long for the day that happens in the US. We’ve had some presidentes who warranted it.

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  2. PMan Avatar
    PMan

    I do not understand the argument that, “Ukraine is corrupt!” YEAH, SO? That doesn’t mean the PEOPLE of Ukraine support that corruption. The PEOPLE from what I understand want to Westernize and become a democratic nation with a prosperous Western-style economy, hence why they are fighting back against Russia trying to make them part of its corrupt, declining, stagnant self. Ukraine is a developing country in this sense though. A lot of the institutions are still Soviet-style, so of course there will be much more corruption than in a country like the United States. We had TONS of corruption back in our early days, hence the development over the decades of all of the laws to help prevent corruption, and even then, we STILL have tons of corruption.

    It especially exists at the lower levels of government. When you talk about the federal government, it is harder to see because of all the attention the House and Senate get, but you look at the individual city and state governments and you’ll start finding corruption that would make your head spin. I believe that is/was a criticism of Zelensky even, that he had slow-walked anti-corruption reforms, which shows the Ukrainian people want to significantly reduce corruption (he has made up for it though I’d say; hopefully after the war, he stays uncorrupt).

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Absolutely. It’s truly great to see somebody who understands this on a deep level. I’ve seen so much clueless, moronic commentary on Ukraine and Russia in the past 3 weeks that I sometimes despair. But intelligent people with great insight exist, and that restores my faith in humanity. Thank you for that.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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