Remember the Blagojevich scandal?For those who don’t, the story goes a little something like this:Rod Blagojevich was the notorious “prostitute” who unwillingly voted for a self-described “disastrous” health reform bill in exchange for $100 million in Medicaid funding for his state.No, wait. My mistake. That was Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu.Rod Blagojevich was actually the cold-blooded snake that secretly collaborated with and essentially bailed out his former firm, Goldmann Sachs, during the financial meltdown of 2008.No, wait. I’m sorry. That was former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.Now I remember: Rod Blagojevich is the warmonger who encouraged the unpopular and unjustified invasion of Iraq in an apparent effort to benefit his former oil company.Wait, scratch that. I’m thinking of former Vice President Dick Cheney.Hold up, now I got it: Rod Blagojevich is the guy who gained corporate support for his health care proposal by promising Big Pharma that any White House health care legislation will bar the government from negotiating lower drug prices.No, wait. My bad. That was President Obama.Kidding aside, Rod Blagojevich was the former Illinois governor arrested last December for allegedly auctioning off Obama’s vacated senate seat.But based on the aforementioned list of criminals, Blagojavich’s crime evidently wasn’t fraud or racketeering. It was getting caught in the act of being a politician.Sure, the former governor probably shouldn’t have dropped a load of potty language on what was already an oven-baked crap sandwich of political corruption.But when you toss “Blago” in a line-up with these less-maligned super-crooks, he suddenly doesn’t seem so bad.This scandal shouldn’t just raise eyebrows. It should open people’s eyes to the inherent “fraud” of politics.And maybe — just maybe — the former governor deserves a big hug and a warm shoulder on which to cry.While petty thieves like Bernie Madoff are portrayed as scapegoats to divert public outrage from political swindlers, Chicago elites have mercilessly offered “Blago” as a sacrificial lamb set aside for public slaughter.But Blagojevich isn’t an aberration. If anything, he’s the exemplar of modern politics. He’s just one example of how crooked politicians use political prowess to broker deals that would otherwise be considered illegitimate or unethical. And he’s not alone.Normally we’d expect this sort of rampant criminal activity to take place in the basement of an old Sicilian pizzeria or in the shadows of some dark alley.But it doesn’t. It takes place on Capitol Hill. And it’s so pervasive it’s impossible to decide where to effectively channel our outrage.In the real world, we’d call this sort of institutionalized fraud corrupt and immoral. In politics, it’s heralded by another name: diplomacy.
In Washington, D.C., extorting people’s money and gambling it away on self-inflicted wars, debt reimbursement and crony corporatism isn’t just “business as usual” — it’s the name of the game.And if you play your cards right, who knows? You might end up playing for big stakes in the Oval Office someday.In the end, Washington politics has the same ominous effect on the human psyche as an ill-lit torture chamber. The more light gets shed on it, the more horrified and disgusted Americans inevitably become.Luckily, for this particular gang, many Americans are perfectly content sitting in the dark, imagining they’re insulated from such criminal activity.But it’s hard to control organized crime in a political system run like a legalized criminal agency.Ignorance may be bliss. But it’s hardly something to boast about. Especially for a society that prides itself on democracy and government for and by the people.Who knows? Maybe Blagojevich really does deserve to go to prison.If so, he should definitely have a lot more company.Scott Burns is a 20-year-old economics junior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_sburns.—-Contact Scott Burns at [email protected]