Corruption has been a part of American history since its inception. From railroad barons to Wall Street executives, politicians have profited from public office for decades. Donald Trump’s presidency has made corruption visible and normalized it as realism. He strips away the polite fictions that once disguised corruption, revealing the system’s underlying truth.
Trump’s corruption is not a deviation from American history but its fulfillment. The nation’s collective incapacity to feel scandalized by it is what makes his era different from previous ones. Corruption has been moralized as a deviation from an otherwise legitimate system, but now it’s seen as a necessary aspect of the neoliberal order.
The exposure of corruption doesn’t generate collective moral renewal; instead, it confirms that there is no ethical order left to defend. This leads to political paralysis and a sense of disillusionment among the public. Liberal responses falter because they appeal to morality without confronting the fact that these values have been emptied of institutional substance and cultural ground.
Trump’s genius lies in his ability to turn corruption into spectacle, making it feel authentic and violent. His followers recognize the source of corruption but mistake its symptoms for a genuine expression of their values. The commercialization of politics and outrage has led to fascism not needing to disguise itself as virtue; instead, it puts on a better show than its opponents.
To rebuild an ethical imagination, we need to build public institutions that serve working-class people rather than the wealthy and invest in collective caregiving that gives democratic ethics concrete life. Corruption thrives in the ruins of solidarity, so we must build a society where truth and honesty are shared public purposes, confrontation with our sordid national past, and genuine departures from it.
Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/10/30/the-first-honest-american-president