Let me paint you a picture. It’s 1997. Newt Gingrich—Mr. “Family Values” himself—is running the show as Speaker of the House. And guess what? He screws up. Big time. Misusing tax-exempt organizations to push his little partisan agenda? Lying to the Ethics Committee about it? The House actually held him accountable! They slapped him with a formal reprimand, fined him $300,000, and sent him on his way with a giant political scarlet letter. Can you even imagine something like that happening today? Yeah, me neither.
Back then, the message was clear: you mess up, you pay for it. Even if you’re the freakin’ Speaker of the House. But now? Oh, we’ve completely lost the plot, folks.
Let’s talk about recent times. Remember George Santos? The guy who lied about literally everything to get elected? His education, his jobs, probably even his favorite color. Turns out his finances were just as shady as his resume. But did he get the boot immediately? Oh, no. It took until December 2023—months of lying, scheming, and dodging accountability—before Congress finally expelled him. And that makes him only the sixth member ever to be expelled. Six out of how many grifters? The math ain’t mathing, people.
And don’t even get me started on Clarence Thomas. This guy takes luxury trips, gets sweetheart real estate deals, and conveniently “forgets” to disclose any of it. Harlan Crow, the billionaire buddy who funded all this, even bought the house where Thomas’s mom lives! Yet somehow, Thomas is still sitting on the bench, deciding the fate of the nation like nothing happened. Are you kidding me? You’ve got an ethics scandal big enough to make a mob boss blush, and it’s just… fine? No big deal? Cool.
Oh, but it gets better. Because now, now, we’ve got Donald Trump back in the Oval Office. Yeah, the guy who got convicted—convicted!—in New York for falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments. He’s a literal felon, and he’s still running the country. What are we doing? Seriously, what the hell are we doing? If you’d told someone in 1997 that this was where we were headed, they’d laugh you out of the room. “A convicted felon in the White House? That’s a great dystopian novel, pal, but maybe dial it back a notch.” And yet, here we are. Living it.
Meanwhile, Gingrich got crucified for bending the rules on a freakin’ college course. They fined him more than a quarter of a million bucks! And the House did it with a bipartisan vote—Republicans and Democrats agreeing that, yeah, lying and cheating are bad. When’s the last time you saw that? Now, they’re too busy yelling at each other on cable news to even pretend to care about ethics.
So what’s the takeaway here? Are we just… okay with this now? Have we decided that politics is just pro wrestling with better suits? Because if that’s the case, we’re screwed. It’s not just about the politicians—it’s about us. We’re the ones letting it slide, shrugging it off, and treating corruption like it’s a quirky personality trait.
You want accountability? You want integrity? You gotta demand it. Otherwise, we’re just handing over the keys to every grifter, liar, and scam artist who wants to take us for a ride. And judging by where we are now, that ride’s heading straight off a cliff. Buckle up.
