I think most countries are corrupt, but the amount that it's normalized in America is certainly unique. People in most countries act like corruption is a blight, here it's not even commented on.
There are countries where it's normal and expected to pay bribes to every governmental official you interact with, America the worst offender nor is not unique in any respect.
Consider how you would get yourself out of prison. In one of those countries, you pay the bribe. There's problems with that, but we know it's a bribe.
In America, we can't bribe our way out of prison, because the corruption is so much deeper than that. You get sent to prison because of corruption you can't even see:
- the prison guard union lobbied the state congress for tougher pot laws via "campaign donations" so that their members have jobs
- the local police chief needs to be "tough on crime" so that the mayor gets reelected, manifesting in "stop and frisk" laws
- the local police department arrested you so they could confiscate your vehicle, via DOJ-aided civil forfeiture laws
- the police department negotiated a higher salary for their members, so long as it was cost-neutral, so now they need to ticket poor people to make money, which is how you got pulled over.
That's the gist of it (I haven't even gotten to private prisons, Fox News, or the NRA)! And don't this this is a Republican problem either, Democrats have been pretty bad at this sort of thing for the last 30 years too.
