November 13, 2022

Legitimacy is alignment upon the laws of the universe which define life and the solution to problems. Corruption is the opposite. It is defiance of the laws of the universe.

Corrupters don't know they are defying the universe, because they assume there are unlimited options for social interactions. There aren't. It's very difficult to align human activity upon the demands created by the laws of the universe; and increasing complexities make the demands ever more difficult to meet.

Corruption is the assumption that there is no difference between right and wrong, only a difference between effectiveness and ineffectiveness.

This question shows up in the journalism of conflicts, where "false equivalents" are made, as if the corrupt side of a dispute were equal to the legitimate side.

There is philosophically no such thing as equivalents in disputes, because there are not two sides to right and wrong. But there is a pretense that the question of right-from-wrong doesn't exist in disputes. So the purpose here is to try to evaluate the nature of legitimacy as opposed to morally neutral disputes.

Motives (intentions) define right-from-wrong. That means results, more or less, follow purposes. Getting something wrong without the purpose of getting it wrong is morally neutral, except that irresponsibility is not without moral significance. And trivia with evil intent is evil. In fact, trivial evil is a common method of corrupting realities with minimal opposition, as if perversion of realities was of no relevance, while evil spreads and infects through perversion of realities.

In general terms, disputes now days, and more and more so, are conflicts over right-from-wrong, not valid alternatives. Valid alternatives are virtually nonexistent. Even during the good old days, the concept of two valid political parties was largely imaginary, though the differences were more easily resolved than now days. Long ago, power mongers drifted towards the Republican party, while vulnerable persons drifted toward the Democratic party. Those tendencies kept getting more extreme, until the Republican party was not allowed to consist of anything more than fascism marching toward Nazism.

Those extremes show the difference between legitimacy and valid alternatives. How then is legitimacy defined while adding something more than the triteness of word salad? Corrupters assume corruption is more legitimate than constructivity. How can they be effectively proven wrong?

Constructivity vs destructivity would be a good focal point; but more abstract awareness than corrupters have is needed to describe the difference. Feeling good about power being mongered is what constructivity means to corrupters. Nonfunctional products are a good thing, when power mongering is facilitated by the degradation of the victims who pay the price.

These examples show the difference between functionality and power mongering. Functionality has a universal quality, while power mongering has a selfish purpose. Universal vs selfish shows one of the defining criteria for legitimacy.

Universal means aligned with the laws of the universe. The universe creates legitimacy, since life and solutions to human problems are defined by the laws of the universe.

It's quite noticeable that corrupters are focussed upon themselves rather than "the good of all" in their purposes. They often say so in their contempt for the good of all, as little as they say about anything. In private circles, they try to promote absurdities that don't wash out in the open. But corrupters show a lot of contempt for good-of-all concepts. Intolerance for pluralism, immigrants, minorities and vulnerable persons have a strong element of hate for the good of all.

That's because corruption puts corrupters in conflict with the universe; and good-of-all is the universe lashing back against them.

Legitimacy is largely a relationship to the universe. The universe defines the difference between constructive and destructive, not the values and purposes of corrupters. But corrupters cannot be corrected in such terms, because they are too disconnected from reality to evaluate the requirements of the laws of the universe.

So let's try examples. When conservatives are saying that having corporations burn tax dollars improves the economy, they are purposefully wrong. Proving so is beyond easy to do, but the proof never has the slightest influence upon the result, as conservatives repeat the stunt about once every two years when they have the power to do so.

In that tactic, the contradictions are highly visible and easy to describe. Corrupters can never stand up to significant criticism. They need to blow away criticism through various tactics, which often includes throwing a tantrum of attacks and name-calling.

Those reactions show the difference between legitimacy and corruption. But there isn't enough truth produced along those lines to put an end to the corruptions.