Why “Everything Is Corrupt” Is an Escape Hatch, Not Wisdom

Why sweeping contempt for institutions isn’t realism—it’s retreat

Not long ago, someone left this comment on a Facebook post of mine:

Will Hinton which assertion? That the government is corrupt and not worthy of taking tax payers money to Washington, running it through the bureaucracy and returning a fraction to its purpose, or that usaid was also corrupt? For that, all you need to do is google usaid corruption and there are many examples….

OUR GOVERNMENT IS LOADED WITH CORRUPTION. We should keep tax money closer to home as to be able to better keep an eye on it, as the founders envisioned. If my local government wanted to help the needy, I am much more inclined to agree to it, or even take part in it (as I do with my church). But sending it to Washington is a joke.

Churches and charities, local governments should take care of the poor, not the corrupt federal government. The pastor is incorrect.

I know this argument well; I used to make some version of it myself, especially in my more libertarian, Tea Party–adjacent years.

I’ve seen versions of this argument a lot over the last few years, mostly from people on the political right but not exclusively. It’s usually delivered like an obvious, unquestionable truth: Everyone knows Washington is hopelessly corrupt. Everyone knows sending money to the federal government is pointless at best and immoral at worst. Why even pretend otherwise?

Here’s what I’m arguing in this piece: saying “everything is corrupt” isn’t brave realism; it’s a lazy escape hatch. It lets us avoid the hard work of distinguishing good from bad, avoids specific reforms and accountability, and for Christians, it short-circuits our calling to be clear-eyed, engaged, and responsible in how we relate to imperfect institutions.

Now, to be clear: I don’t deny that corruption exists in government. Of course it does. Any human institution—whether it’s a federal agency, a Fortune 500 company, a nonprofit, or a church—will have self-interest, moral compromise, and abuse of power. You don’t have to convince me that our system is imperfect.

There are plenty of reasons to criticize Washington. Our national debt is spiraling. We have massive, long-term promises like Social Security and Medicare that will absolutely need serious reform in the coming decades. Federal agencies sometimes overreach or create red tape that smothers good work on the ground. All of that is fair game for critique.

But that’s not what this kind of rhetoric is doing.

“OUR GOVERNMENT IS LOADED WITH CORRUPTION” isn’t a careful claim; it’s a totalizing one. It doesn’t mean, “There are real problems in specific programs that we should fix.” It means, “The whole thing is fundamentally rotten and unworthy of trust.”

It feels like realism, but functionally it’s closer to nihilism.

If corruption is everywhere and in everything, then there’s no point talking about reforms, or strengthening oversight, or adding guardrails. Why bother with more transparency, more enforcement, or better rules around conflicts of interest and lobbying? If the entire project is already a joke, the only responses left are despair or destruction: burn it all down, keep your money “closer to home,” retreat into your church or local charity, and watch the national project from a comfortable distance.

In theory, that can sound principled. In practice, I’ve noticed something else.

Most of the people I hear making these sweeping claims aren’t the people on the economic margins. They aren’t the ones most dependent on Social Security checks, or disability benefits, or SNAP, or subsidized healthcare. They’re usually people who are doing relatively well—homeowners with decent incomes, people with retirement accounts, folks whose lives are cushioned by a combination of personal wealth, strong networks, and decent health.

In other words, they can afford to say, “Let’s just stop sending money to Washington.” They have fallbacks. They have alternatives.

The people who can’t afford to say that—the ones for whom a missing check or a collapsed program would mean eviction, hunger, or untreated illness—don’t usually show up in these conversations. They’re abstracted away into phrases like “the needy” or “the poor,” while we debate the moral purity of federal versus local charity.

I’m all for local churches and charities doing more. I’m involved in that work myself. But pretending that local and private charity can simply replace federal programs is historically and practically false. For much of American history, especially before the New Deal, we effectively tried a “local charity first” approach. It left massive gaps.

When the Great Depression hit, private charity and local relief were completely overwhelmed. Lines at soup kitchens stretched around blocks while unemployment soared, because the scale of the crisis dwarfed what local churches and civic groups could handle. Before Social Security, old-age poverty was widespread; by some estimates, a majority of older Americans lived in poverty or near-poverty, relying on family, church benevolence, or the local poorhouse to survive. “Local only” didn’t protect them.

So I want to push back on two connected ideas:

1. The claim that “our government is loaded with corruption,” as if the entire structure is irredeemably broken and therefore unworthy of stewarding tax dollars at all; and

2. The growing instinct, especially in the newer populist right, to respond to institutional failure not with reform and accountability, but with something closer to “burn it down”—starving or hollowing out institutions and programs, from foreign aid organizations like USAID to parts of the civil service, instead of fixing what’s broken.

I’m less interested in defending “big government” than I am in defending the idea that institutions—even flawed ones—are worth reforming rather than destroying, especially when real human lives depend on whether they function.

And if we really care about corruption, our first instinct shouldn’t be to abandon the project. It should be to do the harder, less glamorous work of holding it accountable.

---

Corruption Is Real. Totalizing It Is a Lie.

Let’s start with what’s true.

There is corruption in government. Sometimes it’s headline-grabbing scandal: bribery, kickbacks, self-dealing. Sometimes it’s quieter: revolving doors between regulators and industry, campaign donors getting special access, friends and family being steered toward contracts.

But that’s not unique to Washington. You’ll find versions of that in big corporations, in nonprofits, in local politics—and yes, in churches. Any place human beings gather around power and money, you will find temptation and compromise.

The problem isn’t acknowledging that reality. The problem is what we do with it.

There’s a difference between:

• Real corruption: specific cases of fraud, abuse, or injustice that can be named, investigated, and (hopefully) punished; and

• Totalizing cynicism: “Everything is corrupt; the whole thing is a joke; only a fool would trust any of it.”

That second move erases a lot of inconvenient truths. It erases:

• The ordinary public servants who go to work every day and try to do their jobs well.

• The millions of Americans who rely on federal programs that actually do what they’re supposed to do, even if imperfectly—Social Security checks that arrive every month, Medicare paying hospital bills for seniors who would otherwise be crushed by costs, FEMA showing up when a hurricane wipes out a town.

• The fact that, in many cases, when corruption is exposed, it’s exposed by federal investigators, watchdog agencies, or auditors—meaning the system is at least partially capable of policing itself.

These programs have plenty of problems. They can be inefficient, expensive, and slow. Social Security and Medicare face long-term funding challenges that absolutely need to be addressed. But “corrupt” is a different category than “imperfect, costly, or in need of reform.”

You don’t have to be naïve about power to admit all of this. In fact, if you come from a Christian framework, you absolutely shouldn’t be naïve about power. Scripture is full of warnings about rulers exploiting the poor, about judges perverting justice, about the wealthy gaming the system. None of this is new.

But those same Scriptures don’t call God’s people to throw up their hands and walk away. The prophets don’t say, “Everything’s corrupt, so let’s stop caring about justice.” They name the corruption, call people to repent, and insist on better.

There is a world of difference between saying, “This institution is fallen and needs reform,” and “This institution is a joke and should be burned down.” One posture leans toward responsibility. The other leans toward escape.

---

The Strange Comfort of “It’s All Corrupt”

Here’s the part that makes us uncomfortable: “Everything is corrupt” feels good.

It offers a strange kind of comfort. If all of Washington is hopelessly corrupt, three things become very easy:

1. I don’t have to distinguish.
   I don’t have to do the work of telling the difference between good actors and bad actors, between honest programs and broken ones, between necessary critique and cheap slander. It all gets flattened into one blob of contempt.

2. I don’t have to act.
   If the whole thing is rigged, then what’s the point? Why bother voting in primaries, learning about down-ballot races, supporting watchdog groups, or advocating for specific reforms? Cynicism becomes an excuse for passivity.

3. I get to feel superior.
   People who still care, who still try to distinguish, who still show up—they’re the suckers. I’m not naïve like them. I “see through” everything. That can feel like wisdom when it’s actually just a refusal to care.

I know this because I’ve been there. In my more libertarian years, especially around the rise of the Tea Party, I was very drawn to the “it’s all corrupt” framing. It felt brave and edgy. I told myself I was just being honest about government overreach. In reality, it often kept me from engaging with any real detail about what specific programs did, who depended on them, or how they might be reformed rather than scrapped.

This is part of why totalizing cynicism is so attractive, especially to people whose own lives will remain largely insulated from the fallout.

In my experience, the loudest versions of this rhetoric tend to come from people who are relatively secure. It’s the homeowner with a 401(k), not the single mom on SNAP, who most often posts “burn it all down” memes in my feeds. For the comfortable, institutional collapse is an abstraction, something to argue about on social media. For those living one paycheck away from eviction, institutional collapse is a direct threat.

To be fair, not everyone who worries about corruption or federal overreach fits this description. I’m painting with broad strokes here. Some people are reacting to very real fears about cultural change, moral decline, or being pushed to the margins in their own country. They’re not cartoon villains; they’re scared, tired, and frustrated.

But even with those caveats, the pattern is common enough that it’s worth naming. And whatever our motives, the impact is the same: when we lean into “everything is corrupt” as our default lens, we make it easier to walk away from the hard work of repair, and easier to ignore the people who will get hurt if things actually fall apart.

---

“Burn It Down” … And Then What?

There’s a spectrum of conservative instincts here.

On one end, there’s traditional limited government conservatism: shrink the size and scope of the federal government, return more power to states and local communities, restrain spending, and be skeptical of federal solutions where local ones will do.

On the other end, there’s something closer to burn-it-down populism: treat the entire federal apparatus as a hopeless “deep state,” assume any constraint on your side is illegitimate, and celebrate the idea of “blowing up” agencies and programs—sometimes literally talking about eliminating departments wholesale.

There’s a lot of space between those poles, and many people are somewhere in the middle. You can believe in stronger local control and a smaller federal footprint without believing the federal government is irredeemably corrupt. I’m not trying to collapse everyone into one bucket.

What concerns me is how much of our rhetoric has drifted toward the burn-it-down end of the spectrum—and how much of our politics has started to catch up to that rhetoric.

Whenever I hear someone say, “The federal government is a joke, we should just stop sending them our money,” I want to ask a very simple question:

Okay. And then what?

If we hollow out or tear down major institutions, something else will take their place. Power doesn’t disappear. It shifts.

History is not kind on this point. When large-scale, imperfect institutions collapse or are gutted, they’re usually replaced by forces that are less accountable and more predatory.

Post-Soviet Russia is one illustration: a weakened state and chaotic transition opened space for oligarchs and organized crime to capture huge swaths of the economy and political system. Post-invasion Iraq is another: rapid de-Ba’athification and the dismantling of existing structures didn’t usher in a clean, democratic order so much as chaos, militias, and sectarian violence. Obviously, the United States is not Russia or Iraq. But those stories show a general pattern: when existing institutions are rapidly dismantled without a workable plan for what comes next, power doesn’t evaporate—new, often worse actors rush in.

We’ve seen milder versions of this dynamic at home too. Decades of aggressive financial deregulation, combined with regulators looking the other way, helped set the stage for the 2008 financial crisis. When the rules meant to restrain greed were weakened or ignored, the result wasn’t more freedom for everyone; it was a housing collapse, wiped-out savings, and a taxpayer-funded bailout.

None of this is an argument for unquestioning loyalty to the status quo. Systems can become sclerotic, captured by special interests, or simply outdated. They need reform. Sometimes they need to be dramatically restructured.

But real reform is very different from “blow it up and see what happens.”

Reform requires:

• Learning how the system actually works.

• Identifying specific problems.

• Supporting or creating institutions that can hold power to account.

• Persisting through setbacks.

“Burn it down” requires dramatic language and the assumption that someone else will figure out the boring details later. It’s destructive rhetoric, not serious reform.

And while a lot of “burn it all down” talk used to be just that—talk—we’ve now lived through a presidency where norms were aggressively broken, inspectors general were fired, foreign aid and diplomacy arms like USAID were targeted for deep cuts, and trust in core institutions (courts, elections, the civil service) was deliberately undermined. It’s still metaphorical “burning” more than literal, but it’s a lot closer to reality than it used to be.

So when we call for starving or dismantling institutions that millions of people actually depend on, without a serious plan for what replaces them, we should at least have the humility to ask: are we really being prophetic—or are we dodging responsibility for what comes next?

---

If Corruption Is the Problem, Accountability Is the Solution

Let’s grant the premise for a moment: corruption is a serious problem. Not just in isolated incidents, but in patterns—contractors getting sweetheart deals, lobbyists writing legislation, officials trading on inside information.

If that’s true (and much of it is), what follows?

Logically, if corruption is the problem, you would think the solution would look like:

• More transparency
  Clearer reporting on where money goes. Open data. Stronger disclosure rules for conflicts of interest.

• Stronger independent oversight
  Inspectors general with real teeth. Ethics offices that can’t be easily defunded or shut down. Whistleblower protections.

• Real consequences for abuse
  Actual prosecutions. Loss of office. Financial penalties. Bans from future government contracts or roles.

In other words: more accountability, not less.

There’s a recognizable pattern in some corners of the right: a loud rhetorical war on “corruption” paired with blanket hostility to almost any new oversight or regulation that might actually restrain it. We get slogans like “drain the swamp,” while at the same time there are moves to weaken independent ethics offices, sideline inspectors general, or treat basic transparency rules as “weaponized bureaucracy.”

We’ve seen attempts in Congress to roll back or gut the Office of Congressional Ethics. We’ve seen executive branch leaders fire or marginalize inspectors general who were investigating misconduct. That doesn’t mean everyone who says “drain the swamp” is insincere—but it does show how easily anti-corruption rhetoric can coexist with anti-accountability practice.

To be fair, some people oppose new guardrails for reasons that are not purely cynical. They’ve seen regulators become cozy with the industries they oversee. They worry about partisan misuse of ethics investigations. They are rightly concerned about red tape that crushes small businesses while large players hire lawyers to navigate it. Those are legitimate concerns, and the left is not immune to similar blind spots. Good intentions aren’t a policy—for the left or the right.

But the answer to failed accountability isn’t no accountability. It’s better and more independent accountability.

If no one is allowed to regulate, oversee, or enforce, what exactly is supposed to restrain corruption? Personal virtue alone has never been enough at scale. We need systems that catch and correct abuse.

And when reform is pursued seriously, it can work. Anti-fraud units in Medicare and Medicaid have recovered billions of dollars from scammers and abusive providers. Inspectors general at various agencies have uncovered waste and misconduct that led to firings, prosecutions, and tightened controls. Oversight is not magic, but it’s not pointless either.

You can’t yell “corruption!” while also sawing off the very limbs that might hold corruption in check.

---

What About Churches, Charities, and Local Government?

There’s an important grain of truth in my Facebook friend’s comment.

Local communities, churches, and charities absolutely should play a major role in caring for the poor and vulnerable. Local efforts often are:

• More relational.

• More responsive.

• More efficient at meeting certain kinds of needs.

I’m grateful for the local food banks, shelters, counseling centers, and benevolence ministries that exist. Many of them do beautiful work that federal programs cannot replicate.

There’s also wisdom in wanting decisions as close to the people affected as possible. The founders were wary of concentrated power for good reason. The Christian concept of “subsidiarity” points in the same direction: handle things at the lowest feasible level.

The real question isn’t “local or federal?” in the abstract. It’s: Which problems can realistically be handled locally, and which require a larger scale?

Here, the “local only” vision runs into trouble:

• Capacity is wildly uneven. Wealthy communities can fund robust local charities. Poor communities can’t. If care for the poor is left entirely to local resources, the help available depends on your ZIP code and your neighbors’ wealth.

• Some problems are systemic by nature. Healthcare markets, housing policy, environmental regulation, national economic policy—these aren’t things your local church can fix with a Saturday service project.

• Crises overwhelm local systems. Natural disasters, pandemics, economic crashes—these events quickly surpass what local charities and governments can handle on their own. That’s precisely why we have a broader layer of coordination and support.

So yes, let’s strengthen local and church-based care. As a Christian, I believe the call to care for the poor is non-negotiable. But we should be honest that this is a both/and conversation, not an either/or.

A healthy society needs:

• Local communities, churches, and charities taking responsibility for their neighbors.

• State and federal systems that provide a safety net, coordinate responses, and address structural issues that no single town can fix.

Insisting that “only the church and local government should care for the poor” might sound spiritual. In practice, it often means accepting that vast swaths of people will fall through the cracks.

---

A Healthier Christian Posture Toward Institutions

For those of us who are Christians, the temptation is to fall into one of two ditches.

On one side is idolatry of institutions: America is God’s special project, our systems are basically righteous, criticism is disloyal, and “trust the process” becomes a kind of civic faith.

On the other side is contempt for institutions: everything is corrupt, nothing is redeemable, and the only faithful place to stand is outside, arms crossed, narrating the collapse.

Neither of these looks much like Jesus, who neither baptized Rome’s power as righteous nor retreated into cynical detachment. He called out injustice plainly, refused to flatter those in authority, and yet still told his followers to pray for those in power and to give to Caesar what was Caesar’s.

The Christian story is more complicated. It tells us that:

• Human beings are made in the image of God—capable of real goodness, creativity, and justice.

• Human beings are also deeply broken—bent toward self-interest, tribalism, and abuse of power.

Applied to institutions, that means we should expect:

• Real good: roads that get built, medications that get approved, disasters where people are rescued, seniors who receive checks they depend on.

• Real evil: exploitation, injustice, and neglect, especially toward those with the least power.

So what do we do with that tension?

A healthier posture might look like:

• Clear-eyed realism about human brokenness, power, and the ways institutions can go wrong.

• Refusal to dehumanize the people working inside those institutions as if they are all cartoon villains.

• Willingness to participate in reform where we can—voting, advocacy, service—rather than retreating into cynicism.

I know I’m painting with broad strokes here. Not everyone who is skeptical of federal power is a nihilist. Not everyone who works in government is a hero. But the extremes of idolatry and contempt are both distortions.

It also means being willing to be specific. “Everything is corrupt” is easy. Naming particular injustices and working to address them is harder.

I don’t think Christians are called to be the loudest voices shouting “burn it all down.” I think we’re called to be the stubborn people who keep showing up, telling the truth, protecting the vulnerable, and insisting that power answer to something higher than itself.

---

Refusing the Easy Comfort of “It’s All a Joke”

So where does that leave us?

I’m not asking anyone to develop a romantic view of Washington. I’m not arguing that federal programs are always efficient, always fair, or always wise. They aren’t. I’ve grown more skeptical of some aspects of federal power over the years, not less.

What I’m saying is this:

• Saying “our government is loaded with corruption” as a blanket statement is not prophetic courage. It’s a way of opting out.

• It allows us to feel morally superior while avoiding the hard, unglamorous work of discernment, reform, and accountability.

• It often comes easiest to those of us whose lives will be least disrupted if institutions falter.

If we genuinely care about corruption, we should be the loudest advocates for:

• Stronger transparency and oversight.

• Real consequences for abuse.

• Concrete reforms that protect the people most at risk when systems fail.

That’s slower than posting a meme about how everything is rigged. It’s less emotionally satisfying than calling the whole thing a joke. But it’s also more honest, and more aligned with loving our neighbors—especially the neighbors whose lives are held up by the very systems we’re tempted to casually dismiss.

If you find yourself saying “everything is corrupt,” here are a few better next steps:

• Name something specific.
  Identify one program, one pattern, or one decision that genuinely troubles you, instead of condemning the whole system in the abstract.

• Support an accountability mechanism.
  Back an inspector general, an ethics office, a transparency law, or a watchdog organization that actually works on the problem you see.

• Ask who’s most vulnerable if this collapses.
  Before calling to “burn it down,” consider who depends on this institution to survive, not just whether you personally like or trust it.

So next time someone says, “The government is corrupt; sending money to Washington is a joke,” I think we should ask at least three questions:

1. What exactly are you proposing as an alternative—for everyone, not just for people like you?

2. Is your anger at corruption moving you toward responsibility, or away from it?

3. Where in my own political life am I using ‘everything is corrupt’ as a way to avoid the slow work of repair?

There has always been a real and necessary conservative instinct toward limited government—toward asking what the state should and shouldn’t do, and how to keep power from growing beyond its proper bounds. That instinct has a place in a healthy democracy. But what we are seeing now, especially in Trump-era populism and in efforts to hollow out or delegitimize entire categories of public life, is something closer to “burn it down” than to thoughtful limitation.

“Everything is corrupt” is an easy story. Living as if repair is still possible—that’s harder.

But I think that’s the work we’re called to.