[DiogenesLamp]

I keep telling people that Washington DC has long been a very corrupt place. They are willing to believe it for every era except 1860 to 1865. During that time period Washington DC was absolutely moral and honest and did *NOT* start a war to protect very powerful men in the North who would have lost a fortune to being cut out of the Southern trade with Europe.

But here is another example of the corruption going back to the early 1960s.

It goes back past the 1860s.

[junkbond]

Mayor Deblasio's Grandfather takes things back to World War I.

Donald George Wilhelm Sr. wrote "Save Belgium" propaganda during the war and worked with Edward Bernays on the Creel Committee, in an effort to convince the public to support sending US troops to Europe.

It worked

[x]

I keep telling people that Washington DC has long been a very corrupt place. They are willing to believe it for every era except 1860 to 1865. During that time period Washington DC was absolutely moral and honest and did *NOT* start a war to protect very powerful men in the North who would have lost a fortune to being cut out of the Southern trade with Europe.

That's not logical. You could plug in any time period:

"I keep telling people that Washington DC has long been a very corrupt place. They are willing to believe it for every era except 1938-1941. Therefore, FDR tricked us into WWII."

"I keep telling people that Washington DC has long been a very corrupt place. They are willing to believe it for every era except 1963-1966. Therefore, the Vietnam War was all about oil in the South China Sea"

"I keep telling people that American politics have always been corrupt. They are willing to believe it for every era except 1773-1789. Therefore the Founding Fathers were only in it for the money."

Talk like that doesn't prove anything. Believing that government is always corrupt doesn't prove that morality or ideas of the national interest don't exist. It doesn't prove that people never act for non-materialistic motives. Sure, we took down rivals to out power in WWII, but that doesn't mean that crushing our economic competition was the reason we were involved in that war.