For unexplained reasons, society now emulates the seven deadly sins as if they were the guiding principles of life. Speaking on behalf of America, I contest that a wholesome lifestyle is fundamentally unattainable. We can thank fast-food restaurants and monstrous portioning for establishing the nation as the most gluttonous of them all. By definition, we are the home of the brave and the land of the sinners: try to picture a person you know who triumphs over the temptation of wrath, greed, sloth, vanity, lust, envy, or gluttony (it is harder than you think). Appropriately, these offenses are named the capital vices. If Americans are to blame for their own societal regression, then how do the politicians who represent our nation fare in comparison? The answer is not pretty: we place some of the worst criminals of capital vices on Capitol Hill.

As Gotham City is a microcosm for the desensitization of society’s moral compass, we are an America without a Dark Knight. Criminality is not a physical feature, nor is it partial to a certain demographic. Criminality does not segregate based on wealth nor social rank. Breaking the law is easy and everyone can do it. In recent years, we have exponentially increased the amount of incarcerated Americans (see graph) to the point where we are rapidly approaching a maximum capacity limit. We are either addicted to jailing US citizens, or America is an ideal breeding ground for criminals. No matter which side you take, I propose that our entire political system functions on the same standards as the structure of our judicial branch: not the judges, but the criminals themselves.

Do you all remember Rod Blagojevich, the Former Governor of Illinois who was charged with an attempt to sell Barack Obama’s vacant seat in the Senate? If you do, then you understand that politicians are capable of thinking they are above the law. If not, then let me explain his crimes. When Barack Obama was elected President, he stood up from his chair in the Senate and sat himself down in the Oval Office. Because he was no longer a Senator, there was an opportunity for an Illinois politician to refill the position. Instead of appointing the right man for the job, Blagojevich thought that selling the seat to the highest bidder would be acceptable; turns out that it is entirely illegal. The “Blago” went under the investigation of the FBI for several years and the media put him in the spotlight. In January of 2009, the Illinois General Assembly impeached the gubernatorial crook, leading to his inevitable indictment in April of 2009 of twenty-four counts of corruption. From this point on, Mr. Blagojevich was subject to the verdict of the jury. The jury deliberated for fourteen days during his first trial in August of that year, finding him guilty of one charge and hung on the other twenty-three; the judge declared this attempt a mistrial. On June 27, 2011, Blagojevich was found guilty of seventeen charges of corruption and sentenced to fourteen years in prison. In the eyes of the jury, their governor was a criminal for his fraudulence, extortion, and solicitation of bribes: the jury had prevailed.

Ironically, the structure of a jury is what caused the mess in the first place: we elect the President of the United States with a figurative jury as well. When Washington declined becoming an American monarch for the presidency of a democracy, he formed a robust precedent for the posterity of the budding nation and gave a political voice to its people.  Our Founding Fathers established a solid foundation for a prosperous America when they finished the Constitution in 1787, but also shaped the Electoral College at the same time to insure that the candidate for presidency would be selected by erudite members of society rather than having an insignificant vote offset the say of a concerned voter. At its naissance, the Electoral College was the unbiased median between having Congress choose the president and having the people choose their own leader. Defined more clearly in the 12^th and 14^th Amendments of the Constitution, it states that a member of the Electoral College (called an Elector) cannot be a member of Congress or someone who has committed treason to the United States.  Therefore, an Elector is a member of American society that is regarded as worthy to elect a President from the political stance of party leaders. Sound familiar? Ironically, Jurors are relatively selected in the same process.

Although a Jury is composed using a random selection of unbiased citizens from the presiding area, the procedure of “Voir Dire” allows an attorney to select members of the jury by rejecting certain jurors from a particular case. In this instance, an Elector has the same qualifications of a Juror without the burden of proof to make a decision. If the systems are parallel in primary function, then what is to be said about their results?

Despite the regality of their names in history, the President of the United States is not immune to the moral deterioration that plagues mankind. Since 1972, the re-election of President Nixon, every president with two terms has been publicly exposed for at least one scandal that has shaped history. For Nixon, it was Watergate and his iconic “I am not a crook” speech. For Reagan, the Iran-Contra affair saw the president negotiating with terrorists and exchanging weaponry for the return of American hostages. When Clinton was re-elected, he claimed that he “did not have sexual relations with that woman,” but was proven otherwise when his affair with Monica Lewinsky resulted in his impeachment. George W Bush saw lighter media outburst, but is still considered responsible for the Plame affair and the improper response to Hurricane Katrina. Already rearing its ugly head is Obama’s first political scandal as CIA Director David Patraeus resigned when his extramarital affairs became public. Whether you’d like to believe it or not, the Electoral College tends to nominate criminals rather accurately.

We all know that politicians can behave like outright crooks: it is human nature to abuse power.  When electing a president however, one would not always associate the process with the criminal procedure. Indeed, the president usually ends there, but it is unlikely to believe that he begins there. History is recorded so that we can avoid repeating the mistakes we make, but scandal is always inevitable when a nation’s worth of responsibility is allocated to the signature of a single man. Are we to blame for his demise, or was he doomed from the start?

 

Sources:

http://whitestonejournal.com/index.php/seven-deadly-sins

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1865954,00.html

http://people.howstuffworks.com/electoral-college6.htm

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/electors.html

http://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=2229

Pictures:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_incarceration_timeline-clean-fixed-timescale.svg

http://0.tqn.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/N/N/4/Blago-in-Jail.jpg