It didn’t. You started paying attention. That’s all that changed. Hillary Clinton was pulling exceptional performance on cattle futures and Paul Pelosi had a strange knack for picking stock that reacted well to laws his wife pushed for. It is brazen today because they’re just launching $MELANIA and shit like that and selling pardons but that’s only because that’s user-visible. If someone siphoned your taxes or performed insider trading you wouldn’t even know.

But corruption has been part and parcel of US politics. Or are we supposed to believe that things like the Chappaquiddick incident were actually innocent accidents?

When I was younger I remember thinking that George Bush pardoning Scooter Libby was outrageous. Then I found out what these people were up to routinely.