I often get accused of being an idealist or wanting to live in a perfect world filled with imperfect people. Then again, I also get accused of being umm, other things as well. Then today I read this Atlantic article about a walk from Dixville Notch to Nashua, NH with the focus on getting rid of the effect of money corruption in government.

Really the part that stuck out for me was

While 96 percent of Americans do believe it important to reduce the influence of money in politics, 91 percent believe it is essentially not possible.

And I probably agree that it’s not possible to eliminate the influence of money in politics, but you can reduce it. And there was also this:

If just 50,000 New Hampshirites made this issue central—if they weaved a briar patch throughout the state, making it impossible for any presidential hopeful to avoid answering this single question: How are YOU going to end the system of corruption in D.C.?—then New Hampshire could create the conditions for a leader to take this issue on, credibly.

That also just seems naive to me. That a single state holding presidential candidates’ feet to the fire can set the state to fix the issue?

But what it also got me thinking of is that most people (all?) hate the idea of corruption in government and want it gone. But can parts of that happen? What is “corruption”? What are people referring to when they talk about “those crooks” and “the corruption”? Can we take it apart, piece by piece and eliminate or at least reduce the corruption if it were looked at that way? What is the corruption in government when you think of it? Is it Super PACs putting out ads against a candidate? Is it a town employee taking home a pickup truck load of town owned dirt? Is it a mayor taking stuff in exchange for a contract? It’s probably those things and a whole lot more. But what in corruption is most important to you and want to go away? Just saying “all of it” is like trying to drain the ocean. How do you do that? One bucketful at a time.