The Insidious Baby Steps of Corruption

It happens so slowly, so quietly, seemingly innocently, but then within a few minutes or a few hours, you start to think about what you are doing or have done, and that feeling of being duped, or being used, or having compromised something you vowed you've never do starts to creep in, making you feel stupid and weak and hypocritical. You've got to watch out for these situations, and they're out there every day, the tiny, little baby steps that take every culture, every society down that road toward the buying and selling of everything, where everyone has their hand out, every transaction doesn't just implicitly involve but is explicitly predicated on baksheesh, where there is no backscratching without an equal or greater service performed, where there is no rule of law because it is ignored, skirted and subverted actively and consciously by a populace who would rather get by easily than make difficult yet honorable personal choices in a public venue where everyone is treated the same.

If you've ever been to Mexico, you know what I mean. If you've been to China or Malaysia or Indonesia or Egypt, you know what I mean. And hell, that's most likely your experience as a comparatively wealthy foreign visitor, someone above the fray and the standard squalor, someone who gets to leave the filth behind and return to a simple society where bad guys pay and hard work and honesty pays off, right?

It's always interesting to encounter corruption. For Americans, for most Westerners, it's the stuff of TV shows and movies, predictable stereotypes with greasy hair and tacky clothing, their hands out, grinning. But it's not quite like that. It's about getting your cabbie to take you where you thought you were going in the first place, instead of maybe getting robbed and beaten. It's about being allowed to easily depart a country instead of being detained or delayed, or worse. It's about avoiding deepening problems with persons of petty authority, who answer to corrupt officials with increasing authority. It's about the naked display of power and wealth, the power of wealth, and the corruption of power. It's always something to encounter real-live naked corruption, and it always gets your attention.

It started on the beach in the Bahamas. Out in front of our gigantic luxury resort, its many-acred complex stretching all over the place, and its towers taking up what vertical spaces they could as well. But hey, the beach is open to everyone, and that's who comes on out, the folks from the other hotels, from other lodging sites in Nassau, and from the cruise ships. They come to see the hotel, partake in its recreational offerings, get the real estate pitch, and bask vicariously for a few hours in the luxury that the property tries so hard to exude.

My kids were playing in the sand at the high edge of the surf. And so were two little Chinese-American (or Chinese-Canadian, I'm not absolutely 100% sure) kids. The girl was maybe 10 to my daughter's 9, and the boy, maybe 7 or 8 to my son's 7. They were having fun, making friends, digging in the sand, enjoying the beach, just like kids are supposed to do. And me? I was in the hotel-provided shaded chaise lounge about 4 yards away, watching them, hanging out, relaxing, watching the world go by. And so was the wife, my sister, and my folks as well. All resort guests, all set, with our distinctive resort green-and-white striped towels, gotten with permission and a surprisingly meticulous check of our hotel ID cards by the folks at the towel hut.

Chinese mom and dad were there, too, rapping with each other in Mandarin. The kids' fluency with English was conspiculous in its nativity, no trace at all of having been brought up anywhere other than North America. Typical Chinese couple, Dad doing whatever Mom ordered him to do, and Mom ordering him around, a lot. I'm not a Mandarin speaker, so I didn't get any of it directly, but her tone communicated what was going on, and I watched Dad go to and fro, a surprisingly far distance down the beach (maybe another 80 yards), to get this and get that. Why their kids were playing there, I couldn't tell ya.

As I sat with my kids near their little sand castle, Chinese Mom played her opening gambit: "Say, since our children are playing so well together, can you please get them some towels?"

Me: "Get who towels?"

Chinese Mom: "My kids. They need towels. They're cold."

Me, I played it cool, instantly recognizing what she was doing. I wanted to have some fun with this, and also wanted to thwart her, but not directly or cruelly, not publicly or angrily, just beat her at her own subtle game. So I countered, "Well, the towel hut is right up there. See the cabana with the shade on it . . .?" and I pointed to the destination.

That got her, and she hesitated. She wasn't ready yet to admit she wasn't a hotel guest. But then what to do? She countered quickly, "I see you have a lot of towels here already. Maybe you can give me two of those?" Yeah, she was observant, all right. We did have a number of towels, all together 7 of them, which would be one for every family member we had at the beach. That's what I told her, so sorry, but we have a one-for-one situation, and all of the towels are spoken for.

CM: "But my kids are cold."

Me: "Uh-huh," (and I had to smile as I said this), "So just have your husband go and get them some towels," again pointing up to the towel shack. Now I was making it clear they were bad parents as well.

That's when she trailed off, and I was happy to let her go. I had succeeded in not saying "no," or even the slightest negative-sounding words. Actually, I was being neighborly and helpful, right? That was my victory. I had beaten her at her own game.

No, they weren't hotel guests, that much was obvious. We all had special little laminated, fiber-optic, stereographic-holographic daily-color-coded wrist bands which anointed us as the chosen Atlantis few. They didn't have them. If they were guests, they'd have gotten them right away, like we all did, as just another way to proclaim publicly how fabulous we all are as resort guests. But they didn't. They were folks from some other resort, from some place off-property. Yeah, I knew that.

So I thought about it a bit. So what if I got them a couple of towels? Yeah, maybe the kids were cold. That would be a nice, caring thing to do. But the kids were playing away in the sun; they just weren't cold. So what if they got a couple of towels? I didn't have to pay for them or sign for them--I wouldn't have to reconcile and defend my towel usage to a resort representative at any later time. Even if Chinese Mom kept the towel and took it home with her, it wouldn't matter to me at all. Sure, it would go into the larger increased operating overhead of the hotel, but what could two towels really add to the already obscene level of price-gouging we were undergoing every time we bought a $7 hot dog or a $25 beach toy? Hell, in some respects I really wanted to go grab a handful of towels and deliver them to her, just to get back at the hotel for boofing us to the tune of $52.00 for two cheepo snorkel/mask sets. Yeah, that would be some disproportionate yet satisfying payback, I reasoned.

But that's when the legacy of my dad seeped in, those goddamn ethics and principles. I could get her towels, but it just wouldn't be right. And that was it. She was not entitled to them, and therefore the correct answer was to keep them from her. If she wanted them, then she had to comply with the requirements to obtain them, specifically being a resort guest. And that was that.

These are the baby steps of corruption. This is where it begins, where it forms, coalesces and all too often, solidifies. This is where principles are sold out, and no one seems to care. This is where getting back at The Man take precedent over doing the right thing, and both parties to the deal start down that algae-slicked slope toward compromised morals and lack of honor.

As we headed in, I looked down the beach, and she'd gotten her towels. Man, for the four of them she had maybe 8 towels or so. Who knows where she got them, and I felt a pang of defeat, but it had not been on my watch. I'd recognized the threat, had dealt with it subtly and honorably, allowing both parties to retain dignity and honor. But at the same time I'd done battle and had successfully defended my ground. She, just as determined to get what she had not earned and was not entitled to, not content to await the day when she could honorably and legitimately lay claim to what she coveted, had just backed up and come around to another door, this one left ajar.

And as globalization slowly swallows the US and the rest of the Enlightment West, this is what we're faced with. It's an inexorable onslaught of cultures and societies in which corruption and tailorable moral contexts are not only tolerated but are an ingrained part of every waking moment. As the peoples from these cultures/societies of corruption seek out the level playing field of the USofA, they bring with them their attitudes of laissez faire when it comes to leveling the playing field, a flexible and hihgly mobile yardstick of what is fair and what is not, all of it self-centered. It's happening around you every day.