They're all crooks

"They're all crooks."  I remember hearing that some time in my early teens from a cousin two or three years older and thus more worldly wise than me.  It rankled me.  Maybe I still had some of that grade school love your country stuff infused in me.  I argued a bit against it, but you know, I was the wide-eyed naif and he was the worldly cynic.  We all know who wins those arguments.

I suppose they are crooks though, no upright blameless guy is ever going to rise in power without doing some dirty deed.  The queen is the more powerful than the rook or the bishop because she can move both diagonally, and horizontally and vertically, unlike her subjects who can only use one mode.  If you want to maneuver to the top of the heap you have to have some flexibility.

Later as I increased in wisdom and cynicism I came up with, well sure they are all crooks, but some of them are bigger crooks than others, some are more your kind of crook and some are more the opposition's kind of crook.  You may believe that all shopkeepers are out to cheat you, but you'll choose the shopkeeper that cheats you less to buy your goods.

Doesn't that make sense?

But you still hear it all the time, and when you try to use the all crooks are not equally crooked argument, the response is something like a crook is a crook.  Which doesn't make any sense at all, but it suits the cynic just fine.

Two things here.  One, the cynic is just lazy.  It takes a lot of reading and thinking and that's work man, who wants to work when they can just utter a worldly wise cynical statement and watch tv instead of making that long trek to the polls, possibly in the rain.

Two, it is a little disheartening.  I think to some extent we like to believe in good vs evil, we like to believe in democracy, we like to believe that there is some good blameless man on the ballot who will set things right, and in a mud-slinging contest, which they always are, nobody looks very good, and to vote for someone who isn't squeaky clean, it makes you less than squeaky clean, and even if none of us are squeaky clean we like to think we are, so it is best to avoid the brothel that is the polling place.

Am I right?  Am I right?