DDT is an insecticide, now outlawed in most parts of the world, that has had an unforeseen and sometimes catastrophic effect on the ecosystem. While DDT is toxic to all animals, its expected concentration in water and plants was deemed never to become high enough to cause concern. However, DDT is both quite metabolically stable and fat-soluble, which means it accumulates in the fatty tissue of animals over their lifetime. As we move up the food chain to higher predators, the concentration of DDT increases to levels where it causes direct harm, like making seals sterile or preventing eagles from laying viable eggs.
This is a devious poisoning indeed, for its causes are hidden below several levels of seemingly healthy animals in the food chain. Only at the top of the pyramid is it a real problem, but there it is fatal.
In US politics, there appears to be a similar effect responsible for a similar disaster. Some people are entering into lower levels of politics for the wrong reasons: fame, fortune, power, compensation, sometimes outright malice. At lower levels, the proportion of these bad apples to the good ones might seem tolerable. Most low level politicians are reasonable people with sound motivations for seeking office.
However, there is an accumulation and amplification effect as we move up the food chain. The bad apples are rewarded and encouraged to seek ever higher offices, while the hard working, honest people tend to stay at the lower ranks and often regard politics as a temporary service rather than a lifetime career.
This means that as we move up the food chain, to state-wide or national politics, the rotten fruit becomes a lot more concentrated. The Republican party seems to attract the most human scum, and promote it more willingly, which leaves us in the current situation: top level Republican politicians are scumbags - with very few exceptions.
To set this straight, we cannot tolerate even a small amount of the bad kind of people at the bottom. They must be rooted out, purged from the system before they can rise in rank and do more damage. The Democratic party seems to have this under control. They are not completely unaffected by the problem, but they seem to function in the same system as the Republicans without suffering from the same strong accumulation of garbage at the top.
The proverbial Republican asshole is a toxic ingredient in the US political system, and it is a threat to its very foundation, on the verge of making it cease to function as intended.
I have no idea how to solve this. The Democrats seem to have it more or less right, but perhaps the Republicans are beyond help and can't learn from the example of others. It is, however, a very real problem that needs to be recognized for what it is: a threat to democracy.
