Truth Telling in an Age of Retribution

When basic journalism becomes rebellion

Cleveland, Ohio, USA, July 18, 2016 — ABC's George Stepanopoulos sitting behind the desk on the set from the Republican National Convention in the Quicken Loans Sports Arena / Image: Shutterstock.com

George Stephanopoulos did something remarkable on Sunday morning: he told the truth about what we're witnessing. On national television, the ABC anchor described the Trump administration's corruption as operating "on the scale of a post-Soviet republic or a postcolonial African dictatorship." Not hyperbole. Not partisan attack. Just accurate description of the systematic transformation of the presidency into a personal enrichment scheme.

But here's what's truly damning: it shouldn't be remarkable to point out a moral truth with this level of clarity. Yet here we are.

The scale is indeed staggering. Pardoning tax cheats whose mothers pay $1 million for Mar-a-Lago dinners. The SEC dropping charges against crypto platforms that list Trump family tokens. Raising billions from unnamed investors while making policy decisions that affect those very markets. This isn't influence peddling—it's the wholesale conversion of democratic governance into a marketplace where everything is for sale.

The comparison to post-Soviet oligarchy or postcolonial kleptocracy isn't rhetorical flourish—it's diagnostic precision. In those systems, the line between state power and personal enrichment disappears entirely. Public office becomes private business opportunity. Government policy serves not the public interest but the financial interests of those in power. What took decades to develop in the ruins of collapsed empires, we're witnessing in real time in what was once the world's most powerful democracy.

What makes Stephanopoulos's statement particularly telling isn't just its accuracy but the fact that we're treating basic journalistic integrity as an act of courage. Pointing out that systematic self-enrichment through public office constitutes corruption shouldn't require bravery—it should be routine. Describing obvious corruption as corruption shouldn't feel revolutionary—it should be obvious.

But we live in a world where stating clear moral facts has become so dangerous—financially, professionally, socially—that we celebrate it as heroic when someone does their basic job. Where ABC pays $16 million for allowing a journalist to accurately describe a court finding. Where Disney executives will undoubtedly field angry calls from the regime for permitting factual reporting about presidential corruption.

“Nothing like this has been attempted or even imagined in the history of the American presidency,” Stephanopoulos quoted from David Graham's Atlantic piece. That's not journalist hyperbole—that's historical fact. We have no precedent for corruption this systematic, this brazen, this completely divorced from any pretense of public service.

This is how epistemic authoritarianism works: not by making lies mandatory, but by making truth prohibitively expensive. Not by banning criticism, but by making criticism so costly that institutions choose silence over accuracy. Not by controlling what can be said, but by ensuring that what should be said carries consequences too severe for most to bear.

The normalization is complete when we're surprised by someone doing what journalists are supposed to do: call things by their proper names. When describing obvious corruption as corruption feels like taking a stand rather than stating facts. When we celebrate meeting the minimum standard of professional integrity because that minimum has become so rare it feels extraordinary.

That's how far the center has failed to hold. When basic truth-telling becomes an act of rebellion, you know the system has already been captured. We're just waiting to see who else still remembers what their job actually is.

I'm sure more lawsuits threaten. More financial pressure. More attempts to make honesty too costly for institutions to afford. This is the price of speaking clearly in an age designed for obfuscation. But Stephanopoulos spoke anyway. On national television. To millions of Americans who needed to hear someone with a platform acknowledge what they're seeing with their own eyes.

The question now is who follows his example. Which other journalists remember that their profession exists to serve truth rather than power? Which other public figures will choose moral clarity over comfortable silence? Which other institutions will decide that their integrity matters more than their bottom line?

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And sometimes, when democracy depends on someone being willing to state obvious truths despite the consequences, we discover who still believes those truths are worth defending.

The regime will try to make him pay for this. They always do. But the truth was spoken, broadcast, heard. And in an age when moral clarity itself has become a form of resistance, that matters more than whatever retaliation follows.

We shouldn't have to rebel against the obvious. But if that's what it takes to preserve the possibility that truth still matters, then we rebel. And we call on everyone with a platform, a voice, or a conscience to rebel alongside us—by doing nothing more radical than their job, done honestly, regardless of the cost.