Taibbi on Washington fixing itself after Abramoff

A couple of weeks ago I put in my 2cents on the Abramoff Scandal and the danger unfettered power is for Evangelicals. Now comes the bigger story from my favorite political journalist, Matt Taibbi (imagine a combination of Mark Driscoll, Bill Simmons and PJ O'Rourke). This is his assessment of the bigger picture in the Abramoff mess (in the latest Rolling Stone),

The raging shit-fire that is the Abramoff scandal exposed Washington as a veritable inferno of crushed values and boundless activistic cynicism. It eloquently revealed an America whose system of government had finally mutated to fit the vapidity and anything-for-money morality of the culture as a whole. In a country where people eat bugs for money on national television, how surprising is a congressman who sells his vote, or a Congress run like a Walk-Mart?

Barring a sudden and unforseen flowering of affirmative values in the depraved whorehouse that is our nation's capital, money is still going to remain a hell of an effective substitute for political principal in this town, meaning all manner of frauds...will be moving in not to do anything different but to take over the old dealer's territory. The Democrats, whose innocence in the crimes of the last five years to date corresponds exactly to their lack of
opportunities for corruption, may now get a chance at the helm. But, it won't take much exposure to cheap stunts like a beaming Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi signing a "Declaration of Honest Leadership" before people begin to remember how much the other guys can suck, too.

Bush haters are celebrating this week as old villains descend into the death chamber, but they should be careful what they wish for. Trusting Washington to fix itself is a whole new kind of torture.