Sorry, big misunderstanding! I wasn’t singing the praise of a Golden Age. No doubt there was enough corrupt wheeling and dealing going on among the founding fathers as much as a century later in Manhattan.
But back then they at least still cared about symbolism and about how these things looked! It wasn’t that they weren’t corrupt just that they took some effort not to LOOK corrupt! It’s a small but crucial difference!
As to the third world of course I agree but the big difference back in the day between the second (as I think we used to be called) and the first was the rule of law. And that has certainly been eroded systematically in the last twenty years! Terrorism….
