Written by Bock Oliver   

As Chris Christie takes up residence as the troll of the George Washington Bridge, I feel warmth and gratitude for the people who contributed to his new status. (I have some personal knowledge of the governor’s behavior towards a friend of mine that makes his fall from grace quite gratifying.) What seems to be the unforgivable behavior demonstrated by the Governor is his unprovoked cruelty towards innocent people. The Governor has given us an important insight into what type of malfeasance we will not tolerate. It amazes me that politicians, lobbyists, corporate executives etc, are able to get away with their unethical, self-serving behaviors without creating huge outcries among the majority of Americans. The Governor’s blatant practice of a politics of cruelty is so egregious that it has finally awakened a slumbering outrage so needed in this country.
As this story unfolds alongside the story of the seven “burglars” who broke into the FBI office in 1971, I find myself pondering the idea that there must be a way to harness both technology and the passion for a just society into an association where the Chris Christie’s of the world can continue to be removed from positions of power.
Imagine a nationwide network of volunteers dedicated to providing whistle-blowers with protection, advice and access to a hungry media where exposees of intolerable malfeasance would remove the cancer of greed from politics and other pockets of power. As becoming a whistle-blower offers potential financial reward as well as personal satisfaction, whistle-blowing could become a much more accepted and admired form of social service. If Edward Snowden were to be joined by others who have the same access to the information he had, imagine the influence that twenty or thirty collaborating voices would have.
Of course there would be abuses within such a system. There would be people looking for revenge, acting out of jealousy, etc. Such risks are very real and point to the need for the whistle blower support networks to have the expertise and funding to screen claims of malfeasance carefully and thoroughly. If accountability to a metric of the ‘common good’ were to be institutionalized, the greed impulse would become easier to resist. Especially if breaking the code of the ‘common good’ leads to significant consequences such as jail time or the stripping of power and wealth. As our barons of greed see that their behaviors have consequences, they will hopefully learn to make wiser choices and direct their talents towards building a culture where success is measured by how much better life will be for all 7 billion of us on the planet.
By giving us another powerful low in the annals of human cruelty, Governor Christie has shown us a threshold that maybe even the most numb among us cannot ignore. For that I offer my thanks.