Let's say that you live in a small, prosperous Midwestern town, a real old-fashioned place right out of Leave It To Beaver or Mayberry, RFD.  You have two teen-aged boys.  The first, let's call him Bill, is whip-smart, ambitious but a bit reckless, prone to run-ins with the law and goes through cheerleaders like most boys go through a pack of M&M's.  The second, his name is George, is not too bright, a “C” student but he's a real straight arrow, dates a frumpy National Merit Scholar and always comes home by curfew.

So, let's say and why not, that one night the cops pull Bill over in his '68 Camaro SS — after a high speed chase — only to find the kid reclined in the front seat swilling Coors Light while getting a hummer from the Prom Queen.  

Chaos ensues.  It is a major community crisis.  Your family, model citizens in the town is publicly shamed.  After several tormented months, an unconscionable amount of money spent on expensive lawyers to maneuver Bill out of a felony charge things finally settle back down.  Bill is bundled off to Harvard, his scholarships still in place.  The family takes a deep breath of relief.

Then a year later in George's junior year over the course of a few months it begins to become apparent that George isn't at all what he seems.  Teetotaling, not too bright, good-egg George, has been running a protection racket around town.  He and his buddy, Dick are at the center of a very tightly organized and quite sordid little tale of beatings, rapes, numbers and extortion.  No, one can pin anything on them definitively but the circumstantial evidence is so extensive it is impossible to ignore it any longer.  Both the family and the local Sheriff are exhausted after the last family episode and are reluctant to open up what could be a can of worms several orders of magnitude larger.

What do you do?  The nice boy two doors down the street — geeky Chess Club memeber, liked George's girlfriend, maybe too much — flat-out disappeared a couple of weeks ago.  His parents are beside themselves.  You get dirty looks down at the grocery store and at the auto dealership.  The family has a pew to itself at the normally packed Sunday services.  Even the guys at the Country Club and down at the bank where you work are becoming a bit standoffish.  Your last neighborhood barbeque only attracted your Pastor, the family of the bank's loan officer — your immediate subordinate — and the Sheriff.

Do you do what is right for your family, your community and your neighbors?  Do you straighten your tie and go down to the Sheriff and give him your full backing to put your son and that asshole Dick away for a long, long time?  Or do you say to yourself, “We've been through enough.  He'll be off to college in two years.  It will be all over then, and we'll all get back to normal.  It will be just like it was.”

You're kidding yourself, Jack.  It will never be what it was.  George and Dick have poisoned the well.  There are a couple of dozen underclassmen running around town kicking dogs, rolling the town drunk and putting the squeeze on the Grocery Store Manager.  Your town is sliding down into the abyss but you are too weak to do what needs to be done, to put yourself through another agonizing…

Impeachment.

Cross-posted from the blog.