Argentina's Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner got six years for steering public contracts to her cronies. Six years. For stealing from an entire nation. My dry cleaner gets more time for a disputed invoice.

Let me translate this for the optimists still reading. A woman who controlled the levers of state decided the levers should point at her friends' bank accounts. This is not scandal. This is governance in its purest, most honest form. At least she dropped the pretense.

The Peronist machine has been recycling this exact story since before I owned my first cynical suit. Different faces, same envelopes. Back in the nineties, Menem was handing out road contracts like Christmas cards. The roads fell apart. Nobody was shocked. The roads were never the point.

Here is what the breathless reformers will do now. They will hold signs. They will talk about institutional integrity. Some bright-eyed law professor will write an op-ed about democratic resilience. I have read that op-ed seventeen times in six different countries. It has never once worked.

Kirchner, naturally, calls it a judicial coup. Of course she does. When you spend decades building a system designed to serve you, prosecution feels like persecution. That is the beautiful logic of the corrupt. They genuinely believe the law was invented specifically to inconvenience them.

She will appeal. The conviction will drag through courts for years. She will remain relevant. She may even run again. In certain ecosystems, a criminal sentence is merely a campaign credential.

Six years. I've seen longer sentences for jaywalking in the wrong neighborhood.

— Vladmir Rackoff

*The fish rots from the head. We just keep buying fish.*