Love Quote by DeForest Soaries

The sting here is how gently it’s delivered: “in their heart of hearts” sounds almost pastoral, like Soaries is granting sincerity, not malice. Then he twists the knife. The problem isn’t just corruption or partisanship; it’s a self-sealing psychology. If the system elevated me, the system must be basically fine. That logic turns personal biography into proof of institutional health, which is exactly how Washington insulates itself from accountability.

Soaries’s line works because it reframes the usual debate. Instead of arguing policy outcomes, he targets the emotional incentive structure of power: status as evidence. It’s a politician’s version of survivorship bias. The elected class becomes a sample that can’t help but conclude the process works, because they are the winners of it. Even “most” does rhetorical work, implicating a broad culture while leaving room for the few exceptions who might still see rot.

The subtext is about reform fatigue and moral self-licensing. If you believe your success is meritocratic, you can interpret criticism as sour grapes or cynicism rather than data. That’s how structural problems get downgraded to messaging problems. It also hints at why bipartisan agreement on institutional fixes is so rare: reforms require officials to concede that their own legitimacy rests on a flawed machine.

In context, Soaries is speaking from inside the civic plumbing of democracy (elections, governance, public trust). The line reads like an autopsy of Washington’s favorite alibi: the system can’t be broken, because it keeps rewarding the people tasked with admitting it is.