Credability Laundering
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
Nothing is cleansed directly.
That would suggest urgency.
That would imply guilt.
Instead, the stain is contextualized.
Surrounded by better rooms.
Better people.
Better light.
A contribution.
An appointment.
A name engraved
where reverence is assumed
and questions are considered impolite.
The narrative is altered
before the facts are allowed
to settle.
Allegation dilutes into misunderstanding.
Harm is redescribed as complexity.
Pattern fractures into anomalies
that cannot be responsibly connected.
Capital migrates
into institutions people are taught to trust—
universities, museums, foundations
whose marble foyers convert money
into moral authority.
This is not generosity.
It is solvent.
It dissolves residue.
It loosens what clings.
Specialists are retained
to choreograph absence.
Lawyers engineer quiet.
Publicists teach damage
how to articulate itself
as reform.
Look—she funds the arts.
Look—she mentors.
Look—she gives back.
Look elsewhere.
The laundering succeeds
because it is reciprocal.
Institutions accept the transaction.
They exchange credibility for funding,
distance for deniability,
ethics for continuity.
No one asks
what financed the renovation.
No one inquires
whose silence purchased the calm.
Reputation circulates
through enough sanctioned hands
that origin becomes a breach of decorum.
By the time the story resurfaces,
it has citations.
It has been peer-reviewed by proximity.
It is repeated by voices
whose authority depends
on not remembering.
Credibility laundering relies on one rule:
memory is optional
when influence is consistent.
And this is why
exposure is treated
as an act of violence.
Because truth is corrosive.
It disrupts the finish.
It reintroduces friction.
It insists on sequence—
on cause,
on consequence.
So truth must be contained.
First, it is questioned.
Then it is aestheticized.
Then it is pathologized.
The facts are left intact,
but the one who carries them
is rendered excessive.
Too emotional.
Too insistent.
Too invested to be objective.
The testimony is not disproven—
it is displaced.
Concern replaces engagement.
Distance replaces dialogue.
Professionalism becomes a blade
used to sever credibility
from speech.
Why are you still talking about this?
Haven’t you moved on?
Don’t you see how much good she does now?
This is how truth is destroyed
without ever being touched.
The truth teller is isolated
not by force,
but by erosion.
Invitations evaporate.
Doors close gently.
Silence is framed as dignity.
What remains is an environment
where speaking costs more
than forgetting.
Nothing criminal needs to occur anymore.
The original harm
has already been converted
into infrastructure.
The buildings endure.
The boards convene.
The plaques gleam.
And whatever truth persists
is buried with care
beneath polished floors—
not eliminated,
just rendered
unspeakable
for anyone
unwilling
to participate
in the forgetting.
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