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You realize that "you people" includes you, correct?
Or are the mega rich treated just like everyone else where you are?
If so, where is this magical land of fairness?
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/party-financing lots of countries limit how much can be given to politicians
Eh... There are a variety of end-runs around this mechanism.
Hiring politicians on as lobbyists or allowing friends and family to sit on private run boards and trusts can create a back channel for money to flow into a politician's pockets. Public money can be funneled into private profits for which the supporting politicians are also stockholders. And politicians can receive discounted/free services from friendly private sector constituencies. FOX News, the classic example, is a multi-billion dollar network dedicated to running Republican-friendly media. But when corporate lobbyists and political strategists can be found everywhere from the boards of NPR/PBS to the guest chairs of MSNBC to the editorial rooms of the WaPo/WSJ/NYT, there's really no safe spaces left.
You can mitigate the direct "bag of cash for favors" effect that, say, John Boehner cutting tobacco lobbyist checks on the floor of the House has produced in the past. But you can't keep public sector administrators from finding ways to receive kickbacks via private sector channels unless you completely divorce these institutions.
There are any number of hypothetical end-runs around just about anything you can think of, that doesn't make protections, mechanisms, controls, or safeties useless.
In the US, political bribery is nearly 100% legal. I'd rather have some hoops for corrupt officials to jump through. We don't even make them break a sweat in this country.
Not even hypothetical. We just had the SCOTUS kick down the door on legal bribery in Snyder v United States.
I mean, if we've got a magic lamp I can do better than a few hoops. But the system is of the corrupt, by the corrupt, for the corrupt.
At some point, you're forced to recognized the farce of democracy at work.
IIRC, people were talking about places in this thread that aren't the US.
As stated, political bribery in the US is nearly 100% legal. You can even study it in school and make a career out of it.
The Canadian system has it's own share of corruption and bribery. Just check out Rob Ford, ffs.
Sure, but that doesn't mean that even discussing real or hypothetical measures to reign in corruption is inherently worthless because you can sometimes get around some of them.
I hate the US "either we solve everything, or nothing is worth doing" mindset that's pervasive in this country, and the only reason I responded is because you're providing a good example of it.
I'm not a big fan of people wish casting naive solutions and then getting hostile when they hear the solutions aren't viable.
You can make this same, tired, ultimately invalid argument about anything you look to improve.
You can't prevent the spread of all communicable disease, so why bother taking any precautions?
Someone could build their own gun, so why bother preventing a convicted felon from buying an oozie?
Someone could evade a line item tax by hiring a fancy lawyer and setting up bespoke legal structures around themselves as an entity, so why bother looking at closing any of the existing tax loopholes?
The answer is that because it's not fucking all or nothing. Sure, someone could hypothetically do lots of things to evade any precaution that you put in place around dangerous or bad things, but that doesn't mean it's completely ineffective. If it's too much of a hassle, some people won't bother. Some people will actually get caught. Hell, with the existing lax corruption laws and lazy ass enforcement in the US people are still sometimes found in violation of them.
It isn't a "if you ain't first you're last" situation. Reasonable safeguards, laws, standards, practices, and the like save and improve lives.
This isn't about arguing. The arguments we make don't impact public policy.
Agreed, so why squabble with people pointing out that the US is more corrupt than other countries? It is.
And it's more corrupt because not only are we more accepting of corruption, but "we" (like you) largely don't believe in incremental change or taking small measures to problem reduction...we largely believe in our version of "superman" arriving...I dunno what your thoughts actually are...maybe some gay space communism revolution that'll never occur?
I gotta tell ya at this point we're much more likely to get full, mask-off fascism complete with gas chambers than we are to get any kind of communist revolution in the US.
I started out illustrating instances in which politicians could end-run a simple bribery ban and it got dismissed as a uniquely American problem.
I don't think the US voter base is any more accepting of corruption than any other constituency. The courts are more accepting of corruption, but that's largely because they are insulated from any kind of oversight or accountability.
We've had periods of mask-off fascism in the US going back centuries. From Indian Reservations to Jim Crow to Japanese Internment to Gitmo detention to kids stuffed into concentration camps on the US/Mexico border. But there are plenty of Americans who have lived through these periods and never really acknowledged it. That's what allows fascism in the US to infest the body politic and to endure from generation to generation.
Meanwhile, we've inoculated ourselves against any kind of mass labor movement with the most hysterical media and legal response to organized workers. Every AES state is a deplorable hell-hole, because some industry unionized or popular local leader took the reins from a failing foreign corporate interest. Every domestic labor movement is simultaneously described as a bunch of entitled greedy idiot teenagers, a gaggle of uppity minorities with drug problems, and a fifth column of foreign infiltrators trying to bring down the American economy.
So I don't doubt the next step will be towards another round of brutal, blood-drenched fascism. But the end result will be the further deterioration of the American project and the ultimate crack up of our unified economy. The only thing that can save America from itself is a new socialist turn. Without that, we're headed for balkanization, further deindustrialization, and ultimate colonization from abroad.
Counterpoints: the US voter base re-elected Nixon (and largely wanted him to stay in office)...elected and then re-elected Reagan (despite him openly admitting to lying to the American public and exchanging guns for hostages)...elected Trump in the first place, cast more votes for Trump in 2020 than they had in 2016, and now look like they might just go ahead and put the corrupt gasbag right back in there despite the fact that he's openly corrupt, brags about it, and will likely get more corrupt in any second term.
So there's your version of superman. Within the current political environment, I just don't see this happening without another depression or similar (so perhaps even decades more of what we currently got). I also am decidedly not someone in favor of eliminating democracy in favor of purportedly "temporary" one-party rule (that never fucking ends).
Nixon was able to capitalize on the sharp George Wallace split in the Democratic Party over the Civil Rights Act. The Nixonian attack on liberals boiled down to the claim that black people were naturally inferior, and any effort at repairing the damage inflicted by Jim Crow amounted to pro-black corrupt patronage.
Reagan wasn't hit by Iran Contra until '87, and it nearly sank the Bush '88 campaign for President. Prior to that, he successfully campaigned as an anti-corruption tough-on-crime President, particularly in his prosecution of ABSCAM and other sting operations aimed at liberal politicians with big business ties.
The idea of a single all-power ~~Ubermensch~~ Superman isn't a socialist view. Time and again, large cooperative campaigns of mutual aid provide better outcomes than the public putting all our hopes on a handful of aristocratic elites.
Socialism or Barbarism. We either hang together or we hang separately.
My apologies for getting the timelines slightly mixed up. In my defense I was 4 at the time. However, Bush winning in '88 despite being neck deep in an administration full of openly admitted liars doesn't exactly bode well for your argument that US voters aren't pretty A-OK with corruption.
Nah, it's a human one, and one that's extremely common in the US despite our governmental structure all but guaranteeing that one guy alone can't fix things.
We love simple power structures, because we're simple beings. It's also why I think there is more to horseshoe theory than people want to admit. Communists claim to want gay space communism but seem A-OK with some stupid asshole being basically a dictator as long as its their type of stupid asshole.
Once we formed up larger civilized order, it took us millennia to conceive of a different type of governance aside from "what one stupid asshole says goes".
I somewhat agree? I think? But I'm not sure it has much to do with anything we're discussing.
Bush Sr's claim to fame before joining the Reagan team was as the guy who cleaned up the CIA after Ford replaced Nixon. He successfully distanced himself from Reagan, while tarring Mondale with a number of Massachusetts scandals.
It's a media-based one. Mass media has been pivotal in expanding and inflating the reputations of larger-than-life individuals (real and imagined). Without mass media, "Superman" is just another pagan icon of a neighboring tribe.
Its strange to see the American right champion Europeans like Macron and Merkel or literal Monarchies in the UK, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. They'll endorse coups such Anez's failed takeover of Bolivia or Park's military junta in Korea or The Jakarta Method in Indonesia or Juan Guaido and Fulgencio Batista looting the Venezuelan and Cuban treasuries. They'll shrug their shoulders at the electoral college, the corrupt SCOTUS, and the blatant disenfranchisement of any number of their states.
But when a popular President wins a landslide in a free and fair democratic election, they suddenly start to see the Tyranny of the Masses. Whether you're a South African post-Apartheid Congress or a Mexican President who wins with over 60% of the vote, you're constantly under the microscope, under the theory that you can't win a legitimate election unless your population loves American more than the Americans love themselves.
Go figure.
I mean people belong to cults. I don't think they joined because of the news (which doesn't even cover them). People are idiots.
I'd agree full stop right there. They're a strange beast. In a way it's possible (though not something I'd bother with) to feel somewhat sorry for them...what with them being so anti-immigration in a country teeming with nothing but immigrants.
I put myself as a top plop on the pile, friendo.
I'm convinced I'm pretty immune to being sucked into a cult, but aside from that I consider myself about as stupid as your average people.
EDIT: I also don't think of us as "sheep" or "glassy-eyed automatons". I think we, as a species, are a different type of stupid. We spend most of our lives deluding ourselves into thinking that we're somehow above (or the winners of) the natural order. We spend enough time in denial to buy a second home there. Our true nature isn't all that much different from a monkey picking flies off of its shoulders in the jungle....just with more zoom calls.
That's the joke, yes.
The top plop of shit is just as indistinguishable from the rest of the shit, it was just plopped more recently.
I do not life in the US. However because of US hegemony and my country being a suck up to the US i have to follow what is going on there.
But in case there is any doubt. The country i live in, which is Germany is corrupt and authoritarian with a complicit public and private media as well as the "center" parties moving further to the right and helping fascism rise faster than ever before. The "liberal" middle class are to a large extent just self delusional racists and the country will become a fascist hellhole in the next ten years.
So if you have the opportunity, please help spread awareness about all the shit happening here too.
Feels like the whole world is on the same trajectory.
I don't know, Labour should win a landslide next week in the UK. And Conservatives will become a party #3 or even #4 for the first time since forever. Tories also ran out of money, lol.
I can’t imagine how nice it must be having more than two parties that’re viable to vote for.
It's still FPTP here, it's just that people got sick of Tories. Even billionaires got sick, imagine that.
You mean Keir "Tony Blair without the charisma and leadership abilities" Starmer's Labour? Fat lot of good THAT pack of ideologically bankrupt liberals are going to do other than freeing the UK from the even worse Tories! 😮💨
Are you on drugs?
Not right now, no. Why, you selling? 😛
It is, expect everything to lurch to the right for the foreseeable future. Get ready for more humanitarian crises as we in the west increase sending climate and conflict refugees back to countries of origin or 3rd countries for "asylum processing" as climate change really starts to bite.
Also, I hope you enjoy Cold War 2: Arctic Summer Melt.
Hopefully, the UK is going to take a couple of steps to the left shortly.
If it does, it’s not because the country is moving left but because the right fucked up.
Yeah, it's a great first few steps. Really hoping LibDem becomes the official opposition and it's just two Left™ parties driving each other leftward.
Current Labour concerns me with how it's moved rightwards, but Daddy Starmer has my vote regardless
Yes, that's right. The last European elections at the latest showed impressively that those dull people who are unable to see through the PR campaigns of the powerful are not an exclusive US problem. It is of course absolutely right that we in Europe rely far too much on the Americans and should set stricter limits to their capitalism, which in my opinion is completely out of joint. But I fear that we have already gotten too far into this quagmire. This is precisely why it is all the more important to raise awareness of this and to name those who are actually responsible for falling living standards and growing inequality - the US-type opportunists, the hangers-on and especially the blatant fascists in the ranks of our politicians and our societies. I am not at all convinced that the reasonable people have a shot, but I sure will continue to make an effort.
At least I heard that world war is unpractical thanks to nato..
Politics shift to the right when people feel disparity, and their future looks break. Politics shift left when people feel optimistic about their future.
Which is absolutely fucking stupid because we need leftist politics when the future looks bleak and when the future looks rosy that is the time to be more conservative about change...
But we're just human, we do everything ass backwards :/
We are the smartest of all the dumb animals in this world. Nothing more.
The funniest part is that this has been brought about by the common belief that idealism is stupid and dangerous and leads to fascism, while cynicism is very smart and realistic. One good thing about idealism is that it gives you a reason to fight and sense of good and evil.
What I mean is that idealism, say, 20 years ago would be associated with extremism, neo-Nazis, unreformed Bolsheviks, sect members, radical Islam. But somehow the actual fighting forces sporting all such ideologies work without it too.
As if that "sail" filled not with wind, but with popular emotion were worse than lack thereof, because without it your "boat" wouldn't be moved from the right (presumably) track. Turns out the "boat" also has "oars". Evil doesn't have to be charismatic, although it was that in the 1930s. It can do just fine with apathy and half-consent.