Corruption in the US isn't new, but it's never been done as openly as it has been recently. I don't think it's a good thing. It shows that the government isn't concerned about what the public thinks, which suggests that they believe they no longer have to be. That's not a healthy sign for what's supposed to be a democracy.
Saying “US corruption isn’t new” is a truism. There are probably isolated incidents, and many unproven theories, but everyone is quick to agree with this statement because it’s a common feeling everyone has now for some reason. The reality of corruption is likely much smaller and more boring than people think.
What we’re witnessing now is what should be called corruption. That corruption that everyone has been screaming for years. But finally real.
Remember, the job of these people’s propaganda is not to say that they’re better than the other side. It’s to say that they’re all the same. That’s it. And when you claim that this corruption is just a continuation of previous corruption, just bigger, and not a difference between essentially not having and having corruption (there’s always some small percentage of corruption, just like any crime) is essentially sweeping for them. It’s repeating their talking points.
Yup, if i claim everyone is corrupt, then i can be corrupt. Ironically, if im corrupt, i probably honestly assume everyone else is, or at least superficially assume that, because if i don't, i might think other people are good and i am bad.
You actually can’t, because of the nature of incentives. If everyone else is corrupt and you’re not, you fall behind and get pushed out. This is how systems work.
We see the same thing with companies. If everyone else is using, say, shady dark patterns you’re not, you lose market share and go out of business. The only result then is that everyone must use dark patterns, it stops being optional.
If everyone is corrupt, how will you compete with the amount of money needed to campaign and maintain incumbency? You won’t.
The only solution is to make corruption systemically difficult or impossible. Individual solutions and morals will go absolutely nowhere, because they’re ineffective at a structural level. Corruption is contagious by construction, the very nature of our political structure makes it so.
I guess it’s more accurate to say that corruption didn’t start with Trump (he wasn’t even involved in politics when Citizens United was happening, for example). The US has been marching in that direction for a while.
The difference now is the openness and also the scale. If a president does one bad thing the press will dig into it, committees will investigate, etc. But what if the president does 20 bad things every single day? The press doesn’t know how to report on that and the legal process is as slow as molasses. And by tomorrow everyone will have forgotten because there’ll be new bad things.
> The US has been marching in that direction for a while.
It's trivial to remember corruption issues from 100+ years ago (I learned about one in middle school with Teapot Dome and political "machines", and those are hardly the full extent) so this is another one of those cliches that is easy to claim but is never proven. There's always some. Humans gonna human. But that doesn't mean either (a) there's always a high and critical amount in magnitude-of-impact OR (b) it's been definitely increasing.
Let's stop saying it as a general trend without examples.
On the flip side, let's keep pointing to all the specific Trump examples.
It's naive to believe that corruption is impossible or vanishingly rare. It's also naive to believe that the current administration is not a major step change.
There's a few I could recount from before this current onslaught, but the delineator is that those incidents of corruption were a once a year sort of thing. If you want examples there's the PATRIOT Act in 2001, No Child Left Behind in 2002, the 2004 rewrite of CAFE standards for vehicle emissions, and the 2007 bailouts of General Motors and Wells Fargo. From about 2000 to 2013 every year you would have one big thing that all the major news outlets like NBC or CBS covered, and then about a dozen smaller things that specialized entities with specialized interests like Mother Jones or Chalkbeat would cover. After Citizens United in 2013 things started to accelerate to about twice and two dozen times a year because the perpetrators could argue it wasn't corrupt, merely "politically motivated speech." Since 2017 however that has been shortened to twice a week and a dozen a day.
> On the flip side, let's keep pointing to all the specific Trump examples.
"They" (the cult that worships Trump) would simply presume "TDS" over such an idea, but the fact here is that Trump absolutely is "off his rocker batshit insane" (to a degree we've not seen before in any U.S. president yet), and anyone who claims that he's "good for America" is just as (or more) insane than he is (or they genuinely do hate the U.S.A. and only support him because they know the kinda harm he's capable of doing).
Another fact is that if one really gives a damn about corruption, then you gotta start dealin' with it sometime or it just continues to get worse, and now is probably a good time to start, since it's currently lookin' so outta control that nearly everyone with more than a couple of braincells can easily see it and can't plausibly deny it, and givin' it time to fester doesn't seem like such a great idea. Historically it's never once been good to let the rot fester, and it never led to anything good for anyone to do so.
The big cheap lever that everyone has is voting, and using whatever social leverage you have to get people around you to change their vote.
Primary legacy democrats. In NYC, the primary was the real election. Then vote in the replacement Democrat. Replace any Republican in any elected positions, then start taking a closer look at the local D machine.
"Many of the most damaging emails suggest the committee was actively trying to undermine Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign. Basically all of these examples came late in the primary -- after Hillary Clinton was clearly headed for victory -- but they belie the national party committee's stated neutrality in the race even at that late stage."
Ah yea, the famously successful political approach of “discard half the people, they don’t matter, then throw away half of the ones left over”. Works very well.
This isn't about individuals. The Republican Party is completely complicit and as long as members of that party hold office they will continue. I would love to have multiple qualified candidates to choose from across the spectrum but right now the system has been co-opted and a hard reset is the appropriate response.
Maybe if they don't like the results of the elections, they'll hold new ones until the "good" result comes out (true story, happened in Romania (a EU country) two years ago).
There was proven massive illegal funding of advertising for one candidate and the election result was annulled and rerun under the existing statutes and regulations under Romanian law, ordered by professional judges in a public legal process that was procedurally fair and had appropriate evidentiary requirements.
Stop parroting lines from organisations dedicated to delegitimising liberal democracies.
Protest. Insistently try to convince people around you to join you. Initiate and organize these things.
The have been many, many protests throughout history. Some did nothing, some changed history. Many of them were done under much, much more dangerous and difficult circumstances than a protest today in the US. Yes, some American protesters have already died at the hands of the authoritarian government, but that is only going to get worse and worse if you let it.
Not really interested in getting into a debate here, I’m just pointing out that GGP said “openness and also the scale”, to which you ignored the “scale” part and pretended it’s only about being corrupt in the open versus in private. I can point this out without making a comment at all (although I have my opinions) on whether I agree if the scale has changed.
(To be clear, I absolutely believe the scale has increased tremendously, but arguing about this is gonna be fruitless because it’s all subjective, there’s no hard numbers for any of it, and anything I can point out, you can just say “well that’s because they’re doing it in the open now, they were always doing it”, which is just as unfalsifiable. There’s basically no good outcome to debating this.)
> arguing about this is gonna be fruitless because it’s all subjective, there’s no hard numbers for any of it
I was just genuinely curious what somebody with your set of opinions has in mind for a time frame, because "1/100th the corruption" is too vague for me to quantify in my head.
As for arguing, I generally don't expect to change opinions with comments, especially those of whom I'm engaging with directly, so no worries there.
1/100th is hyperbole. But it has gone up. My opinion on the timeframe is the obvious one:
Since Trump. Entirely.
I generally think there’s actually not that much corruption in politics in the US. Mostly just insider trading, if you count by dollar amount. But I think generally there have been studies on the net worth of people before they are elected to public office versus after, and it’s within a few percentage points of the general population. There’s also the issue of lobbying firms hiring ex politicians but to be honest there’s something to be said for an ex-politician as a lobbyist: they have expertise and connections, they’re valuable to lobbying firms even if there’s no favors involved.
What we have now is:
- The president openly hocking a cryptocurrency and making billions off of it
- Taking money for early access to his posts on truth social, which is essentially how he communicates to the public. “Give me money and I’ll tell you first”
- Giving pardons to his supporters in a brazen and obvious way
- Taking donations from private donors to fund his pet projects like the White House ballroom
I could go on but like I said, I’m not really interested in the actual debate here because nobody’s gonna change their minds if they haven’t already.
But the previous administration denying a fair primary process gave us the present one due to forcing an unpopular candidate. They collude with each other so much that they're effectively one party.
Where do you get the $250B crypto number. He is corruptly profiting of his position, plain as day, but $250B in crypto? Really? What's the point in ridiculous exaggerations like this when the truth is bad enough?
Read this and imagined corruption as non-linear. What before is “isolated incidents”, spreads like an SIRS (Susceptible → Infectious → Recovered → Susceptible) infection model.
Even the graphs in the article suggest this. The low point for perceived corruption was 59% in 2006. So 20 years ago more than half of Americans already believed it. Even their OECD median graph's lowest point was 55%.
What I hate about the top comment is it is a thought terminating cliche. It sure as hell makes a difference when 90% of people believe the government is corrupt vs 60% of people. It treats the situation as binary. What also matters, and isn't shown in the graphs, is how corrupt people believe the government is. But we can also make some pretty good inferences here that more people think corruption is higher. There's a big difference between a leaky bucket with a few small holes and the bucket having such large holes that it's more accurate to call it a pipe.
> It’s to say that they’re all the same.
Exactly. It is the binarization of things. Extreminism is a lack of nuance. It is dehumanizing because we're all complex beings. It is a lie because the world and all of us have complexity to us. Extremism wins by making everything simple and easy to understand. "It's so simple, you just..." tune in and tune out. Don't think, just feel. Don't solve problems, just get angry. You get to feel high and mighty, because you're smarter than everyone else. If you were king for a day you could solve all the world's problems, because it is so simple.
I refer you to the Knapp Commission Report of 1972.
Page 1 (the very first words):
"We found corruption to be widespread".
Page 10:
"Commissioner Murphy in his early statements about corruption regularly included a pointed statement indicating that the corruption in the Department was limited to a few officers. On one occasion he went so far as to imply that there were no more than about 300 corrupt police officers in the entire Department. After Patrolman Phillips had completed two of his three days of testimony at our public hearings, Commissioner Murphy found it necessary to discount his testimony of widespread corruption, referring to him as a 'rogue cop.'"
"Smith defined it [the rotten apple doctrine] as standing for the proposition that 'police departments are essentially free of corruption except for the presence of a few corrupt officers who have managed to slip into police service and also into key assignments such as gambling investigations, despite rigorously applied screening procedures designed to keep them out.'"
"the Department now rejected this approach 'not just on principle, but because as a way of controlling corruption it had utterly failed.'"
Page 7:
"The Commission examined and rejected the premises upon which the rotten-apple doctrine rested"
Page 11:
". . . they [the public] are sick of ‘bobbing for rotten apples"
Page 5:
"investigations have occurred on the average of once in twenty years since before the turn of the century, and yet conditions exposed by one investigation seem substantially unchanged when the next one makes its report. This doesn’t mean that the police have a monopoly on corruption. On the contrary, in every area where police corruption exists it is paralleled by corruption in other agencies of government, in industry and labor, and in the professions."
Page 61:
"The Commission’s findings were hardly new. As long ago as 1844, when the state legislature created the New York police force as the first municipal police department in the country, historians record an immediate problem"
(This was followed by a brief summary of every previous scandal and Commission dating back to 1844).
When people say that US corruption is nothing new, they aren't condoning it, they're (in every case I've seen) drawing exactly the contrast you are making - it was like this before, but now it's so much worse!
Corruption was not isolated incidents and unproven theories before, there have been corruption scandals throughout US history and even similarly flagrant actions earlier in the US (read about the "robber barons" of the industrial era, the early figures in long-lived political dynasties like the Bushes or Kennedys or the history of organized crime groups like the Irish or Italian Mobs). Political machines built on graft and money laundering were just thought to be something of history books because nobody pays attention when things are going well and the past century has been pretty great for US citizens overall. We've come to dominate the world militarily and economically, righted historical wrongs and corrected contradictions in our society, and achieved a level of global cultural and political influence that is truly unprecedented in history. Now, we are probably going to go through another few tumultuous round of reforms and changes just as previously happened.
That's a lot of words to issue a reproach of people using manipulating "truisms" and propagandic non-specifics, without using any specifics of your own.
You might have a strong argument but you seem to be afraid to name anyone or anything.
Wow, i really dislike your argument. So instead of cleaning their acts on corruption, war crimes, and other abuses, the Democrats should just be held accountable to nothing because Trump is worse?
I'm sorry but your mindset is precisely what got Trump elected. The democrats abandoned the working people, propped up the military industrial complex even more, and enriched CEOs and bankers. Trump propaganda is not the reason people are not voting for them.
Just look at DSA. Why do you think so many both democrats and republicans end up supporting DSA candidates? Because they are the only mainstream candidates who are not 100% corrupt.
No, what got Trump elected is both the republicans falling in line en masse, and the lefty populists backstabbing democrats the entire time it was happening. This is why republicans support DSA — it helps democrats lose.
Mainstream democrats who actually know how to govern unfortunately don't have great rhetorical skills, easy slogans and sound bites, or the social media skills required to fight back against populist pundits. The mainstream media at one point also started going insanely harsh on normal democrats, while giving lay up interviews to trumpers, to avoid being accused of TDS.
Democrats fail to fight on both fronts because they often suck at being influencers, and are actually good at governing. They're boring government officials, nerds that try to actually tackle difficult problems in good faith, by taking all stakeholders into account, and finding feasible solutions.
Things are not simple. You're in a populist rabbit hole. It's easy to hate these suit wearing "corporate" dems if you don't actually appreciate the complexity of modern problems we're solving.
What you call "normal" democrats are not solving problems for most people and are not in good faith. They maximized social inequalities since Bill Clinton and deregulated anything that was meant to protect people. That's not "good at governing", unless governing very narrowly means serving the elites.
Some things are not simple, and i'm really not a DSA fan (they're too mild in many regards to solve the problems we're facing) so i'm not really in their rabbit hole. But DSA is not what i'd call populist; they're making realistic and mild social promises based on rational/scientific study of solutions (and seeing what worked in the USA in the past, and what works in other countries, such as 100% free healthcare).
You, on the other hand, seem to be down a rabbit hole where making billions of people suffer for your little privilege is just business as usual and asking questions is dangerous. Things are not simple, but they're definitely simpler if someone tries to actually solve them which no mainstream politician is actually doing. Here in France, it took dozens of thousands of workers with guns post-WWII to have free healthcare for all, and it's been working surprisingly well ever since (although to be fair, since absorbed and reformed by the State, much less so).
The ones (perhaps not so much candidates but national leadership?) that outright pursue Russian interests are surely 100% corrupt, if you count 'semisecretly serving an entirely different and hostile country' as corrupt. I get that the counterargument is 'yes but USAID and NATO are existentially evil and so anything for the purposes of destroying NATO is legitimate', but at that point you're Sephiroth-posting and I don't feel obligated to respect that at all.
It has been there over 50 years, with the ratchet tightening toward where we are now not each year - but mostly in the shadows, not in your face laughing.
Two things change each year:
- how much the populace has been proven to “take”
- how much further the empire’s attention is spread out, leading to it not serving its own interests and citizens, aside from continuity of governance
Not everyone pointing out corruption is normalizing it, by the way. I’m personally looking forward to the conclusion of that.
What we had before is a normal amount of corruption. There's no such thing as having zero crime. Just like we can say that air travel is safe, despite there being incidents, we can say there is no corruption, despite there being incidents.
The talk of shadowy cabals and conspiracies are fashionable, but never proven.
Corruption that actually meaningfully hurts the country and the world at scale (in recent history) only started with this administration.
You're going down a populist rabbit hole, I've been there, it's not a good one.
> What we had before is a normal amount of corruption. There's no such thing as having zero crime.
These two things aren’t mutually exclusive.
Also, “normal” isn’t good. In fact, “normal” often seems like a horrible bar to aim for.
> Corruption that actually meaningfully hurts the country and the world at scale (in recent history) only started with this administration.
You don’t do the sort of systemic damage observant people have been pointing out for MANY administrations. Is this one bad? Yes.
But it’s really weird and incorrect (based on the definition of the words) to say the corruption only just recently became real / meaningful / harmful.
Observant people pointing out corruption is not corruption. Real prosecuted corruption exists. That's why we have courts. Otherwise, it's conjecture that everyone is too eager to believe. Any behavior that can be explained, among other things, with corruption, is just added to the roster, because being cynical protects you from accidentally coming off foolish or naive. But it isn't serious.
This is the first time in recent history we went from normal amount of incidents of corruption to straight up corrupt administration.
> “normal” often seems like a horrible bar to aim for.
If "normal" is a horrible bar to aim for, you should figure out what a world with zero crime would look like. I don't think you would ever want that world if you take time to think about it.
Not sure how we can just go ahead and slice up the world into "tightly-knit communities", but even if we could, there's domestic violence, feuding, and mafia that arises just fine in those environments.
How do we determine that there’s corruption? If we did that by just pointing out that something looks or feels like it, why not treat all crime this way? There is a reason we created a judicial system. Things very often look and feel completely not how they really are.
There exists unprosecuted corruption for sure, just like any other crime, but claiming that it’s somehow happening on an outsized scale vs expected normal baseline? Based on what? Listening to people pointing it out who have everything to gain from selling this narrative? Conjecture and vibes?
Again, things can be complicated, even bad. That doesn’t mean they’re corrupt until there’s credible evidence specifically of corruption taking place.
Because government and law enforcement should be held to a higher standard.
Here’s the closest and easiest reach to obvious regulatory capture from the other scumbag party:
“I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute—if we do bring a criminal charge—it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.”
Lots of Americans are aware of regulatory capture.
Yet: folks aren’t even discussing fixing it yet. Everyone is just pointing and mentioning, like a meteor is coming.
Where does this fall in your argument? This looks more than “complicated” - whatever that means (please do better).
This was a descriptive, not a prescriptive statement, of a real problem. He literally says that it is concerning that prosecuting large institutions can cause economic harm. He isn't saying they won't prosecute, he says it's difficult because of the downsides. Holder made a mistake of wheeling out a complex nuance to a public that isn't prepared to handle it.
I don't understand where is the evidence of malicious force trying to self-serve? Anything specific that points to corruption here? Is this like "yay, Holder gave us a loophole! We just need to build an incredibly large, successful business, and now it will be difficult for Holder to prosecute us, so we can finally start being corrupt"? Is that what you're saying?
What large successful business would want to squander it all on corruption on an off chance that the economic inconvenience would save them from prosecution? They are the most incentivized to identify and remove that sort of PR and legal cancer from their org.
I’m saying you’re dangerously shit at reading between the lines if you don’t see the scheme when an ex-government person gets $400k+ per instance to show up and speak to financial institutions they/their administration didn’t prosecute out of profitability (or even majorly inconvenience their compliance department).
> What large successful business would want to squander it all on corruption on an off chance that the economic inconvenience would save them from prosecution? They are the most incentivized to identify and remove that sort of PR and legal cancer from their org
Plenty. All the way back before the East India Trading Company - work your way out from there.
Many business structures and owners only follow laws as is convenient - expected, if the only true consequence is a $$,$$$ speeding ticket and/or inconvenience ls that the ownership is insulated from.
> He isn't saying they won't prosecute
> That was the direct context of his statement.
He prosecuted them, and chose fines over criminal punishments. If this was due to maliciousness or corruption, I'm glad that whoever openly explained it all in this interview gave up his plot. /s
> I’m saying you’re dangerously shit at reading between the lines if you don’t see the scheme when an ex-government person gets $400k+ per instance to show up and speak to financial institutions they/their administration didn’t prosecute out of profitability (or even majorly inconvenience their compliance department).
I'm saying that you're so good at reading between the lines, that you no longer see the lines. You say all these random facts, but aren't connecting them to prove any corruption. If our judicial system worked the way you read between the lines, we'd all be in prison.
> All the way back before the East India Trading Company
What happened in 1600s has zero bearing on what happens today. Even the world in the 80s and 90s is no longer remotely the same.
> if the only true consequence is a $$,$$$ speeding ticket
Nobody ever actually knows what fine they will get. One day it's a fine, another day it's a judge making an example. No business exec in their sane mind would ever risk this. No lawyer in a sane mind would ever advise this. It's an incredibly uninformed, foolish position to only see a couple of perverse incentives, and be completely blind to the overwhelming amount of positive incentives.
> What happened in 1600s has zero bearing on what happens today
Unchecked ignorance.
What relevant examples of getting away with corruption can we glean from a pre-enlightenment, pre-formal-police, pre-constitution, pre-checks-and-balances, pre-judiciary-act, pre-telegraph, pre-paper-trail, pre-free-journalism, pre-internet, pre-camera-phones, pre-surveillance, pre-data-centers, pre-whistleblowers, pre-structures of accountability world?
Corruption has gotten magnitudes harder to get away with (even since 00s), which is why history is irrelevant here. You would need something extraordinary, like becoming a president with criminal immunity and self-pardon powers, and getting an electoral majority to support you being openly corrupt.
> Saying “US corruption isn’t new” is a truism. There are probably isolated incidents, and many unproven theories, but everyone is quick to agree with this statement because it’s a common feeling everyone has now for some reason. The reality of corruption is likely much smaller and more boring than people think.
Corruption in the US been extensively documented and proven. The revolving door at regulatory bodies, dark money, gerrymandering, no-bid contracts, "kids for cash", the collusion at the DNC before the 2016 primary, unconstitutional domestic spying by the NSA (along with the directer James Clapper lying to congress under oath without consequence), the lies the George W. Bush administration sold the public to justify his wars (and just about everything else surrounding them including profiteering, the use of torture, and many other war crimes), the Whitewater scandal, etc.
You can go back in time as far as you like and you'll find things like The Teapot Dome scandal or The Whiskey Ring.
The kind of corruption we're seeing today is exceptional, but to pretend that anything before now was "isolated incidents" and "unproven theories" is beyond ridiculous. Things right now are bad enough that we don't have to blind ourselves to our own history in order to make it appear worse. It is worse. It doesn't change the reality that corruption has been an ongoing problem in the US and maybe if we'd been more aggressive about punishing it we wouldn't be here today. Sweeping any of it under the rug is the last thing we should be doing.
You listed a bunch of things only some of which are bad, and none of which are clearly corrupt. Did you know that things can be bad, and still not corrupt?
When you delete a customer database at work, it doesn't have to be because you're corrupt.
You're believing conjecture, because it makes you feel smarter, like you can see through the facade. The reality is that you're probably afraid to come off naive. We have to be stronger and fight this urge to cry wolf about everything, because sometimes real ones show up.
> You listed a bunch of things only some of which are bad, and none of which are clearly corrupt.
Charitably, you might be using a different definition of corruption than most of the world uses. Even if we limit ourselves to only a narrow definition of only political corruption, the abuse of government power for private gain, most of what I listed would still be (sometimes literally) textbook examples of it. The revolving door, dark money, "kids for cash", no-bid contracts, Teapot Dome, these are examples of how we've seen bribery and cronyism play out in the Untied States. Voter suppression for example is a form of electoral corruption. While you're welcome to play at semantics or choose your own definitions for what you feel is and isn't corruption, claiming that "none of the things" listed were "clearly corrupt" is simply false.
I think we'd agree that a worker deleting a database doesn't have to be corruption, but that also doesn't mean it can never be an act of corruption either. I'm not talking about conjecture, just documented history, some of it recent. There are people in prison right now for their roles in it and many others who should have been, or who should still be, locked up for it, but who have escaped justice because of corruption.
It's difficult to imagine what "real ones" would even look like to you personally, but be assured that to the rest of us the US has a very long and well documented history of real corruption.
Let's take revolving door. Who would you want to be in charge of regulating an industry, a person who knows it inside out or a newcomer who has no idea how anything works? How would the latter have any hope at being an effective regulator? You would never accept this kind of lack of experience anywhere else in life. But for some reason we're all used to pointing out revolving doors as some kind of gotcha, without giving it the basic level of thought.
Dark money sounds bad, but anonymity doesn't imply corruption. Money also isn't enough. Look at billionaires trying to run for president, and where they got. You'll also be hard pressed to find any example where a politician picks a stance that goes against their constituents' opinion, in favor of money. Usually money piggybacks on a public opinion that already supports them, or is largely indifferent. History has shown that pumping money can rarely reverse public opinion to a significant extent, but sometimes can dissuade a positive opinion into indifference. Even that, unclear if it’s still possible in today’s world.
Kids for cash — I didn't know what it was at first. Sure, that's straight corruption. A couple of judges committed crimes, got caught, and received prison sentences.
I could go down every example you made, but I hope the sample above illustrates what I mean. "Documented history" is conjecture until it's adjudicated. You're making a mistake of putting "documented history" (insinuations of corruption in dark money, revolving doors, voter suppression) in the same bucket as clear and adjudicated corruption (like kids for cash), and based on this mixed bucket of good and bad examples, make a conclusion that there's always been outsized corruption in US, compared to normal baseline. Your basis for that conclusion is flawed.
The US has been suffering from late-stage capitalism for quite a while now. The obvious example is Citizens United allowing corporations to make unlimited political bribes. We just pretend it is okay by calling it "lobbying", but with the current slide into fascism the megacorps no longer feel the need to pretend.
I dont think it existed nearly at the same level, not even close. And honestly, even now, i still think it's a handful of actors doing a lot of it.
Kinda like when women say that men harass them in the bars and a lot of men seem confused because we don't think we harass them, when it can be like 1 guy harassing 20 women in a bar on the same night.
Can you prove any corruption from another President similar to one very obvious case of corruption, where the UAE invested in a very clearly scam crypto company run by Trump's family (who have no crypto expertise) and then very soon after got contentious export licenses for Nvidia chips?
Grant and Harding are famous for being personally corrupt.
Nixon resigned to avoid impeachment for political corruption.
Reagan colluded with Iran to prevent the release of hostages during Carter's re-election campaign and later sold them weapons to bypass congressional oversight.
These are just a couple well known examples at the presidential level, I am sure that for every one we know about there are dozens if hundreds of similar examples.
Go further down the scale to the congressional, state, city, and municipal levels and you encounter even pettier levels of corruption where you can buy votes for 5 figure construction contracts or just simple cash handoffs.
Like everyone here said, they just don’t even care about being “caught”. Not ten years ago most of this stuff would likely end a career or land you in prison.
Now it’s just, “So what? Nobody can do anything.”
It’s not better that the corruption is blatant. They’re rubbing our faces in it, and not the least bit concerned about consequences. The message is clear… there aren’t any, anymore.
And the most insulting was how they telegraphed it all. Accuse people of things they clearly didn’t do… and then actually do all those things.
They've always rubbed our faces in it in modern times. There was a time, not that long ago, when Presidents wouldn't accept payments for speaking after office. It only began with Gerald Ford. Previously it was felt that it would impugn the integrity of the office, and obviously it 100% does. Nonetheless, now presidents are happy to e.g. bail out companies and then take tens of millions of dollars in speaking fees for 30 minute chats with those exact same companies.
The real issue is that partisanship tends to blind certain people to corruption when 'their side' is in office, which largely works as an enabling factor. When nobody cares or nothing happens over a 'little' corruption, it just leads to a little more, and the next thing you know - you get to where we are.
My feeling about all the corruption talk is that everyone is at different points on the "oh yeah now I see it" curve. I've noticed that I'm really annoyed at people who are just now getting it as I've been seeing it for 20+ years. Because people who are further behind didn't see it before they have no idea how bad previous corruption was and only see the new corruption as a unique evil, unmatched by anything that ever happened in a million billion years. Which then makes for very tiresome arguments about how bad it used to be back in the day. They actually argue that it used to be fine, but NOW it's bad.
Anyhow kind of a rant but it's an insight I had as to why nobody can agree on anything despite lots of folks probably being honest/good faith actors.
I think when people grow up with something it grows to become all they know, and so they assume it's normal and everything else is aberrant. So the overt corruption of now a days (or at least of yesterdays) is not even seen as corruption, because otherwise surely somebody would do or say something about. Surely.
So large 'awakenings' require localized extreme circumstances, or at least the perception of extreme circumstances. That perception keyword is what makes everything so dumb, but I won't complain. More people being 'aware' is a great thing, regardless of how we get there.
Reading things like this help me understand how so many people fall for scams. You're so extremely trusting that it's hard to wrap my mind around... I can't relate on any level.
Bad news is, you're probably in the midpoint of that meme bell curve. Grown up structures and institutions are designed well, with accountability built-in. Many many good people work in them, who hate corruption as much as you do. Bad actors are whistle-blowed upon, persecuted, convicted, and imprisoned. It's incredibly difficult in practice to do anything significantly corrupt and stay unnoticed. I don't know if you work (like, at a large-size workplace), but imagine doing something shady at your work, surrounded by your colleagues. It's not easy. The amount of surveillance, paper trail, auditing that government work entails is way more than any normal business.
The irony is that your unending cynicism is actually turning you into a fool for the other side: the populists that constantly discredit institutions. They figured out that your cynicism (aversion to being scammed?) is so strong, that it can be used to scam you. They only need to discredit everyone else, that's easy. Make conspiratorial allegations based on perceived outcomes, not actual proof. Sell you all the cynicism in the world: everything is broken, everyone's bad, and you're one of the smart ones who sees it. US institutions are corrupt and worthless. This lets them pretend to be experts, because you're now a guest in their version of reality. And they directly financially benefit from your attention.
Institutions maintain real internal accountability (none of these alternative media populists do), implement real processes that work, tackle real issues in ways that take into account all stakeholders, and don't just produce slogans and talking points. I know they're old and not cool, but they work. Unfortunately, very few groups are left that actually defend them, you all got scammed by relentless, self-serving, financially incentivized alternative media into thinking that everything is broken.
Just because things are complex, doesn't mean they're broken. Just because measures taken aren't always satisfying, doesn't mean they are malicious. Don't get scammed into this world view by people who directly financially benefit from selling it.
Prove him wrong. Show us documented cases of corruption from, say Obama, or Biden, or Bush Jr. And then we'll compare it to the documented cases of Trump corruption, starting with his 2 crypto pump-and-dump schemes and his family's fake crypto company (3 already very brazenly open ones and there are more!) and let's see if you can pull similar for any of the previous presidents of the 21st century
Looked this up and it seems like most if not all high level officials divested from companies they worked for or would profit from. Cheney still owned stock in haliburton but it seems he gave away profits when selling those to charity, he did get a large parachute when he left them.
This is very different from the current admin at least. But direct profiteering by high level officials didn't happen or they were very good at hiding it. They did make their friends and old colleagues very rich, maybe that it reason enough?
And I am someone that considers that administration to be full of war criminals that manufactured a reason to invade Iraq.
But Cheney never profited from any of that increased work. He donated every single investment profit from Halliburton stock (since he was paid in it and held it as VP) to charity. That's like 1000x less corrupt than even one of the 3 situations of Trump corruption from only his most recent term that I outlined
He just bombed civilians in the middle east. Current administration is both bombing civilians in the middle east and stealing from civilians in the US.
Do you have a source that says it was an analytical error? Everything I've read over the years suggested they knew there were no WMDs, yet went with the narrative. Here's one post that cites a CIA report that shows the administration knew there were no WMDs.
Not directly, but indirectly by declining any punitive actions. Ideally the banks earnings should've been used up towards the bail out punishing shareholders in the spirit of the free market. But if I remember at that time, execs paid themselves large bonuses immediately following the bail out.
Most of the big ones. The government in fact was issued equity in these banks that they later sold to recover the funds. So it was very much necessary to preserve shareholder value.
This arrangement probably wouldn't have upset people so much were the people responsible for the crisis held accountable. Worse still, they paid themselves huge bonuses as soon as they got bailed out from the bailout money itself! All this made people question the real intention behind the bailout. Corruption is often effected indirectly, so as to give the perpetrator plausible deniability.
No, they’re not examples of corruption. Did Bush or Biden seek to profit from their actions financially? Not that I know of, unless you have proof showing what and how.
Corruption is not limited to financial profit. There are many ways to engage in acts of self interest like grant personal agenda, favours to friends/donors, quid-pro-quo etc.
That’s not an answer to the question. How did any of these presidents profit, financially or not, from their actions regarding Iraq or the 2008 financial crisis? What was the quid pro quo they received?
Well, the question primarily seemed to contest the scope of corruption, so I responded in view to that.
The big banks were one of the top donors to Obama's 2008 campaign. The fact that none of the banks were prosecuted or even held accountable for the crisis raises big questions how much the campaign funding influenced the way the bailout was structured. It also doesn't help Obama that he was famous for going after private funding after backtracking on his pledge not to do so.
Bush's story is similar but with energy companies the most famous being Halliburton who funded his election campaign and turned out to be the biggest beneficiaries to profit from the Iraq war. It probably wouldn't have upset people as much had it not been that the Bush family had close ties to this company and where Dick Cheney also happened to be the CEO. It was a big scandal at that time you can go read back on, but as is with many of these scandals everything seems to be forgotten or forgiven with time. I wouldn't be surprised if it's the same with Trump 20 years from now.
- Bush invaded Iraq because an oil company funded his campaign?
- Obama bailed out banks (a thing every government worldwide was doing) because banks funded his campaign?
There’s no evidence of these claims, compared to the evidence of a fucking private jet being bought for Trump in comparison. Also Trump has enriched himself, personally, more than any president in history by quite some margin, using the office of President. I just wanted to show what you’re equivocating about, here.
If you follow the way the private jet thing is done, it is structured as a gift to the government and not the president. It is perfectly legal and you won't be able to find any "proof" of corruption over it. This is how most corruption is done, in an underhanded manner, but everything by the book, with enough plausible deniability.
In many cases corruption is only known to the perpetrator, because it is a matter of intent. One can always proffer a different reason for what they are doing than what they actually intended and when those reasons later turn out to be false, you may never really know whether they acted in good faith in the first place.
So corruption largely comes down to perception end of the day. It is ultimately a matter of trust and when that trust is eroded, the perception of corruption grows. There's no smoke without fire. When we see smoke in a building, we do not go searching for proof of fire, we just gtfo because the risk is too much. We should do the same when we see red flags in people in powerful positions.
These people are also all wealthy with stable fortunes - they don't need a lot of cash because they have everything. Trump is also a rich guy, but he has a lot of debts and legal troubles and worries about leaving office, so he urgently needs cash to bankroll and bribe and attract likeminded individuals to help him.
Which US Administration said or did anything to prevent every US corporation from trading their manufacturing secrets for cheap labor, to the totalitarian country that they're all allegedly wringing their hands over for us?
Which one stopped the CIA from overthrowing democratic elections in other countries right from their inception, starting with Italy in the 50s and continuing with Operation Gladio all throughout Europe and moving into Southeast Asia as they worked with criminal groups to perfect their narco funded guerrilla warfare machine?
Did Trump even catch up to the number of bombs that "peace prize" Obama dropped in 8 years?
There are no sides, there's just a corporate Uniparty putting on some theater for you and you can absolutely prove that out if you dig past surface material and surface thinking.
I think it's worse. It's not that the government doesn't care that the public hates it; it's more like the government is doing whatever it wants and half the public is going wild absolutely loving it.
I also gotta wonder what percentage of this group is amplified beyond reality by bot armies and hostile foreign actors. There can't really be that many people so completely detached from reality, can there?
isn't really the crux of the problem with modern day USofA, more and more people are completely attached to their algo tuned bubble, curated for them by the data scientists of <insert techno silo here>.
It's not just the hostile bot armies of foreign actors tugging on the strings of perception, the distortion is coming from inside the borders.
There is no local media in the US.
A wide swath of the electorate gets 100% of their news from Fox news.
In Texas, it is widely known that the Trump family are experts in crypto finance, and worthy of the gains they have made. (also that sharia law is widely practiced)
When people that aren't highly educated have no source of accurate current events, they have a warped view of reality.
That 35% will change their tune if it screws their stuff up. Trump et al is great in the large unless he's your business partner or boss screwing your money and life up, hitting on your wife or daughter, owes you money etc. Cheap symbolism is appealing in a fog only, not in your face.
By the way two important social media strategies whether on TV or in text forums are,
1) appear unflappable
2) never deviate from the talking points
Read (1) and (2) with an implied parenthetical phrase: "when in public"
These are effective because the other side usually settles for small wins of seeing their counterpart flinch, feel lost or embarrassed i.e. to win in a fleeting way. Therefore, to the degree you can keep a straight face the better you deflect these small wins ... in public.
It has a strong secondary benefit of removing from context common sense, consistency i.e. the realm of cause/effect, policy where reality is more closely aligned. And when that goes out the window, your runway to BS is 10x longer.
Ejecting family wrongly arrested, misidentified, or those have followed the law (meager and crappy as it is sometimes), or who are denied due process is not unalloyed win in private people claim in public. Even if the guy is here is illegal and should be removed ... there's kids, money, and other dependencies involved. It's not the clean win people say.
What goes on off camera and off the HTML page is a whole other reality.
Here's an anecdote I heard personally: a guy I know went to Mar a Largo for a business function not related to Trump, but as a club house selling its meeting rooms and menu for revenue. My buddy is a non-white guy of considerable wealth, business success, and connections. This guy allegedly ran into Harris Faulkner (FOX news host) . During chit-chat she said she told this guy she does not associate with everything she says on camera. She continued to explain by saying she presents a viewpoint her employer pays her to convey.
I think you’re underestimating the true believers. Plenty of conservatives are willing to suffer if they think it makes others suffer more. See Dying of Whiteness.
> The national favorability rating for the Democratic Party sits around 39% to 41% favorable, with unfavorable ratings ranging from 48% to 54% across recent mid-2026 polls. [0]
And Congress as a whole...
> The approval rating for the U.S. Congress stands at 10%, while disapproval has climbed to 86%, according to data from Gallup. [1]
Diffuse organizations like "Congress" or "the party" aren't what you're voting for. Unfortunately Congress really does take it on the chin for the actions of the President in midterms, because that's very recognizable and personalized, and partisan votes (or just staying home) are the only lever people have to express displeasure.
"People hate Congress but love their Congressperson. "
I honestly think most Congress people want to do good for the country. But the system has become totally dysfunctional making it basically impossible to really work on issues. The influence of money is just too much. To me this goes hand in hand with the rising inequality that gives a few people at the top outsized influence. Super PACs don't even have to deploy their money anymore. The simple threat is already enough to bring most Congress people in line if they want to keep their job.
> I honestly think most Congress people want to do good for the country.
That seems wildly unlikely. Wouldn't there be evidence for it by now? Over the last decades there have been scant murmurs of the US congress sitting down and taking a serious look at what might be good for a country. I'm happy to say that the root cause is a voting public in the US (everywhere, really) rewarding unprincipled liars and punishing principled politicians. But the outcome is that the US Congress is full of unprincipled liars who have little regard for the good of the country, because that would be a principle that gets in the way of political expediency.
The system isn't some abstract concept foisted upon them from on high. They control it. There are some very high-level constraints on them that are all-weather good ideas and apart from that it is a free-for-all. The reason the system is dysfunctional is because that suits the congresspeople.
Most of the US airforce is executive transport. Clearly you dont actually know people higher up in government. As someone who dated a very high up state legislator in my state said: She totally doesnt care cause she doesnt suffer the consequences. And at the congressional level it is again a level apart. Michal Crichton has a name for this, I think!
I hate my congressman. Why, he won't listen to me. No public meetings, no interviews with real press. Only 1 way phone calls, where you can submit questions via e-mail a day before the event.
No private meetings either. I have repeatedly called both his local office and his DC office. If I have a donation, a staffer will meet with me.
His philosophy is simple "You love Donald, I love Donald". It is the focus of the mailers that are sent out every quarter.
This elections democrat has no polling. The prediction markets give her an 8% chance of winning.
I'm sure you understand the dystopian irony of your last sentence, but I thought I'd highlight it anyway. That's some "no fighting in the war-room" level commentary on the state of the USA.
People don't feel like they are well-represented by either party.
They may like some republican stances (say, reduced regulations and welfare spending), but despise others (Trump, wars, anti-renewable). Meanwhile they might like some democrat stances (Inclusivity, environment), but not others (high spending, rent controls, etc).
So you're stuck between a rock and a hard place where there's no good way to express your desires. I can totally understand not wanting to vote in such an environment, and disliking the government no matter what. You can't get your specific views represented because everything has been collapsed into two broad camps that average out - and as lots of research shows, no one is truly average.
You are in good company with most Americans in that regard.
It seems like the whole "we just blame the other side for everything we want to do, and then use that as justification when we actually do it" strategy must be well orchestrated, but the voters themselves legitimately seem to believe it is actually how things work. I am darkly impressed at the skillful manipulation.
I think this whole "that half" and "this half" thing makes it significantly harder to hold people in the government accountable. I know plenty of conservative people who think the corruption in the government is out of control.
Do they act on their beliefs or merely parrot them?
I ask because I've known people who were shocked at what took place 2021-01-06 but who proudly voted to re-elect Trump.
Today isn't much different: talk to a conservative voter who complains about the tariffs, Iran war, etc. and ask them whether it would be enough for them to vote Democrat, and the answer is near universally no. Lots of people have performative outrage because they're supposed to be outraged at what's going on, but the truth is that there's no line the Republican party can cross which would make them switch votes. Exceptions to this rule are still few and far between as far as I can gather.
Elections are won and lost by the people who don't vote so not voting for Trump still counts as a win.
Most politics is sold as tribal. "Our leader" and "Our team" are not the same thing. If "Our leader" is a disappointment, "Our team" can still be the good guys who need to do some house clearing, introduce some fresh blood, and all will be well again, etc.
Reality in the US is most politics is billionaire-funded. Trump didn't just happen, and he certainly didn't pull himself into the top job through his own efforts. He was groomed for decades before being crowned.
That's the level of corruption most of the population never sees. It's why the establishment is so scared of wildcard politicians and the DSA as a movement - both threaten to snip the strings of corporate funding.
As long as those strings are there, what happens in the media is kayfabe. The real decisions are made elsewhere, and the big tentpole events - 9/11 and its aftermath, the various Middle Eastern wars, financial crashes and bailouts - are the special menu the rich get to feed off, and the public never sees in advance, never mind votes on.
Do those conservative people keep voting for Trump? Will they support his blatantly unconstitutional third term run? If so I think we need more words for nuances around what conservatism has come to mean.
I'm sad to say I don't feel like I have a good handle on what is going to happen in the near future. Between the ongoing daily "flood the zone" from the administration and how fast AI is moving I have no idea what happens even a few months out from here.
Do I think he will run? I don't know - he said he wants to, regardless of constitution, and I think he would love the vanity of it if he was sure to win. They've done a lot of work to be able to suppress votes, throw out mail in votes, and declare the election invalid, plus the legislature seems inexplicably spineless, so I don't know if he would run again or not. Anything but release the epstein files I guess?
Well friend, the current political climate in America might be unprecedented, but is not unique. As someone who lived under a mix of military, monarchy, psudo-democratic and democratic governments for first 30 years of my life, I've seen this played out many times before.
That's what blows my mind, nothing that is happening is actually new, we have seen this shit play over many times. And yet the system was completely incapable of shutting this down.
It's not comprehensible without understanding that huge amounts of people are watching straight up lies and propaganda all day every day for their 'news'.
A lot of the early Trump responses were incredulous about some insane thing Trump said to a rally crowd, but he was basically repeating whatever insanity they'd all heard on Fox News the night before.
Imagine there had been no Nuremberg trials. The Nazis just got a slap on the wrist and almost immediately let back into politics as usual. That's how we got here. We're still fighting the remnants of the confederacy. Germany and Japan in particular purged most of those elements from their society. Here we built statues to the evil fucks.
As a general rule, anyone who tries to use slavery as a skeleton key to understand US politics is most likely an ideologue with an agenda. Sane people don't propose struggle sessions for events which happened 100+ years ago when everyone involved is long dead. You wouldn't point to a gigantic statue of Genghis Khan to explain what's wrong with modern Mongolia.
I don't think this is a slavery thing. Trump just sucks.
The poster you responded to did not mention slavery, they mentioned the confederacy, which held a variety of views, many of which still inform the politics of many Americans today. Acknowledging this reality seems reasonable.
Your replies indicate your disdain for appeals to the history of American slavery in political discussions, yet you were the one who brought it into the conversation, diverting the thread by initially straw-manning the parents view.
This is bad faith hair-splitting. You know perfectly well what tshrimple thinks "Nuremberg trials" were needed for, or why they think confederates were "evil fucks".
They didn't say the Confederacy wasn't really about slavery, they said it was much more than that. And it's those more abstract ideologies which have persisted through American politics, as traced in the history podcast episode I posted in a sibling.
They were evil fucks. Slavery was one among many deplorable things conservatives supported and still mostly support to this day. They also opposed women's suffrage. They opposed civil rights and fought to maintain segregation. They fought against gay rights. They fight against trans rights. They literally fight against any minority who might land on an equal playing field. Hey... guess who has been stating lately that women shouldn't be allowed to vote?
They are always the first to cast someone as an "other" and scapegoat for all of their problems. You're the type of person to hear "Haitians are eating their cats and dogs!" or "Mexico is sending us rapists and murders" and say "That guy has a good point!". It's pretty fucking gross and you're a clown at best for defending them.
There has been a lot more than "some changes in alignment over the years"—the parties of 160+ years ago are essentially unrecognizable today. Given the nature of how the modern Republican party established its base over the course of the 20th century, this idea of taking pride in a legacy of ending slavery is basically comical, a fiction that falls apart with even a basic knowledge of the history of American political ideology and party alignment.
I don't think it is much more comical than modern Democrats trying to take credit for the civil rights movement. The Democratic alignment has changed from "judge by content of character, not color of skin" to thinking that practice is highly problematic.
1800s Republicans were a big business, religious, nationalist party. The Union side in the Civil War was motivated by religion (cc "Battle Hymn of the Republic") and nationalism. Rich men paid to have poor men serve in their stead.
Some people believe they have a right to land based on claims from millennia ago.
I suppose you could question their sanity, but the point stands - history has a short memory, and a few generations are nothing.
Especially when the after-effects of slavery, including segregation, disenfranchisement through gerrymandering and for-profit imprisonment, and other forms of continuing violence, are still live issues today.
That map is inaccurate. Unfortunately slavery is still very much a thing in many parts of the world, including forced labour, prostitution and some sweat shop labour.
The PRC and North Korea still use slave labour as do some other countries. The Soviet Union had slavery with the Gulag system during the 20th century, and other places such as East Germany had some within living memory.
As a general rule, someone trying to use a simple single numerical measure as a skeleton key to understand politics across nations is an ideologue with an agenda.
As for the Genghis Khan comparison, I may have made an error. We may just be dealing with severe cognitive limitations here.
If you think slavery is the key to explaining everything about the US, the burden of proof is on you to show that. Just because something gets discussed a lot does not prove that it's important. Donald Trump is himself the child of immigrants who immigrated to the US well after the end of slavery, and maintained a residence in a state (New York) which opposed slavery. The relevance of slavery to his presidency is at best unclear.
The burden is on you to have studied the subject in even the slightest detail before you mouth off with your ridiculous hot takes. There are plenty of discussions of this available.
Do you need me to spoonfeed you about where you can find them? Or do you not actually have the intellectual capacity to be able to use a search engine, or a chatbot?
The 1970s were 50 years ago. "Long dead", in other words. Did you know that Brazil didn't abolish until 1888? They also imported far more than the US: https://www.slavevoyages.org/static/uploads/01.jpg
I don't think you can say "long dead" until no one who met them is still alive. We have 6 serving Senators over the age of 80, meaning they were born in the 40s or earlier. We have a total of 76 serving Senators who were born before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed...
It's called penal labor, and it was and remains widespread around the world. (And, yes, Brazilian law requires mandatory labor for all prisoners.) It wasn't until the middle to late 20th century that countries began to reform penal labor. But it's complicated. Without penal labor you can't force prisoners to, e.g., do laundry or mop floors. Even mandatory community service is a form of penal labor, and you can still find that in some Western European countries.
The norm now is to require a wage for mandatory labor, but of course often it's just a pittance. (Only 6 US states have uncompensated labor.) But even when you require minimum wage, many criminals owe restitution, so it could be and is taken away again.
Many US states have penal labor systems just like in Europe, that is nominally opt out, mandatory wages, etc, but at the end of the day it's always open to accusations of coercion and claims of "slavery".
The rhetoric around the 13th Amendment is exactly why we're in the situation we are now politically. Everything is equivocated to maximize rhetorical impact. Every unethical thing a politician does is "corruption", so when you get open and egregious corruption as with Trump, people can't discriminate and assume it's all the same.
Was penal labor abused to roll back the clock on abolition? Yes. Is penal labor abused today? Yes. But calling it slavery, drawing parallels to chattel slavery, is just irresponsible.
> Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
> Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The 13th amendment specifically mentions penal labor as an exempt form of slavery.
Take your criticism to the authors of the 13th amendment, not the people who bothered to read it.
Setting aside textual analysis and how commas are used in the constitution, the point is that people claim not just that slavery is allowed, but that mandatory penal labor is slavery, and implicitly the same slavery that was ostensibly abolished.
So do you agree or not agree that mandatory penal slavery is an extension of 19th century and earlier American slavery. Because that's what the movement and rhetoric are saying. And removing the Exception Clause won't change the rhetoric, because the entire point is to argue "things haven't changed".
It's the same rhetoric that equivocates "wage slavery". All those things can, of course, fall under a literal definition of slavery. Just like all forms of misbehavior by politicians can be called corruption. We can say, well, Trump isn't doing anything every other politician hasn't done. Which can be literally true. But I choose not to play semantic games like that, because those semantic games are at least as likely to be used to excuse abuses as they are to prevent them. If you want reform, pursue reform. Note that many states have removed their state constitutional Exceptions Clauses which by itself resulted in zero changes to the status quo, because when you play semantic games there's always room to redefine things on-the-fly, or to find another semantic loophole. Every court knew what the Exceptions Clause actual, contextual meaning was, and can just as well redefine slavery or non-slavery to exclude or include penal labor. Semantic games don't change the real world, except insofar as they promote cynicism, confusion, and disengagement from substantive issues.
"Around the world, at least eleven million people are imprisoned, either pre-trial or following conviction. Most sentenced prisoners will work while in custody...
...
Most countries’ legal systems, however, carve out an exception for prisoner-workers, permitting the state to require them to work—sometimes for no pay, but typically for very low rates of pay.
There are, even so, multiple potential benefits to prison work. For example, ICPR’s recent research indicated that prisoners who could not work (when prison regimes around the world were restricted during the COVID-19 pandemic) reported many negative consequences, including to their mental and physical wellbeing. At the minimum, work may mitigate some harmful impacts of imprisonment. At best, it may increase prisoners’ prospects of successful reintegration into society, potentially also benefitting society by reducing recidivism."
The question isn’t whether prisoners work in other countries which I’m confident you know and dodged.
The question is whether the prisons in Brazil are private, and are allowed to sell prison labor FOR A PROFIT, incentivizing both greater incarceration rates, and disincentivizing release.
The answer is no, I’m not aware of ANY other country that allows a private organization to profit off the labor if people imprisoned by the state. At least not any country we would consider 1st world.
It’s absolutely absurd to suggest the current situation is beneficial to anyone but the ruling class and anyone claiming otherwise has never been to prison, never had a relative or friend who has been to prison, or is literally a psychopath who lacks basic human empathy.
Your comment stated: "And does Brazil have their own 13th amendment that allows them to use prison labor as their modern slave workforce?"
The article I linked states: "Most countries’ legal systems, however, carve out an exception for prisoner-workers, permitting the state to require them to work..."
So my quote directly answers your original concern.
Your new concern is about private prisons. Here's a new quote from the article which addresses your new concern:
"Involvement by non-public entities in prison work can take many forms. In most countries including all three of Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the United States, for-profit companies operate entire prisons (or provide services within prisons) under government contract. Similarly, the operators of both public and private prisons in all three countries contract with buyers, equipping prison workshops and using prisoner labour to produce goods and services which go on to be sold beyond the prison."
(p. 15, emphasis mine)
So no, the US system doesn't seem to be especially unusual, according to this article.
You're welcome to decry this practice as inhumane, btw. I just don't think it is some sort of skeleton key which will help us understand every aspect of US politics.
It's recent enough that people living today knew former slaves. That's not ancient history at all, so I think the comparison is not good. I'm sure Brazil also has to deal with fallout of their practices, but I don't see how it changes how the fallout of US slavery impacts the US.
A full 76 of current serving US Senators were born before the passing of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which officially ended segregation and the Jim Crow era).
That certainly means it's recent to me. My own parents (both still alive) grew up while "separate but equal" was still law of the land.
So, yes, it's definitely racism. Or shall we say, the lasting imprint of slavery and the Confederate ideology more generally. Reconstruction failed and therefore allowed the Confederate ideology to persist for 100 years of Jim Crow and right on into today.
>It's recent enough that people living today knew a slave.
Slavery ended in 1865. That's 161 years ago. So maybe there are a few modern 80-year-olds who interacted with 80-year-old former slaves when the modern 80-year-olds were infants. Those 80-year-old former slaves would themselves have no memory of slavery since it would've ended before they could form memories. And the modern 80-year-olds would have no memory of the interaction, since they themselves were infants when the interaction happened.
In other words: There aren't very many of these people, and it's unclear if most of them would count.
You know something which happened more recently in the US than slavery? Prohibition. A trendy, self-righteous moral crusade which didn't accomplish what it set out to achieve, and ended up creating a bunch of problems instead.
I think Prohibition is a pretty good template for understanding the form and tendencies of modern left-wing activist movements. But--at least reducing alcoholism was a good cause that we had a shot at doing something about! Short of inventing a time machine, crusading against slavery from centuries ago seems rather pointless. That's not a problem for activists whose primary goal is to be trendy and self-righteous, of course.
Someone who died in 1964 was technically a slave, but not yet old enough to function as a slave. Real slaves were mostly dead by 1940, the few who remained are outliers
Babies being born into slavery served the slave system just as much as grown men slaving in a field. Slave was a legal status in a system, not a job title. A baby born into slavery is a real slave, not a fake slave.
Either George, who enslaved her mother, or his brother, Dr. Fabius Haywood, who enslaved her older brothers, Rufus and Andrew,[3] was probably Anna's father
So Anna came into existence because her mother was raped by a man who legally owned her as property. And that was recent enough that Anna lived to witness Gilligan’s Island.
Moreover, she was still a slave until she was six and served her masters as a domestic house servant. When you were six you were probably being educated to read and write and do math.
You guys are so quick with your “well ackshually” that you’re missing the point which is very simple and has been restated by other posters.
I'm anti-Trump. If you tell people "Trump is a corrupt asshole", that has a chance at convincing supporters to abandon him. If you tell people "the US needs a cultural revolution due to events from past centuries", that's what got him elected in the first place.
A good general wouldn't voluntarily shift the battleground to a region where their troops are weak. Political persuasion is no different. The Democratic Party keeps losing because they cling to unpopular positions on cultural issues. If Trump is as bad as you say, prove it to me by showing willingness to strategically cede ground on a few issues in order to win more voters.
>We're still fighting the remnants of the confederacy. Germany and Japan in particular purged most of those elements from their society. Here we built statues to the evil fucks
That is a historical fact which has important explanatory power. It may not directly be the best basis for public Democratic platform, which most people probably agree with. The core manifestation is in our institutions, and that's what we need to fix. I agree with you that framing it through the lens of corruption is the best overt political strategy.
Is this theory falsifiable? What would it look like if this problem was "fixed"? Many confederate statues were taken down--did anything change as a result? The entire thing seems like a delusional crusade against windmills. Focus on the present, not the past.
I get the sense that many in this thread simply have an un-quenched lust for re-education camps. Probably under Stalin they'd be mumbling about dastardly capitalist spies and saboteurs.
> Many confederate statues were taken down--did anything change as a result? The entire thing seems like a delusional crusade against windmills. Focus on the present, not the past.
This sounds like a thinly-veiled argument to keep them up. But why should we keep them up? In what universe does it make sense to honor the losers of a failed coup attempt against our nation by embodying them in statutes?
The reason many continue to pursue this is because of the surprising number of people who want to maintain them. It's not a "crusade against windmills," it's a crusade against people who want to honor the enemies of our nation. It's as understandable as being upset that a group of people would want to maintain an Osama bin Laden statue in the middle of Manhattan.
Taking statues down may not change much in and of itself, but it's a small piece of the bigger puzzle.
> I get the sense that many in this thread simply have an un-quenched lust for re-education camps.
I’m generally aligned with your point, but I also don’t think the official position of the Democratic Party is that we need a cultural revolution, nor do I observe most Democrats feel that way.
What I do see is media and politicians on the Right characterizing extreme positions held by a minority of folks on the far Left as though they are adopted by the entire Left, and that weak uncritical minds on the Right believe that nonsense. Rush Limbaugh pioneered this technique to profit himself, and Trump gave him a fucking Presidential Medal of Freedom in his first term.
I think you're somewhat underestimating how effectively the far-left minority has scared others into silence. Anyways, I do what I can to push back against them when they say things which seem wacky to me, as in this instance.
Maybe I should work harder to make my actual views clear. I added a few sentences to the end of my original comment in this thread: "I don't think this is a slavery thing. Trump just sucks." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49572347
Scared others into silence with what magical powers? Zero control of both chambers, zero control of the executive, military, cable news, Supreme Court, law enforcement etc. With what is this mighty far left minority scaring people? Protest sit-ins on campuses? That's what makes you quake?
> I think you're somewhat underestimating how effectively the far-left minority has scared others into silence
Besides all the YouTube videos, X posts, the addition of two new right-wing TV networks (OANN and NEWSMAX), “Truth” Social, WSJ, NY Post, etc.? Silence is a myth perpetuated by the right (“people are trying to suppress the truth and your 1A rights!”) to build a following when in fact opposition voices are plentiful.
> because they cling to unpopular positions on cultural issues.
The Republican propaganda machine will always be ready to make any cultural issue the dems hold 'unpopular'. They turn anything and everything into a culture war, and if nothing exists, they are more than happy to manufacture it.
Observe how they turned their own vaccine into a cultural issue.
There was a lot for people to be angry about, particularly the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Bush administration got us into as a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11, combined with the 2008 financial crisis and Wall Street public bailout that culminated in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street
You should check out this podcast episode with two historians, tracing the influence of the Confederacy ideology all the way to the current Supreme Court:
Pretty much everything that has happened in the past has consequences today. It's the butterfly effect.
Slavery has existed as far back as history. The idea that people are created equal, and are equal under the law, is very, very new, and that idea has resulted in a great many positive things happening.
You seem to be missing important parts of US history, not least of all the century of Jim Crow. I mean, come on, my Boomer parents were already alive to see the Civil Rights Act passed.
For a trace of the thread directly from the civil war to the current Supreme Court, check out this podcast episode:
Sounds like you’re completely ignorant to US history post civil war. You seem to know nothing about the daughters of the confederacy. Know nothing about segregation and Jim Crow. You have no idea that conservatives fight to this day to maintain monuments to literal traitors to the country. Or that they still routinely fly the flag of traitors to the country. Or more likely you do know about all of that and agree with it and just want to white wash conservative history in the US.
I'm sorry you're too dense to see why "The Party of Lincoln" is defending the confederate flags and confederate monuments. They must just really believe in states rights except where it actually helps people. Sort of like the confederates who pretended to be about states rights while demanding other states return their "escaped property". And it doesn't explain everything in US politics. I never claimed your strawman. It explains US conservative's degeneracy. Their complete lack of shame or civility. They never had any.
>"The Party of Lincoln" is defending the confederate flags and confederate monuments
I think the obvious answer here, insofar as that's true, is that historical continuity is simply not as strong as you are assuming. I mean you've basically admitted it yourself. In 1860 would you vote for the Democrats or the Republicans?
Someone replied to my comment. I composed a reply, then they deleted their comment. Since I already put in the effort to write my reply, I will paste it here.
* * *
Trump outperformed with black people relative to Romney and has appointed black people to his cabinet.
>problems going on to the present day
Often more noise than substance, e.g. the odds of a black man being unarmed and killed by cops in the US are something like one in a million annually.
>The white vote in the US was a solid majority for Democrats before the Civil Rights Act and is now a solid Republican majority.
Ethnic bloc voting is not at all unusual by international standards. I might as well interpret black loyalty to the Democrats as racism against white people.
>Those who "deserve it" are usually not white.
Trump has had many many "beefs" with white people such as Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Mike Pence, James Comey, Mark Milley, Anthony Fauci, Megyn Kelly, Joe Scarborough, Rosie O'Donnell, etc.
What frustrates me is when activists take an issue which should be a winner ("Trump is corrupt, let's do something about government corruption, all Americans can unite around this") and immediately pivot to handwavey, divisive race-baiting and talking about how utterly depraved conservatives supposedly are. Sometimes it seems like you guys are determined to lose.
West Germany and Japan did not purge "most of those elements". Both places retained a surprising number of people from the early 1940s, for the simple, cynical reason that many of these people had skills and experience in administration. Many Nazis ended up in significant positions in NATO and even NASA, and some such as Walter Debus and Klaus Barbie ended up in American employ.
A few examples of prominent Nazi officials who worked in West Germany: Reinhard Gehlen, Albert Schnez, Adolf Heusinger (Inspector General of the West German Army), Hans Speidel (major NATO commander), Johannes Steinhoff (Chairman of the NATO Military Committee from 1971–1974), Johann von Kielmansegg (Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Central Europe), Ernst Ferber, Karl Schnell, Franz Joseph Schulze, Ferdinand von Senger und Etterlin etc.
“Researchers found that some 77 percent of senior officials in the [West German] Justice Ministry had once identified as Nazis, a portion higher than during the Third Reich, the period between 1933 and 1945 when Adolf Hitler controlled Germany, and much higher than researchers expected. The group included Nazi-era prosecutor Eduard Dreher, a man who sought the death penalty for petty criminals, and Max Merten, who played a role in deporting Jews from Greece.” – 2016 Christian Science Monitor Study
East Germany did purge most of its Nazi elements, but became a dictatorship in its own right. When Germany reunited, there was a purge of East German judges but a number of people involved in the old system continued in the new Germany. (Even Angela Merkel who had a significant position in the FJD.)
Most of former Soviet Union made a limited attempts to remove Communist era officials. Some of those responsible for Stalin era atrocities died in their beds. Russia is still full of them, and age, not officialdom . Even people like Valentina Tereshkova the former cosmonaut. PR China has never purged itself fully of Maoism, and Chairman Mao's picture still pops up everywhere despite being arguably the biggest mass murderer in history.
I was thinking more that Nazi's rounded up and gassed a million Jews. So I'm not in a forgiving mood if you're making joking comparisons or trying to be cute.
They did that in the end. In the decade leading up to the final solution they engaged in a lot of shenanigans that have already been replicated by maga.
Many governments engage in "shenanigans". One of the biggest mass deportations in US history was directed by Eisenhower, the same guy who beat the Nazis. Switzerland just recently considered a more severe halt to immigration than anything contemplated by the US.
> One of the biggest mass deportations in US history was directed by Eisenhower
About a quarter of a million, hardly the biggest .. and importantly this was at the request of the Mexican Government who wanted many of the Mexican workers who entered the USofA to be returned to work in Mexico.
Despite the derogatory name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Wetback was a attempt to appease the Mexican Government and get their continued support to provide "legal" Mexican labour to the USofA.
Eisenhower did not gas Jews. Please fuck off with your weak ass what about Eisenhower bullshit.
I know you think you're being cute but some of us had grandparents that had to flee that shit and do not find quite so hilarious as you and your mates.
I think you and I are on the same page? I'm trying to push back on the handwavey Nazi analogies by pointing out that garden-variety "shenanigans" are not necessarily rare, i.e. the Nazi/Trump comparisons are not necessarily valid.
If Trump tomorrow says communism is great, then every Fox news host, MAGA content creator, and MAGA bot would be extolling the virtues of communism. The republican house and senate would enable it, maybe with a small bribe here and there. There is no line. There is no integrity. It's just looting.
People who feel lost and disaffected would rather see the whole thing burn down than continue with the status quo even if it is objectively worse for them.
And its clearly been building for a while. Trump and Obama are about as opposite as possible, but they both won by campaigning on "change".
This is true in most political systems. Its how most revolutions start. The commoner is always screwed but they still support them.
I dont think america is all that exceptional. All sides just see it through their filter bubble and miss the forest for the trees.
Don't know why you're being down voted. I can't believe there are people who didn't vote for Harris because she wasn't anti-Israel, as if Trump would somehow be better for the Gazans.
(Well I can believe it, it shows a limitation of rational thought and second order effects, which our electoral system exploits. And some of them are outright "accelerationists" which is a looney strategy itself.)
Once I understood that capitalism is (thinly) veiled slavery, and that it creates a system to suppress those that add value, I have found it easier to follow what is happening over there.
We just don’t see the slavery because we are the best compensated slaves. But most of us want to become masters, don’t we. “Entrepreneurs“, right? So at some level we know that that is the system we live in. And we are at the top of the bottom rung of that ladder. But it is still the bottom rung. And it is still a ladder.
Nobody does. The amount of teenage angst posted in this forum about the current admin is amusingly pathetic. None of it matters. Congress constantly gets a free pass while we focus on a figurehead largely enabled by a passive and embarrassing congressional electorate. “We found the scapegoat, blame that guy!”
It is from the Bible and the old testiment law. A goat were prepared for sacrifice (part of a much more complex ritual that I'm skipping), but then lead out in the wilderness and released instead of killed.
Corruption has been rampant under multiple administrations. I actually had hoped Trump might root out more corruption in his 2nd term, but two things happened: Congress wouldn't go afraid the corruption that was being found, and Charlie Kirk was assassinated in broad daylight...after 2-3 assassination attempts on Trump himself too.
It's easier to start looking the other way when bullets start flying.
Having said that, I'm not saying Trump was a saint, but it seems this board forgets we just had Obama and Biden running their corruption rings for 2 decades too...
Part of the problem with the open brazenness of the corruption is that the populace of the country will follow the lead. The rot will spread far and wide if it is seen that there is no consequence.
Yeah, just look at the eastern block countries - corruption was everywhere and considered totally normal. So much that it eventually brought the whole thing down.
But it still left a deep mark on people - people who grew up under the old regime still considered it normal to bring gifts (usually alcohol in some form) when visiting doctors - the idea being it would be rude not to!
This is having real consequences - I saw an interview with a doctor, where he showed the reports a big closet, full of alcohol from these gifts.
That was from just the last week. He also mentions colleagues with tendencies for alcoholism dying from this...
I find this optimistic, suggesting that the rot can be stopped with some consequence? The rotten "populace" in the country seem to love their corrupt politicians, and it's because they're corrupt too. Meritocracy began it's slow death with the banking bailouts.
Now, if you had some grand master plan to use some part of the federal government to stomp some people in some state for doing it wrong this is probably bad for you. But on a 30-40yr timeline it'll probably just mean a cycle of the feds doing less and the states doing more and the diversity that comes with that.
Like we'll all screech about the EPA revoking this or the DOT ceasing to do that but whatever those policies are, if people want them they will be picked up by the states. In most cases it'll probably be 40-something states continuing to do whatever it was or 40-something states saying that was stupid all along and stopping immediately.
The EPA is a good example of why this is so bad. Even if 90% of the states pass rules to protect the air and water it takes only a small number of states not following environmental regulations to cause a massive amount of harm to air and water quality and the effects of that can be felt in other states.
It also hurts businesses when they suddenly find themselves forced to follow an inconsistent/conflicting patchwork of state laws instead of a single federal law.
That said, it's still encouraging to see states picking up the slack and passing laws to protect their residents, even though I can't help but feel bad for people who become stuck in states where the government doesn't care about them. I hope that people will be begin to flee states where the government chooses to put corporate profits above the well-being of the public or wants to strip them of their rights, but realistically there will be many people who can't afford to move or who feel compelled to stay because of ties to their friends, family, and community.
You're only looking at the glass half empty side of things.
The environment in the US is very diverse so why is it federally regulated to the degree it is?
Not having to put up with rules that make sense in the arid plains or western deserts is gonna be a huge boon to everyone east of the Mississippi.
The "consistency" argument is like 99% red herring. There's already a huge patchwork because the way federal agencies work is the states do most of the enforcing so you have 50 states worth of precedents and political whims to keep track of. If we're gonna suffer that patchwork it should at least work for the state as they want it rather than just be various flavors of spin on federal rules nobody fully agrees with.
You can run this sort of exercise with just about every federal agency. Stuff like the FRA, DOT and other things where the literal subject matter is flagrantly interstate are where this sort of thing is least true.
> The environment in the US is very diverse so why is it federally regulated to the degree it is?
Because there’s relatively little need for diversity. Dumping toxic waste into river systems is as bad in Oregon as it is in Florida. Things that genuinely need local management (e.g. wildlife) can be managed locally.
You are ignorant of how much of what the federal agencies do is create rules and recommendations and best practices and then tell the states they don't qualify for grant bucks if they don't implement somme amount of all of it.
This is where most of the dysfunction comes from, not the classification of what is or isn't a pollutant. Because this is how you get some water rich municipality in the southeast having to adopt stupid rules they don't even want based on some guidelines that were written to be compatible with the water poor west.
There'd be a ton less people who are categorically opposed to the federal agencies if not for this sort of thing. And it goes for most agencies, not just the EPA.
Which are a completely different set of ecosystems with different needs than the gulf coast, or the southwest, or the northeast.
Like for example aquifer depletion is a serious thing in the southwest. It's borderline irrelevant in the northeast which is only getting wetter with climate change anyway.
So you split the difference when you write the federal rules and the result is insufficient for the southwest and their governments have to do a bunch of BS rule stretching crap to take it further and a nuisance in the northeast where their governments have to do a bunch of the same BS in the other direction to lighten it up.
Why not just let these states write their own laws that work for them. Sure you'll probably get one or two screw ups but most states will probably be better served.
But you're still delineating regionally, based on one specific issue... There are issues that affect many or multiple regions. And states are going to have to duplicate effort, and firms or individuals will need to relitigate state by state.
There's been studies of healthcare administration, education, and other areas of devolution in UK and Spain. There are benefits, but there are also costs and outcomes can get worse despite the benefits.
Implying that it's always been this way is part of the reason we are now here. For my entire life, bad faith commentators insinuated that the federal government was rife with corruption. When under Democratic control, of course. The time that Al Gore made one long-distance telephone call from his official desk, using his own personal calling card, birthed over 200 New York Times articles, 30 of them on the front page. We just had to get to the bottom of all that corruption!
The problems that happened during the Clinton admin (with the exception of Whitewater) weren’t so much corruption as they were short-sighted neoliberal trade deals and hostility to organized labor, which accelerated the process of hollowing out the country. But this was also an unusual period in US history due to the end of the Cold War, so this administration could be an exception. Most of the scandals from this period appear quaint.
An under-examined axis of this problem is that people choose to believe in corruption because it's better than the alternative.
It's way more comforting to believe that Bill Clinton's buddies (or whoever) got rich selling industrial America overseas to the cheers of the progressives who thought all that stuff was dirty any way because at least that way it looks sane and planned and rational, albeit selfish, than it was done out of ignorance or malice.
And once enough people believe in the corruption, it manifests itself because it's perceived as how things are.
> short-sighted neoliberal trade deals and hostility to organized labor, which accelerated the process of hollowing out the country
What if they weren't short-sighted and not hostile? Look at Germany, which did not do this and instead kept strong provisions in favor of organized labor and protecting their domestic industry from foreign entrants.
They can't keep doing it anymore. That would have been our future. But we pivoted to high skilled services and it has served us immensely better than if we had tried to defeat other powers in industrial and manufacturing where they had a clear advantage we didn't, in terms of cost.
This ignores that Germany is not energy independent (unlike the US), and that it suddenly lost its main energy supply and followed this up by closing its remaining nuclear facilities, a massive self-own.
This also ignores that the US is now having serious trouble supplying its own military and tech sector due to the same deindustrialization! It also basically created its most formidable geopolitical competitor through this process.
"Both sides are just as bad" is copium for when the guy from "your side" is revealed to be a corrupt piece of shit. You don't like it, so you justify to yourself that the other party is also full of creeps and assholes and thieves, so you can continue to support your guy guilt free...
Of course the supporters of one particular political party is much more better at gymnastics of the mental kind than the other side. Having no spine makes it quite easier...
Thats just party politics operating as it was designed. You only have one real party just like communists and fascists. The democrats control everything in the country via bribes from their super pacs and "charitable" foundations and fundraisers.thats why they were so upset when us-aids got suppressed.
Thats why people give millions to the clintons for haiti and the Haitians never see a single penny. The corrupt take that tax money and give it to their friends who give it to charities which are owned and operated by their friends who then donate that money to campaigns or other charities who do the same thing.
The republicans are just as corrupt but their power comes from the dems pissing people off so instead they vote against the dems but the reps are the only other option so the reps do the exact same thing as the dems and steal tax payer money and set up laws that make it more difficult for small business to compete with government sponsored monopolies. The left and right parties are like a left and right hand they wont get in each others way or fight each other they cooperate to screw the american people over and the stupid americans keep pretending they have a choice between the left slap or the right slap. The only way to take control of the country is to root out the corruption but the corruption is perpetuated by party politics and stupid americans are more loyal to their stupid corrupt parties than their nation or neighbors.
The Supreme Court opened the doors to this with Citizens United. You can’t expect one party to unilaterally disarm while another rakes in hundreds of millions. We all just need to come together and agree on a constitutional amendment to end this.
I don’t think that’s right. The US government cares a lot about what the public thinks about them. They propagandize actively on social media, the president puts his personal name onceverything, they are extremely persistent in their messaging to loyal reporters and so on.
I think they have discovered that what the public thinks simply no longer tracks what they actually do: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters“
What would anyone expect to happen when people are stupid enough to elect someone who tried, with multiple parallel methods, including an attack on Congress, to steal one election already.
Okay so now that everyone has been shown how they can cheat the election with mail in ballots. How do you propose to stop the republicans from using mail in ballots to steal the next election? Since clearly you cant use the feds to weaponize the post office.
How do the democrats secure an election? Do you just make sure you stuff the box with more mail in ballots than the other guy? You already made it illegal to show id when casting a ballot so if the republicans want to play the same game as the democrats how do you stop em? Do you just claim that its okay when we do it?
Our election protocols are secure and past elections have been secure[1][2]. And mail ballots have never been shown in any significant way to constitute "cheating". Mail ballots are only issued to registered voters and cannot be "stuffed"[3].
You need to cite some actual sources behind the question loaded in your comment.
When Congress people enrich themselves while serving in office[1] and there's a revolving door from public service into private and we have billions in unaccounted spending, fraud everywhere you look (especially since Covid), it's no surprise people feel upset by corruption.
My hope is we will, one day, have an administration that roots it out using modern fraud detection, gets rid of waste, shuts down non-profits that funnel monies to their founders (anything where "overheard" is over 50%), stops insider trading amongst politicians and government workers, but I don't see them voting against their greed.
> It shows that the government isn't concerned about what the public thinks
Similar to the "Death of a Euphemism" [0], where some politicians decide they don't have to cloak their proposal in the trappings of reasonability any more.
I highly recommend the whole series, as it has renewed relevance today.
Well it’s almost certainly not just more open. But also more common and more intense. There is 100% absolutely no possible comparison to Trump’s personal acts of corruption in any prior White House ever.
Maybe it doesn't qualify as a personal act of corruption, but George W. lying us into the the Iraq war followed by capturing people off the street and then torturing them in military prisons, is comparable to what's happening today, in my opinion.
Dubya did some of the most horrific things in modern American history, and filled the pockets of many of his associates im sure.
But in terms of the letter of the law unfortunately he couldn’t be held accountable for much of it because it was legal! The US legal system has largely agreed that the president, especially with a bloodthirsty Congress behind him, can torture, kill and maim as much as he pleases so long as it’s outside the border.
Trump is bad, but please let's not excuse corporate neoliberal dems that are totally fine with insider trading, legalized bribes, and are quite proud that their consultant campaign workers get lucrative gigs at corporations/boards due to insider access. I mean we have people like Gillibrand that are openly in bed with the crypto industry while somehow decrying what Trump is doing. Feels like they're upset that Trump exposed how rotten this game has gotten.
At some point you realize there is a game that you were never playing and it becomes a bipartisan issue.
No one is excusing them. But it's worth pointing out that in every aspect of government ethics reform, from campaign financing to insider trading by government officials, the legislation promoted by Democrats is stronger than that promoted by Republicans, who often not only don't promote reform but actively oppose it. For example, the recent lukewarm ban on insider trading was opposed by Democrats on the grounds that it was too weak, excluded the President and VP, and included unrelated voter regulation measures. And the Democrats have been trying to pass legislation to correct Citizens United for years. So while it's a bipartisan issue, one party is much more pro-reform than the other.
That's great if you're talking to a high schooler that has never been politically active, but I'm literally a democratic party operative. I've attend state conventions, state nominating conventions, platform conventions, DNC twice. This is not the democratic party I want to part of and why I'm extremely thankful people-led organizations like WFP and DSA are actively trying to change things for the better.
None of what you are describing has any real momentum behind it and for how many decades will you let politicians fails you until you do something in response?
Like bro, the democratic party isn't an opposition party. There is a reason why the party has majority unfavorability rating [1] throughout Trump's entire second term. How do you square this?
This is a fucking terrible sign and it's why progressive candidates have seen a massive insurgency this cycle and why the corporate do-nothing dems are so scared shitless that they might have to actually answer why they are okay with genocide + corporate welfare programs while doing nothing to help people materially.
You say no one is excusing them, then spend your entire comment excusing them.
After reading about Ground News, I am starting to gain a real appreciation for how effective "both sides are bad" is at benefiting the right. It may well be the closest I've seen to 4D chess in reality.
They help launder this idea that every issue has two reasonable sides. Which is patently false
There is some kernel of value to seeking out information from diverse sources. But groups like Ground News pervert that to mean that the left and right are on equally good terms with fact and reality (nevermind that collapsing politics and news media down to left and right is balderdash)
Huh... I'm super liberal (not so progressive necessarily) and I enjoy Ground News a lot. I don't feel like it gives an impression of both-sideism at all, and that's something I'm quite sensitive to?
That is their stated purpose, though? To give equal parts left & right so that you can supposedly be better informed. But the implicit assumption is that left & right are equally truthful & fact based, which is not the case, so the resulting coverage leans right.
Notably, like another allegedly unbiased news source (RealClearPolitics and related), Ground News is run by conservatives. They know precisely how it works and are taking advantage of sensible people who think they must be getting biased news and want more exposure to the other side, with the intention of ratcheting the Overton window ever more to the right.
No, I don't believe that is their stated purpose. It's to share stories from across the spectrum and then emphasize how differently they're reported or not-reported.
That does not necessarily imply giving equal airtime or equal legitimacy to the different sides at all.
Eh, to the extent that I care about it being "run by conservatives" it's only in whether it creates a distorted perception of reality. As someone with a very varied media diet I don't really find them to be distortive, so I don't really care whether the founders are conservative or not.
When I hear people making these claims (all unproven theories, or misrepresentation of what really happens), I want to know: what happened in democratic administrations that went in favor of a large corporate donor and against the public? Any specific example where they diverged, and a politician ruled in favor of the corp, and against their constituents?
What is unproven here? This is all found in various wiki articles or just being alive at the time (yes Obama did bailout banks over people, yes Clinton did condemn large swaths of the US to poverty).
I honestly don't understand your other question, you can watch any primary challenge race across the country and you'll see these dynamics play out. We're also dealing with cumulative effects that have taken place over decades (NAFTA is still impactful in many areas that if you run as D these districts you are guaranteed to lose).
If you're from a certain region and want specific examples LMK.
I think a lot of these beliefs are downstream of some perceived aloofness and intellectual elitism in the party combined with sour grapes about how 2016 turned out for certain grassroots demographics in the party.
I don’t think the vibes argument there is incorrect, Dems have failed to deliver for a long time, but the claims themselves really just make a conspiracy out of the shitty electoral situation Dems / progressives have been in since the creation of the senate 250 odd years ago.
> Feels like they're upset that Trump exposed how rotten this game has gotten.
You make it sound like he's the one calling this out, "Drain the swamp" style, when instead he's the one elevating it to the next level. A month ago he sat for a TV interview in the White House, and he said, verbatim, "My children are insider trading all the time". And it was so on-brand for Trump's administration that it barely moved the needle.
Barron is an unemployed college drop out who gained $150M in net worth in a year. Donald Jr and Eric start companies or get paid millions for board seats that get billions in government contracts within days of their forming/joining.
You, unable to form more than three words about all of this, but able to go on a vague rant about how its the Democrats we should really be angry at. Corruption is endemic. It's never been as brazen, and as much, as now.
Don't disagree, take your example of using cryptocurrency to massively break banking regulations plus the ability to make rug pulls a known feature. Now what do you expect democratic politicians to actually do about it since they have no issues working with the crypto industry while taking their donations? Gillibrand is a great example of this, crying about Trump getting rich off cryptoscams but not willing to actually legislate against this stuff because it'll cut off a lucrative source of campaign financing:
Like this plays into the record "high" perception of corruption. (also you know that the democratic has had majority unfavorable ratings throughout the Trump administration [1], a major blight and a poor sign that the opposition party is in fact not unified in opposition)
I do find the person that makes your comments amusing. Mostly the types that do zero organizing, never volunteered for a political campaign, have never canvassed in their life, don't attend party meetings, aren't part of any state committees across the US, but all seem to exactly know what's wrong with the voters and apparently you aren't allowed to criticize a party for reasons that allude me.
Perfectly capable to form plenty of words just fine. I'm a democratic party operative that has mostly grown to hate the party more as the years go by, luckily my sentiment is hardly unique (way more common than back in 2016).
What do you exactly do to help combat this situation? I rather converse with people that are engaged and not just consumers of advocacy.
Okay and how do you think it helps the democratic candidate's ability to win elections when they are part of the same party that supports corporations over people? In the not so recent past the democratic party controlled Congress for 60+ years on the new deal coalition alone, now look what the party has morphed into...
I read the article too, in what sane world is it okay if 70% of citizens thought their governments + corporations are corrupt over a 20 year time span here. Society apparently has get quite bad for the last 20% to realize the state of things.
The only thing I got out of this article is that both parties + the F500 need to be destroyed.
>The only thing I got out of this article is that both parties + the F500 need to be destroyed.
I don't know, if we'd had an overwhelmingly Democrat-dominated government, we'd have comprehensive bans on government insider trading and we'd correct the bad ruling in Citizens United. Corporatism is definitely a bipartisan issue, but at least Democrats recognize it as a problem, while to Republicans it's a feature. Not everything in politics is symmetrical, and misguided nihilism is actually how we got where we are. Turns out the road to hell is paved with "it's both sides."
> I don't know, if we'd had an overwhelmingly Democrat-dominated government, we'd have comprehensive bans on government insider trading
We had two years under Biden with Democrat control of the House and the Senate. They passed no legislation to ban insider trading.
It probably didn’t help that the poster octogenarian for insider trading was Speaker of the House
> and we'd correct the bad ruling in Citizens United.
CU was absolutely the correct ruling as it just means I can take money from wherever I’ve earned it and spend it on publicizing my message.
Prior to that you had to buy a media company to have the same effect. It was perfectly fine for Fox News or The NY Times to focus articles and segments on what they deem newsworthy to push their narrative. But if I made my money selling widgets, I couldn’t spend it the same way.
It’s a perfectly reasonable ruling.
> Corporatism is definitely a bipartisan issue, but at least Democrats recognize it as a problem, while to Republicans it's a feature.
The same people probably complain the Senate is an antiquated body that should not exist because mob rule is the only true voice of the people.
With just 48 Democratic senators and 2 independents caucusing with them, the 117th Congress had to deal with rampant GOP filibustering, starting with setting up an independent commission to investigate the January 6 riots. https://www.npr.org/2021/05/28/1000524897/senate-republicans...
A corporation is just one or more people pooling their resources for legal and accounting purposes. Theres nothing inherently virtuous or evil about the concept.
Going back to my original example, why is it okay for a media company to use their platform and resources to promote whatever speech they want promoted, but I can’t use money I made selling hot dogs to do the same?
The only way to make the playing field fair is to allow everybody to take part. Otherwise you have a handful of media companies with outsized control of indirect messaging.
>A corporation is just one or more people pooling their resources for legal and accounting purposes.
It is not. That's one aspect, but another major aspect is that those individuals pooling their resources are not liable for the corporation's actions. This immunity from liability for their collective responsibility has a price, and part of that price is that the corporation should not be used in an attempt to manipulate elected officials. Corporations are not people for the same reason that you are not a blood cell. The whole is not only greater than the sum of the parts, it is materially different.
>The only way to make the playing field fair is to allow everybody to take part.
This is one solution, I'm not sure it is truly the only solution.
Why do we treat media companies differently? Maybe we shouldn't. Newspapers traditionally had political coverage, and had no restrictions on political commentary. As a result, their owners wielded enormous political power. Then radio and TV arrived on the scene, and had to abide by the "equal time" rule due to their government-granted broadcast licenses. The internet upended all that. We should look for a good answer, not just an expedient one.
> two years under Biden with Democrat control of the House and Senate
Nobody has controlled the Senate since ‘09. The veneer of bipartisanship created by the filibuster meant that Congress has done nothing since ‘09 (outside of a few stimulus bills and the Green New Deal which was probably a good bill in the long run hampered by bureaucracy). It turns out that’s great for the party that wants to do nothing, and really bad for the party that wants to do something.
You could say that Dems should’ve killed the filibuster. But there was no appetite for it until Trump 2 because things weren’t going great but they weren’t going belly up
> The only thing I got out of this article is that both parties + the F500 need to be destroyed.
Destruction is easy, as we are all witnessing.
Making things better is hard. It takes commitment to incremental change, often having to overcome setbacks, and accepting that the product of democracy is inherently nonlinear.
Democracy also demands that its participants understand that most of the time what each individual wants to be, will not be exactly as they envision, since that would be autocracy.
Nah, this is the same tired excuse that has never played out in reality.
Destruction is totally fine of useless institutions. Especially those that are openly antagonistic and profit from killing Americans. US institutions are designed to impede progress and stop actual democratic movements.
No one was ever asked the public what they thought when they shoved neoliberalism down our throats. Yet that system reigns supreme and has created a hellscape where people are openly ignoring their biological imperative because their lives are so miserable (a behavior that's also found in animals at zoos).
If you think I (or virtually anyone else) am a fan of the two-party system, you probably aren't paying very close attention to... anything.
Things can be varying levels of imperfect. Things can be imperfect and acceptable, imperfect and bad, or imperfect and extremely extremely bad. It's not a sign of intelligence not to be able to discern between them.
What is this argument really? Comparing one man’s corruption to a whole party with decades of history. “Honey my cheating on you is bad but look at this man Trump with decades of public philandering.” Whataboutism at its finest.
No, it's more like "oh wow that explains why Americans do not trust institutions, have massive unfavorable feelings about the democratic party, and voters no longer believe democratic politicians are pro-worker."
Like this is a thread about corruption but I guess if you give a shitty corporate veneer it's suddenly. If you're older than 40 you saw the democratic party implement NAFTA, cut welfare programs, and bail out banks; apparently these three major policy pillars aren't related to people's feelings on corruption.
Totally independent, they're just totally only saying Trump + republicans are corrupt not like the entire system that compromises two parties both of which are in bed with corporations and voters have a lived history reflecting just this.
Next thing you're going to tell me is that the Gaza Genocide played no role in Harris losing '24 either.
But we didn’t have to vote DJT into office as a counteracting force. Whether every decision is bad or not, not my point. It just seemed obvious that he wasn’t the right guy.
Some people can’t vote against their party. Some people believe write in is the move.
A write in, or even just scrawling "FUCK YOU" across the ballot is at least an active protest. It shows that you aren't apathetic to, or okay with, what is going on. It'd be interesting to see a write in campaign for someone with enough public support to be more than just a protest vote though. It'd be interesting to see someone campaign to the public with no interest in participating in the two party system at all, just asking the public to write them in when the time comes.
Well said. It's not that I disagree with the concept, just that the action itself is not meaningful to the overall process (not without a lot more people doing the same).
I've never written a name not on the ballot but wonder sorts of feelings arise afterwards. Is it "Good, I did the right thing"?
There are plenty of third-party candidates in most elections. However, most people are convinced that they have to vote for the lesser of two evils. In addition, a third party or independent candidate who starts getting too much public support will be likely be sabotaged long before election day.
For example look up Butch Ware's recent run for governor in California. It's just the tip of the iceberg in how the two party system maintains control.
Problem is, public thinks that the government is corrupt but it doesn't impact their voting choices. Public is OK with corruption.
If you look at many deeply corrupt countries, corruption is beneficial for majority of population there. As people in Belarus used to complain to Russians some 20 years ago, "in Belarus we live very poorly because Lukashenka does not allow us to steal unlike your bosses", and they were right.
>Corruption in the US isn't new, but it's never been done as openly as it has been recently.
It's been open a long time. Patriot Act/Snowden/Assange, JFK coverup, shutting churches to keep Walmart open, social media censorship, gerrymandering, immigration enforcement, etc
Corruption does not mean bad policy. It’s government officials breaking the law to empower and enrich themselves. To the extent the items on your list even exist outside of the addled minds of conspiracy theorists, they aren’t corruption.
It's also possible that we have better tools now to expose corruption and communicate it to each other. The level of corruption could be the same but we are just much more aware
I agree though it's concerning that now it seems to be done without care to the visibility
It is perplexing how similar it looks when a stupid person who is elected by a stupid base is directing a country.
The difference between people doing corruption before and Trump is that the other people had a "legit" lifestyle and worldview but did corruption as a side thing. An ignorant business person like Trump has corruption/intimidation/coercion/deception etc. as a lifestyle because someone like him can't live in the world that he is living in without this lifestyle.
Trump isn't really corrupt in the same sense as Obama because they are fundamentally different. You could even say more educated politicians that are able to understand what is going on are more evil.
People won't tolerate evil politicians anymore because they understand they are being robbed by the financial system and aren't getting their piece of the pie. It has to be a break to democracy (war?) or economic reform or Mamdani/Trump style government from now, it is really unthinkable people will keep electing Biden/Hilary/Harris/JD Vance kind of politicians anymore unless there is a big breakthrough in brainwashing
It is concerned, but not in the way one would think.
From what i hear politicians like Gavin Newsom from California are passing bills to prevent independent journalists like Nick Shirley from exposing fraud and corruption.
That signals that they (government officials) are extremely concerned with what the public thinks, but mainly in the sense that they don’t want the public to have the information that would put them in a thought spot.
On the other hand, the fact that fraud and corruption is only reported by some early-twenty-something independent youtuber/journalist should really tell you a lot on the state of mass media in the USA (in the sense that the mass media are essentially colluding with politicians).
Part of the problem is we've essentially made corruption legal, at least for Congress. In the past if you gave a million dollars in cash to your Congressman, he stood a good chance of getting caught and arrested. But these days it's just normal for wealthy people, companies, and pressure groups to donate large sums of money to political campaigns.
Then the money gets laundered through book sales. We're all supposed to pretend that money isn't affecting votes, but come on.
More than that, in 2020 Trump got a record number of votes for any Republican or sitting president ever. In other circumstances he would have won. It’s just that Biden also got a record number of votes.
All they have to do is persuade the public that all politicians are corrupt, then they can be as corrupt as they like. It’s the populist playbook the world over.
You are partially right. We used to collectively throw people out when they were exposed as corrupt. Now it works like this: Republicans get called out by Democrats, Democrats get called out by Republicans and Democrats. And if that goes on long enough Democrats will start overlooking their own transgressions, I see that starting already.
It's amazing that in a discussion about how bad corruption has become or is perceived to have become under this particular Republican administration, that there's several people hand-wringing about the Democrats and how they've been corrupt, or they're worse, or now "what if they get hypothetically get worse as a result of this?". Anything to avoid having to take direct action against those currently in power, currently openly selling pardons, shitcoins, and government contracts.
I think if you re-read my comment we are basically in agreement, I just think if we continue on the current trajectory of not holding people accountable, it will spread to both parties. Ask yourself this, in a two party system, how bad would a Democratic nominee have to be before you’d vote for Trump? He has created a lot of runway for his opponents to be corrupt.
