"Democracy needs its gatekeepers": The Republican Party is too corrupt to care about the country
3 years ago by BagOfHammers to c/politics
You’re not wrong.
You’re right!
Same. Even those who vote for him and his like and then disingenuously claim ignorance of racism and bigotry will actually acknowledge it behind closed doors and say it's "strategic".
Which is the dumbest shit I've heard.
I mean, that goal sounds pretty dumb to me. So that's where I'm coming from as it being the dumbest shit I've ever heard.
It's like these people never emotionally matured past toddlers.
I think it's telling that Chuck Todd called Sanders supporters "brownshirts" but didn't say anything close to that about the January 6 insurrectionists.
Oh but haven't you heard? Right wing views are always silenced! /s
As usual, it’s all projection 🙃
That's because Republicans played the long con.
They pretended to Champion fairness for so long, claimed that they were being unfairly discriminated against and that the media how do liberal bias. The result is that is now the media is too afraid to criticize the right for fearing that the liberal media stick will be used to hit them again.
It was never about ensuring an equal dialogue, it was about coming up with a standard where no matter what the right wing does, whatever the Democrats do has to be as good or as bad, regardless of what it is.
That's how you get "both sides are the same!" Nonsense
See: George Carlin - The Big Club (NSFW)
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When Donald Trump - the undisputed Republican frontrunner - is running to be president to avoid jail time and general responsibility for his crimes, you know this country is in trouble.
That year is just a slow burner
Worse, it's 2020.
Politics in America is basically just like everything else. It’s just a brand people adhere to regardless of who works there. It’s the fast food of government.
If you like McDonalds better than Burger King, that’s where you’re gonna go. You don’t care who the manager of the McDonalds is. It doesn’t impact your decision.
That’s American politics now.
I’m Trump’s case, the fans are too dumb to realize that he scored on himself and cheer anyway.
The headline implies that they're indifferent to the country's welfare, but in reality, they're actively hostile to it. They're fine wrecking the economy if it makes them richer and/or leads to a Biden defeat in 2024. They're fine destroying public education if it lets them be "anti-woke" or push more people towards charter schools (thus further giving a leg up to people from rich backgrounds). They're fine ignoring the climate catastrophe if it makes their rich donors and dumbass voters happy.
That sounds like indifference to me. They are “fine” with wrecking stuff, but that’s not their goal. Their goal is more power, more money, more… whatever. They are 100% indifferent to the countries welfare. At least that’s what it feels like to me. It’s definitely still bad, as indifference to other peoples suffering is a pretty crappy way to be.
Charter schools are legally public schools that operate on a lottery for admittance where I live. The employees are in the state benefits system. The only difference is that the charter schools structurally are private 501(c)(3) non-profits that don't have public school boards, limiting the opportunity of the broken electoral process to interfere with education and the ability of Nazi groups like "Moms for Liberty" to fuck with them. The only fuckery they have to deal with is funding and the fuckery of the state legislature. I'm going to send my kid to one because I live in a red area full of white supremacist students and teachers, something that is WAY less of an issue at my local charter. For every charter school nightmare story, there's tons more success stories.
Starting with a test on basic constitutional rights would be a start. It'll be nice if politicians actually know basic 5th grade material like this.
Then we can move on to other tests to weed out the old and decrepit. Memory test. Drivers test. If they can walk a mile.
And lastly a test asking them basic things. For example: How much does a sandwich cost? If they say $0.50 or $600 dollars, we know they're not fit.
I know I'm upper middle class, but $1 million sounds too low these days. Especially if you want someone highly educated. I just had a state university education and military experience and with the rate I'm saving for retirement I'm protected to be more than that $1 million. I'm not trying to brag, I'm trying to say that I hope the people running the country would be better educated and more qualified than me.
Yes, but I do want the people running the country to be in the top 10 percentile at least as far as qualifications go. Which doesn't always translate to wealth, but has a pretty strong correlation.
1 million might be a tad on the low side. If you own a nice 3 bedroom 2 bath family home depending on location that could be $500k or even $700k all on its own. It doesn't take much to get to 1 million from there. Toss in a couple nice but not fancy cars and that's another $50k easily if not $100k, then the value of all your other possessions, and maybe a decent retirement account and you're basically there.
2 million on the other hand, and that's well into "rich" territory (but sadly barely even moves the needle of the ultra wealthy like the Koch brothers or Jeff Bezos).
How much a sandwich costs depends entirely on where you're buying the sandwich, though.
Ask someone from Rochester New York and someone from New York City how much a sandwich costs, and you're going to get wildly different answers, and that's the same state
Can we break up the federalist society? And what about removing the assholes who dismiss the peoples votes in the electoral college?
Like I'm not American but is one party really more corrupt there? Like wanting to kill minorities is not corruption, that's just normal evil shit. Don't both parties basically pilfer the economy, do massive amounts of insider trading and sell the US to corpos on a daily basis? That's at least the impression I have gotten. Like one party is absolutely more comically evil though.
Yeeaaaah, we ain't doin' so hot.
One party does it far more than the other, but largely yes. The democratic party does have a progressive wing that wants to fix these things, but they don't have the power to do so yet. The Republicans don't.
And Democrats aren't??? Both parties need to go
I don't see the democrats trying to end democracy, dumbass, Trump and DeSantis both want to be dictators very badly.
You don't?
You think they aren't corrupt? Great, I have some real estate to sell you
You're one of those people that nuance and context are lost on aren't you?
No quite the opposite. By campaigning as "we aren't those guys", Democrats can get away with having no serious legislative agenda and just make sure their donors' applecarts stay upright. That's what they do. It's a huge problem. Notice how they never actually fix anything?
You’re right that they don’t want to end democracy. A case can be made, however, that they just want the power and control to do what they want to do as well which is usually just enough small potatoes to keep voters happy while still lining the pockets of THEIR rich friends.
The times they’ve had control of the senate and house with a democratic president has amounted to nothing big or great for codifying some human rights (roe v wade) or even passing some major reforms for the country.
I’m guessing the OP has all that mind when they made their comment and they aren’t exactly wrong. However, I don’t know what the right answer is because humans are so corruptable, but the democrats are the lesser of two evils currently.
Please don’t cherry pick a tiny statement in an entire explanation of thinking and present it as a “gotcha”.
Look, I voted democrat, but anyone arguing that they are also not corrupt is a moron. They are waaaaaay LESS corrupt, but they’re still corrupt and they haven’t made big moves that they could when they have had the power.
It's sad that we're in an era where any accountability at all is considered hostility to party. Even nuanced, well thought out takes get shit on. It's as if everybody wants to be subjected to worse and worse times. We all need to realise that the flaws of the corporate Democrat world are holding us back, and no that is not to suggest the crimes of corporate Democrats are comparable to those of the virtual entirety of current Republican leaders who are actively trying to dismantle the system itself, but status quo politicians of any party have got to get put in check or we're only going to continue to suffer as a whole.
Fundamentally the problem is literally voting. Specifically first past the post voting. There is no viable mechanism to have more than two parties in a first past the post voting system and with only two parties you're forced into voting against someone rather than for someone. Both parties oppose proportional voting systems specifically because they know it would weaken them, although only the GOP has specifically banned ranked choice voting in state and county elections.
The very first step (but certainly not the last) in fixing our democracy must be to replace first past the post with some kind of proportional voting system. That is the only way we'll get more political parties that better reflect the actual desires and opinions of the American public which in turn will help curb corruption in the political parties.
Correct, they aren't. They're not great, but they didn't try to overturn a free and fair election and then protect the people that orchestrated it.
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The only “blind side” that I’ve observed since Trump entered politics is from journalists and media corporations that continuously bend over backwards to give him the benefit of the doubt, while doing literally the opposite for people on the other side of the spectrum like Sanders or AOC.
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