[fulafel]

I think this is attributing too much agency to "government". Voters wanted slavery, and so public officials supported it. Voters wanted wars and a surveillance state after 9/11. Etc. (Same goes for the good things that the public sector does, of course)

Yes there is inertia and self-perpetuation, like in any organisations, but not overwhelmingly much.

[coldtea]

>I think this is attributing too much agency to "government". Voters wanted slavery, and so public officials supported it.

The voters vote what they're told to -- and they're told to by those in power who can pay for campaigns, have their pals in party positions, etc.

Plus, the voters get all kinds of stuff that benefit the powerful that they never explicitly asked or voted for, and that were never on any platform. Even whole wars can be promoted onto them...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/posters-sold-world-wa...

Besides, there were tons of dirt poor whites picking cotton in the South. And they had no slaves, the were closer to slaves themselves...

It's more poor vs rich, than white vs black. Even if poor whites were also racist, those plantations weren't owned by poor white folk either...

[fulafel]

Taking this view lets the voters off the hook too easily. Citizens often genuinely want things that are bad for a bunch of other people. Look at the immigration/refugee related polling for example. Or climate change inaction.

Sure the public opinion is affected by PR efforts, but people still possess facilities for critical thinking, and everyone knows to be critical about political claims rather than take them at face value.

[coldtea]

>Taking this view lets the voters off the hook too easily. Citizens often genuinely want things that are bad for a bunch of other people. Look at the immigration/refugee related polling for example. Or climate change inaction.

Voters might want lots of things, but do they get them though, when those things don't align with what those in power want?

[stickdogg]

The truth is that not "everyone" knows to be critical about political nonsense. Plus, most people I encounter in this state of PA have no idea what the term "critical thinking" implies; let alone deliberately practice it. PA is in the dark ages compared to Seattle. It's extremely sad to see.

[dsfyu404ed]

Hate to break it to you but critical thinking is just as lacking in progressive urban areas. Seattle, Boston, Denver, NYC, (let alone the valley) are chock full of idiots who do not think about how public policy impacts anyone but themselves. You just don't judge as critically when it's your people.

[mr_spothawk]

yah, but the Steelers! did u see that game last weekend?

/s

[chii]

> voters vote what they're told to

who's "they"?

[coldtea]

I think that the syntactic structure makes it pretty clear that "they" refers to the voters.

[chii]

i think i was unclear in what i meant - who are the people telling the voters what to do?

[graedus]

Broadly, those with power and money. Having enough money to lobby congress is one manifestation of that. Having enough money to wage large multichannel PR campaigns on the population is another. Funding think tanks, funding PACs, ownership of or influence over the major media outlets.

People with this kind of power and money form a series of formal and informal interlocking networks, and often interests align across most or all of those networks. Tax cuts for the rich and for corporations is perhaps the most obvious one. Pushing for war might be a bit less unanimous, but wars do produce near-immediate profits for the military-industrial complex and those invested in it, and potential future business opportunities for other sectors (for example if the war results in regime change, which leads to an opening of previously closed markets, the sale of state-owned businesses and assets, etc).

[marcosdumay]

I think it's patently clear who is telling the voters how to vote. People usually call those by "the media" or something like that.

It is also clear who is telling the media what to say.

The one thing that is not clear at all is how much the media actually influence voters. I don't think there's as much influence as the OP was trying to convey, but well, as I said, this is not clear.

[coldtea]

Well, those with power and money and lobbyists and politicians in their pockets and mass media...

From Murdoch to Bezos and NRA...

[stickdogg]

I know that's right.

[jMyles]

This seems like a differently-worded variant of "we get the government we vote for." But that conclusion has been convincingly rejected by sound political science for quite a while now.

The policy preferences of the voting constituency in any given national election are not strongly correlated to policy results. This is shown convincingly in Benjamin Ginsberg's book, "Do Elections Matter?" I strongly recommend this book - after reading it, you will never again try to explain away an act of government by attributing it to voter sentiment.

It is a difficult-to-deny fact that, in the USA, the government frequently and quietly advances policies which do not appear to be derived from any kind electoral mandate, nor are favored by a substantial portion of the electorate.

[visarga]

Government represents the interests of capital, not of ordinary people.

[haZard_OS]

I'm interested in the concept but do you have a suggestion for a book published more recently? "Do Elections Matter?" was published almost 30 years ago.

[tsbertalan]

Well, there's [1], but see also references in this Vox article, which hedges that somewhat: [2]

[1] https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-... [2] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...

[fulafel]

It's not exactly the same idea. But of course I would be interested in hearing if the referenced book could explain away my observations of government/popular opinion alignment in the issues discussed. Random chance is of course one possibility.

[wallace_f]

I am not so sure about that. Did voters ever vote on the surveillance state? Wars like Iraq, Vietnam, etc, were created by lies that would not exist without this agency. The WMD lies and Gulf of Tonkin lies have been well documented in respectable news outlets, so it is not like these are at all conspiracy theories.

Yesterday was May 4th, the anniversary of when the agency in government murdered unarmed, peaceful war protestors at Kent State, then 11 days later bayonetted about a dozen peaceful war protestors at University of New Mexico.

These are not things free people compelled their government to do.

[fulafel]

I'm sure we both know that voters vote for representatives, not laws, so that question is not applicable. But in general, there has been popular support for things like "patriot act", and wars, as measured in polls.

[called_it]

There has also been even more support for the opposite, so that's just more sophistry.

[fulafel]

Iraq war and patrioct act both saw more support than opposition in polls, when they happened (law passed, invasion was started).

Wars did get less popular when they went badly, so you can argue that they would have been shorter if public officials would have retreated when polls turned against them. But that's a separate discussion.

[mr_spothawk]

polls are stated in such a way ... theyre part of the control

[nasredin]

Voters wanted Iraq War when they voted Bush in 2004.

I remember those "love it or leave it" years well.

[u801e]

> Voters wanted wars and a surveillance state after 9/11.

It could be argued that voters were manipulated towards that point of view.

[stickdogg]

Watch zeitgeist on YouTube and you can discover the true story of what occurred on 9/11.