[lapcat]

The two parties are not the same, but the privately funded electoral system of the US applies to all parties. Democrats cannot escape the corrupting influence of money.

Consider, as a revealing example, the Patriot Act of 2001. There was more resisitance to it from Democrats than from Republicans, yet there was still not nearly enough resistance. In the Senate, the vote was 98-1, with only Democrat Russ Feingold against. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriot_Act?#Legislative_histo...

In my "free speech zone" link above, the Democrats were the first to use that blatant violation of free speech, at their national convention.

Republicans take advantage of the precedents set by both parties.

[johnnyanmac]

>Democrats cannot escape the corrupting influence of money.

They could. These are not people struggling to pay rent, they do not live paycheck to paycheck. Heck, the median age of congress is 58 so a good portion of them are free to retire and never work another day in their lives.

But they in general choose not to escape it. The money, the networks, the power. I guess the sad thing is that the populace aren't aware enough to properly primary anyone who does turn their backs on them.

[lapcat]

By "Democrats" I meant the Democratic Party.

Democratic politicans are not a fixed group of people: anyone can run for office. The issue is not so much that money is corrupting otherwise good people. Rather, the issue is that political campaigns are self-financed, and wealthy donors put their money behind candidates who they know to be friendly to their interests. The wealthy do not fund candidates who are unfriendly to their interests and indeed may throw their money behind an opponent, or just directly fund "interest groups" that malign candidates whom the wealthy dislike.

> I guess the sad thing is that the populace aren't aware enough to properly primary anyone who does turn their backs on them.

The fundamental problem is that primary campaigns require money, just like general election campaigns. The situation may be even worse for primary campaigns, because the news media provides much less free coverage for primary campaigns than for general elections campaigns. And the news media tends to distribute coverage based on "electability," which is invariably a euphemism for the ability to raise campaign funds.

[johnnyanmac]

>The fundamental problem is that primary campaigns require money, just like general election campaigns

That's part of the thing that irks me. In the age of the internet, I just don't get how and why money needs to correlate with outreach. As the most extreme examole: is 1 billion in funding really getting your name out there more than 2 billion? And is 1 billion really doing a better Job than 50m that's hyper focused on engaging the right audiences smartly? That's a big part of how you "disrupt an industry" here in tech. Get modest funds and focus efforts on what the core. Not all the bells and whistles.

Maybe among older audiences who rely on traditional media, but the internet doesn't scale that well with throwing money to compete (we can look at Google+, Mixer, and many gaming storefronts as examples). I feel there's gonna be a shift in this thinking as legacy media dies out and there's too many internet newscasters to pay off and weave a narrative.

[actionfromafar]

Pushing youtube channels, buying spots in podcasts, meta ads, google ads, AI ads, AI alignment. It's all money game.

[throwaway173738]

What do you want people to do about the current crisis? What action could be taken to resolve the situation today?

[lapcat]

This appears to be a marked change in subject. How are your questions directly responding to my comment?

I would say that, if taken literally, resolving the situation today is not possible. We're currently living in a deep hole that was a very long time in the making (one might even say hundreds of years in the making), and it would likely take a very long time to climb our way out of it. There's no magical, immediate solution.

The US political system has always been corrupted by money, but modern technology has enabled a vast increase in the scale and efficiency of such corruption. It used to be said, "all politics is local," but now it might be said that all politics is international.

[tdeck]

Just to add to this.

We (many people) voted for Biden in 2020, and that was supposed to be at least part of the solution. What happened? He appointed an AG who he knew would drag his feet and not hold Trump accountable. He continued Trump's illegal asylum policies and even kept building Trump's border wall. They played chicken with Republicans to see who could shovel more money into ICE, and spent 4 years repeating Republican anti-immigrant fear mongering but then saying "we shouldn't go that far on policy". They did almost nothing about Roe V. Wade being overturned, despite having an unprecedented leak that gave them months of notice before the decision.

And what was done to fundamentally restrain the power of the presidency in preparation for the possibility of a Trump win? Well, we had a lot of talk about "norms" and finger wagging. I'm sure glad that finger and those norms are here to protect people I care about now. If only there were something more they could have done.

[srean]

Same with Obama. He let Bush and Bush's administration get away with 0 accountability.

[johnnyanmac]

we didn't get here in a day, or even a decade. So it won't be solved overnight.

But sure, in the ideal world:

1. Call every bluff Trump makes. Do not capitulate to anything. Drown him in lawsuits. He's lost at least a 3rd of the DOJ so they cannot handle suing every company, college, and state at once.

2. Anyone in a red and especially purple states, make it a habit to call your represenatives every day. emails can (and probably will be) ignored. Don't let their lines be anything but people telling these congressmen to knock it off and actually do their jobs. Collorary: anyone in a blue state calls in and makes sure their congressmen know they need to also resist, fight back, and not capitulate.

3. If you can, townhalls are even better than calling. If you see the local townhalls you know this scares the GOP congressmen stiff.

4. if you see federal agents in the wild, always be recording. The truth is the beth antidote to corruption. Make sure you livestream as well so they can't just seize your phone. The more live feed out there the harder it is to spin.

5. heck, if we're really dreaming big we plan some general strike. Shut down the country for a day and you'll have everyone reeling to try and backpedal.

Varying levels of realism there, but the theme is clear: resist and make sure others resist. They can't ignore us all if we work together. But that "working together" in such a hyper-individualistic society is the hard part. It may just be more realistic to wait until someone dies or midterms happen.