And whom do you suppose would be writing those regulations? Of course the answer to this question is the very same reason that the tech giants will not be split up. We have a mountain of rules and regulations and anti-competitive behavior, price fixing, and all other sorts of stuff. And then we have Time Warner/Comcast openly agreeing to not compete, charging arbitrarily high prices, and the FTC apparently deciding there's no such thing as a merger that might lead to reduced competition. Then you have the head of Comcast golfing, partying, and most importantly fundraising like a fiend for the former president.
One of our two political parties is campaigning on a platform to reign in this type of campaign finance influence:
"Democrats would use their first month in the House majority to advance sweeping changes to future campaign and ethics laws, requiring the disclosure of shadowy political donors, outlawing the gerrymandering of congressional districts and restoring key enforcement provisions to the Voting Rights Act, top Democratic leaders said on Tuesday."
Everybody says this before elections. Trump was going to 'drain the swamp' and Obama was going to take down k-street influence. Then they get into office, tip their hat, and turn their back until the next election when suddenly they're incredible again, or at least they promise they will be. Obama ended up creating a special executive chair to let a Monsanto VP take control of the FDA, tried to jam the corporate written TPP through in the most undemocratic and secretive way possible, chose not to even try to hold the banks accountable for collapsing the economy, and so much more. Trump's apparently decided his go-to man on foreign policy and national security is none other than John 'Yellowcake' Bolton.
That old joke really is true. How do you know when a politician is lying? Their lips are moving.
It’s much more fashionable and edgy to point at any failure and then judge their entire administration on solely that point. Don’t forget to dramatically overestimate the presidents ability to effect change in the government as a whole, and instead hold them accountable for congressional obstruction.
Indeed it does! We live in a democracy and we have the ability to elect literally nearly anybody we'd like for any office. And fewer Americans than ever strongly identify as either republican or democrat. Yet, somehow, republicans and democrats make up nearly 100% of all office holders at all levels of American government. Isn't this interesting?
The reason is tribalism, and more specifically politicians becoming extremely adept at driving and exploiting tribalism. Many of the issues held as cornerstones by both parties are ones that are relatively unimportant. The reason they are held as cornerstones is because they do an extremely good job of dividing people. The reason for the desire to divide is because it helps both establishment parties to maintain a grip on power.
How? In the most recent presidential election what percent of people do you think voted for Hillary thinking 'Yes, this person truly represents what I value most and will make a great president.' By contrast what percent voted for her because the alternative was simply unacceptable? And similarly for those that voted for Trump. By focusing all of their energy on dividing people it makes people ignore the failings of their preferred side and instead focus on the awfulness of their less preferred side. This, in turn, does a fantastic job of getting people to vote against their own interest. And, in turn, this also encourages both sides of the political spectrum to play up to their own villainy (from the other side's perspective).
By continuing to vote for the 'least awful' choice instead of the choice people actually want, this system will be perpetuated indefinitely.
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Interestingly enough, I think the efforts made towards sharply dividing people started to happen around the early 90s. And something happened then that was probably not just a coincidence. Ross Perot, at one point, looked set to win the US presidential election. He was polling ahead of both Bush and Clinton. He ultimately ended up taking 18% of the vote and, at the minimum, working as a spoiler. Ross Perot was a complete outsider. And he got those tens of millions of votes running a straight forward platform that he advertised on public broadcasting and infomercials. All these fancy political campaigns, teams, and political strategery was was nearly upstaged by this [1] guy with some printed out graphs and plain speaking.
And so it looks like works on min-maxing elections went into overdrive since then. It just turns out that getting people ragingly mad at each other over inane issues turns out to be one of the best ways to keep getting elected. And so yes, I do think pointing out how both parties in the US are complete trash does help solve the problem. What we need is people to stop being so scared and tribal. Instead vote for whoever you think will do the best job, instead of trying to decide who's "electable" and will do the least awful job. Trump, if nothing else, should show that the notion of "electability" is a complete lie and tool to maintain power. Anybody is "electable", anybody is "presidential". Vote for who you want instead of kicking in that cognitive dissonance, pretending the future won't be exactly like the past, and voting for the exact same idiots over and over.
