• givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s not an accident.

      The Uber wealthy discovered they can donate to both parties to get the same economic policy, and that the two would differentiate on social issues.

      Regardless of which party wins, the rich never lose.

        • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You might be able to find an article somewhere, but billionaires own all the media, so it doesn’t get talked about much.

          But look at the rise of American neoliberalism.

          In the 1990s a wing of the Democratic party started pushing the same economic policy as republicans. To differentiate the republicans started becoming more extreme. And the neoliberals kept going more “conservative” economically to win over republicans. Which didn’t really work, but no matter what happened the party leaders would claim it’s because they hadn’t moved far enough right economically.

          The result is what we see today.

          The neoliberals wing has changed their labels a couple of times, but are still doing the same shit.

          And voters are left voting against their own economic interests every election, because there’s simply no other option.

          Even abstaining isn’t an option, because republicans are slightly worse on economic policy, and absolutely batshit on social policy. Which is why voter turnout is so low.

          • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            You might be able to find an article somewhere, but billionaires own all the media, so it doesn’t get talked about much.

            They also own the search engines that would show the thousands of private blog articles that are talking about it, so you’ll be hard pressed to find them.

        • RagingHungryPanda@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.

          • Julius Nyerere

          Just a quote I remembered and thought was funny… and sad

        • KermitLeFrog@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Lots of people on YouTube talk about this a lot. It’s something that you won’t really find a direct source for, but is obvious once you start looking into it. Reagan changed everything in the US, after his presidency every president since has pushed neoliberal policies. Low social spending, low taxes, lots of bailouts and subsidies.

          It applies to the parties as a whole too. Republicans create a problem, Democrats say they want to fix it but can’t because Republicans are blocking them, they wait for everyone to forget about it and then they do it all over again. When Democrats have full power they could go back and fix those problems but they never do. And they never get anything done when they have the power. They just move the goalposts, focusing on problems that require help from whichever part of government is Republican controlled. That way they can pretend they’re trying to do something and blame Republicans for blocking it.

        • abraham_linksys@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Not directly related, but look up how many people are represented by all the republican vs democrat senators in US Congress. I’m pretty sure in the current nearly perfectly split Senate that the Democrats represent around 40 million more people than the Republican senators do. It’s fucked, they get elected for culture war nonsense and then can do whatever they want as long as they fight the culture war of the week and coast into reelection.

        • RayJW@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          This is only slightly related, but this video I just watched yesterday explains extremely well what the relation between the media (read the rich) and US politics mostly is, sadly.

      • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        My pet theory is that the two parties are a competition between different factions of the wealthy, with finance capital controlling the Democrats and industrial capital controlling the Republicans. That’s why it seems like Democrats want everyone to be white collar workers and Republicans want everyone to be blue collar workers.

    • crusa187@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Same. I think our best bet for now is for the repugnantcons to split, and the corpo dems join the corpo repugs as an official corporate party. Then we can have what’s left of the dems, hopefully without the financial influence of the oligarchs.

      • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        How do you propose a candidate would win without the financial support of the oligarchs? Campaigns are won through marketing and marketing is expensive. If you have the most money and a catchy slogan, you win.

        • crusa187@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          I think what you’re describing is the current reality, and so we would need a paradigm shift. It could happen via a mass cultural awakening, where people decide the rich should not be the ones ruling their lives. This is in fact the essence of American democracy. I believe this is already happening, you just don’t hear about it on TV.

          We’d have to demand that candidates run on, and elect them on, policy. This is the tricky part…turning a blind eye to America’s greatest export, advertising and marketing (propaganda).