Last week was the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision enshrining the idea that money in politics is not corruption, but constitutionally protected speech. States and cities across the US are battling the rotten legacy of that decision.
Last week was the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision enshrining the idea that money in politics is not corruption, but constitutionally protected speech. States and cities across the US are battling the rotten legacy of that decision.
This and Citizens United gave the rich and Russia all they needed to destroy democracy.
Fuck now we got trump crypto openly taking money as corrupt as possible from countries all over the world, especially Saudi Arabi.
Come on, this is all homegrown fascism. Sure, it benefits Russia, because the US being alienated from her allies is obviously beneficial to Russia, but Trump is corrupted mainly by American fascist interests, in my opinion.
I hope we don’t repeat the mistake of not prosecuting the wealthy. By refusing to take down the bastards, the Roosevelt administration basically gave permission for fascism to grow.
Democrats have always been complicit with fascism. The entire two party system and capitalism itself must be destroyed for freedom to reign.
While a lot of the fuel was present the Ruskies most certainly added to it and helped ignite the current fire. Otherwise it’d probably still look like the 1990s militia movement.
There’s no denying that Russia has done a lot to foment far-right sentiment, but the idea that the US couldn’t or wouldn’t destroy democracy without Russian interference is ridiculous
The idea that the US ever had a real democracy in the first place is pretty suspect. The way the Senate was designed to prevent the people from coming for the rights or property of the wealthy is very telling. They basically knew it was a lie from the start and designed fail-safes to prevent their cronies from losing power.
100%. The American Revolution was a war waged by the rich against the mega rich, and they got poor people to die for it.
Nor am I saying that it wouldn’t happen, but I’d argue the case that they are instrumental in its acceleration and current form. Don’t get me wrong it is almost inevitable that US democracy will end be it with the dissolving of the Union or dictatorship probably followed by the former, but it happening as it has almost requires Russia and honestly 9/11 Bush did a fucken number on the system.
Russia didn’t stir up anything that wasn’t already there, but they definitely stirred. The post 9/11 rush into authoritarianisn is far, far more instrumental, and 9/11 was a very predictable outcome of post-WW2 US foreign policy
Okay Boris
It’s easier and more comforting to imagine that there is some villainous foreigner responsible for all of the evil you see in the world, but actually, America is the home of evil. The truth can be painful, but it will also set you free.
If you can recognize that the global ruling elite don’t care about countries except to use them against eachother, you begin to see that Russia and China are just convenient scapegoats for capitalists in America. In Russia, they blame America and China. In China, they blame Russia and America.
The truth is, they are all playing the exact same game. We’re the pawns in that game.
Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia. Orwell saw the pattern back then. The dynamics and details have shifted greatly, but the essence remains.
I do think you guys should stop quibbling over the detail of who is responsible for the fall of US democracy, though. Russia was an integral component, as the other guy says, and you were right about Russia not being the top of the chain of responsibility. Capital is at the top. Billionaires, corporate execs, the capital class. (Not the Jews, by the way, even though Israelis are prominent in the framework. Jewishness is not the useful part there, it’s the fact that Israel is a colonial project, an outpost of capitalism in the Middle East. The Epstein Files, if anything, has shown us how that works.)
You are both right, and you both agree on the important bit. As do I.