c_hawkbob wrote:No, it's the weakness a democracy corrupted by unchecked capitalism. Take the corporate contributions, pacs and lobbyists out of the equation, give us ranked choice voting and mandated equal press coverage, campaign financing and advertising of fairly selected qualified candidates and democracy would be working just fine. Campaign finance reform is key. Right now money is driving everything, and making the rules to keep it that way.
A lot of those reforms are needed. They would at least improve some of this. We really need to tamp down on for profit political media/entertainment.
We're pretty far from unchecked capitalism. We live in a heavily regulated, high tax capitalist society with availability to massive amounts of information and we still cannot get things done that would be good for the nation and recently voted in a reality TV star loon that seemingly intelligent people voted for. When you're taking an average of 20% or more of the productive activity of the vast majority of Americans with sales, property, and state and federal income tax and more taxes, you are not dealing with unchecked capitalism. We have massive regulation and taxation of business at the local, state, and federal level.
You talk to these folks like I do. You have to see how many are ridiculously ill-informed on a wide variety of issues. We have to write for an 8th grade reading level for the widest possible information delivery. If someone can only read at an 8th grade level, can they really make a quality informed decisions on complex matters of government? I'm thinking likely not. In fact, I can't think of a period in this nation's history or any nation for that matter where it occurred and we are probably the closest.
It is documented history that a small minority of humans have always carried us forward in government, technology, science, economics, and just about everything due to the inequity of intelligence, education, and all things associated. Until we see some leaders step forward that can put us on a better path by gaining the trust of enough of the masses, we're stuck.
Then again, we're living better than most of the world. Americans tend to be taught to be unhappy with their lot because we want constant improvement. We have one of the highest standards of living in the world, especially for the size of the nation. I still think much of the unhappiness of people is media driven. Nothing has been more poisonous than for profit political media. That needs to be tamped down at some point. For profit political media is terrible for a nation, not as bad as the media being owned by the government like China or Russia, but still pretty damn divisive and disruptive to a nation.