Occupy…
The way primaries are carried out in the US is radically undemocratic. Candidates show up to a town — loads of publicity, a lot of ads and the money came from who-knows-where with all sorts of secret strings attached… They mostly talk about what they believe you’ll like to hear.
elections, as many of you probably know by now, have become bidding wars, usually between a few billionaires and corporations, with the public at times confused with all the propaganda they’re being fed and reluctantly choosing their fate without proper information or total understanding.
It’s not just elections. In the US, even within congress, if someone wants a position with a certain degree of power and authority, they literally have to buy it.
Committee chairs used to be granted by a political party on the basis of seniority, service and other factors. Now, you literally have to pay the party to be a candidate for a chair.
That has an effect, it drives members of congress into the same pockets if they want to get anywhere.
This is not 100% of the time but these are pretty widespread tendencies and are fragmenting whatever is left of functioning democracy.
Wealth will always try to use its wealth and power to take over the political system as much as possible. The public has to find ways to fight & struggle against this. rulers still can overcome the concept of democracy, and turn a democracy into basically a kingdom or dictatorship, and that’s by the controlling of opinions and attitudes. Methods like propaganda, consumerism and stirring up ethnic hatred will always go on but we have to find ways to resist it.
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Conservatives are still a large section of the population and we should respect their natural beliefs and inclinations as all viewpoints should be carefully considered and respected. unfortunately most republican leaders are just using those beliefs to service a finacial or corporate agenda, one which commonly hurts the average person. democrats do it too to some extent but republicans are much more obvious about it.
The Republican party have abandoned the pretense of being a political party years ago. They’re uniformly committed, and with such dedication, to tiny sectors of power and profit that they’re hardy a political party anymore.
They have to do something to get a voting constituency so they’ve been mobilising sectors of the population that were always there, but not politically organised very well – religious evangelicals, nativists who are terrified that their rights and country are being taken away, and so on.
To understand someone fully, you must not only listen to their words but also watch their actions. most politicians in the GOP want you to only listen only to their words, and sadly, that works in convincing a lot of people.
But to those who dig deeper and analyse evidence and facts as well as monitor their actions and what they implicate, their actions tell a very different, specific and often terrifying story.
