Quote:
Originally Posted by Gnist
More people should take the uncompromising option, and we would have more life in politics.
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Ah, but the prerequisite for that is that people should be more intelligent, informed and discerning. And not be susceptible to mass advertising and propaganda, to empty and meaningless rhetoric. And because this is absent, this is why democracies don't work. This is why the candidate with the biggest war chest can afford to buy more advertising and hence win more votes. And why those who contribute to such a chest have a disproportionate impact on public policy. In the USA, politicians are a commodity just like labor, land, and equipment. If I had $5 billion behind me, I would buy political influence just like I buy other factors of production. As Greg Palast says, the USA is the best democracy money can buy. So forget the waving flags, the balloons, the empty pledges and promises, the worthless rhetoric: the real deals are being made behind closed doors. They just need the rubber stamp of public approval in terms of votes -- by a public that doesn't even know (or maybe even care) about the deals made. This is why the candidates are almost identical -- they've been vetted and bought by the same buyers. Regardless of who gets voted in, the policies will be almost identical. In the rare instances that someone really radical and populist gets in, he will get assassinated.