4 ms·

Campaign finance isn't illegal, nor is it a sign of evil. It's a sign of a broken system, but we have to distinguish between an evil system, and a good system f

Campaign finance isn't illegal, nor is it a sign of evil. It's a sign of a broken system, but we have to distinguish between an evil system, and a good system filled with evil people. American activists would be better served if they had a good notion of a theory of government. The dominant attitude in activism, on any side, these last three or four years, has been one of making the government do X, where X is some extraordinary ill-defined goal. So people are offended when X doesn't happen, and begin to suspect Congressmen are evil. The truth is probably more like this--Congressmen are good people in general, but selected by their appeal to moneyed interests and influential political causes. Then they are thrust into an environment where everyone wants them to do their bidding, and so condition themselves to ignore most sources of information, particularly sources outside their own interest, or sources they don't understand. This appears to an outsider to be like cronyism and willful ignorance. The reality is they haven't a clue about certain things, and in fact that's part of the reason why they got elected... TL;DR: don't fix the people. You won't get anywhere making unrealistic demands on anyone forced to conform to a bad process. Instead, fix the process.

bane 15y ago
Campaign finance isn't illegal, nor is it a sign of evil. I agree with the first part, but not the second. Otherwise there simply wouldn't be a reason to push these numbers out as if they were a sign of some kind of badness. In a representational democracy such as ours, Congress is hired to represent the interests of their constituents not the interests of who pays the most money. That the voice of the constituents appears to not be heard or represented at all is the thing that's wrong. Simply buying your a vote for your interests is not how this is supposed to be working. And the people who can actually change it are the ones who are being bought -- virtually guaranteeing no opportunity for change to occur, despite immense desire from the electorate for exactly that change to occur.

bane 15y ago

Campaign finance isn't illegal, nor is it a sign of evil. I agree with the first part, but not the second. Otherwise there simply wouldn't be a reason to push these numbers out as if they were a sign of some kind of badness. In a representational democracy such as ours, Congress is hired to represent the interests of their constituents not the interests of who pays the most money. That the voice of the constituents appears to not be heard or represented at all is the thing that's wrong. Simply buying your a vote for your interests is not how this is supposed to be working. And the people who can actually change it are the ones who are being bought -- virtually guaranteeing no opportunity for change to occur, despite immense desire from the electorate for exactly that change to occur.