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The thing we have called "democracy" for the past three hundred or so years is basically just shadow government by whoever has the deepest pockets to influence

by OroPla 2mo ago

The thing we have called "democracy" for the past three hundred or so years is basically just shadow government by whoever has the deepest pockets to influence public opinion with propaganda and pay politicians to do what they want. The politicians get blamed and cycled out while everything continues as before.

parineum 2mo ago
If that were true Hillary Clinton would have been president.
- waffletower 2mo ago
  Money is deep on both "sides". It didn't help Harris to have the most either. But you can't deny that some political steerage toward donor agendas occurs.
- imglorp 2mo ago
  She won the popular vote by a mile, he won the electoral vote. Some would say she should have been.
  - nomel 2mo ago
    Nobody with cursory knowledge of the US voting system would though. Edit: to the downvotes, our system doesn't care about popular vote, and neither do the most democratic/left left leaning states, who don't care to use proportional voting.
dathinab 2mo ago
no this way of thinking, is not very useful and can be pretty harmful, just because something is imperfect doesn't mean it's fully broken. Just because people have always manipulated democracy doesn't mean it "basically just shadow government". And sure, the US is a very bad case, _especially_ in recent years. But also let's not forgot that for most of it's history just one of the countless scandals of Trump would have been enough to highly risk impeachment for a president and be equal to political suicide. I.e. there has been quite a bit of limits on corruption and influences from behind the scene. It's just that the US went and broke itself. And yes a two party system was never truly democratic, it's still better then a one party system nor the same as a full shadow government. Which brings us to another point, there never was "the" shadow government, just many different people which had way to much influence behind the scene in not so democratic ways. A shadow government implies some form of organization/structure which actually governs and then puppets in front, but that was never really the case in the US AFIK. Even today it isn't as a lot of the escalating corruption is just pretty much out in the open by the governing people, instead of in any shadow, by people not in a official position.

by OroPla 2mo ago

parineum 2mo ago

If that were true Hillary Clinton would have been president.

waffletower 2mo ago
Money is deep on both "sides". It didn't help Harris to have the most either. But you can't deny that some political steerage toward donor agendas occurs.
imglorp 2mo ago
She won the popular vote by a mile, he won the electoral vote. Some would say she should have been.
- nomel 2mo ago
  Nobody with cursory knowledge of the US voting system would though. Edit: to the downvotes, our system doesn't care about popular vote, and neither do the most democratic/left left leaning states, who don't care to use proportional voting.

dathinab 2mo ago

no this way of thinking, is not very useful and can be pretty harmful, just because something is imperfect doesn't mean it's fully broken. Just because people have always manipulated democracy doesn't mean it "basically just shadow government". And sure, the US is a very bad case, _especially_ in recent years. But also let's not forgot that for most of it's history just one of the countless scandals of Trump would have been enough to highly risk impeachment for a president and be equal to political suicide. I.e. there has been quite a bit of limits on corruption and influences from behind the scene. It's just that the US went and broke itself. And yes a two party system was never truly democratic, it's still better then a one party system nor the same as a full shadow government. Which brings us to another point, there never was "the" shadow government, just many different people which had way to much influence behind the scene in not so democratic ways. A shadow government implies some form of organization/structure which actually governs and then puppets in front, but that was never really the case in the US AFIK. Even today it isn't as a lot of the escalating corruption is just pretty much out in the open by the governing people, instead of in any shadow, by people not in a official position.