There's a strong distrust of government across the entire political spectrum. The difference is that one half thinks the solution is to let private corporations handle everything because they have this strange delusion that a corporation actually has their interests in mind beyond the bare minimum to earn a profit. The other half has a delusion that government can be fixed.
I struggle with this one. If they don’t know how to do X, find people that do and hire them as civil servant, with a slightly less than average salary.
I know it’s not that trivial, but I don’t see why conceptually it cannot be fixed?
( asking as a new us citizen btw; I voted for the first time a few month back. Yes, this place is fucked. I will probably not retire here. Or even stay that long.
But there is a few things going for us. For instance direct democracy is more alive than most. Electing judges, specifically in that debatable precedent system… is really powerful and readily accessible.)
Sometimes these combine. Like, if the state wants to build a new road, they'll give the contract to whoever is going to donate the most to the governor's campaign during the next election, even if that means it costs a lot more.
It doesn't help that our voting system creates a scenario that will always devolve into just two political parties. Any third party candidate ends up being a spoiler for a similar party and guarantees a victory for the other major party. This is why Democrats are hoping Trump runs for President as a third party, as it would split the Republican vote and hand the Democrats an effortless win.
We only have direct democracy for local and state offices. Presidential elections are not a direct democracy.
The first one should be harshly reign in IMO. Having strict and enforced limitation on donations works. The proof : crooked politician try to get around it and are sometime getting caught. ( sarkozy, chirac )
Second one is more mechanical: having > 2 parties allow politics to happen.