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Comment by freddie_mercury | Hacker News Reader

I don't think corporate election influence or mass media really have anything to do with it.

The issue first showed up in 1828 election, when some of the Framers were still alive, and the US basically did nothing about it over the ensuing 200 years.

Remember it was Andrew Jackson who went around ignoring Supreme Court decisions and saying "they made their decision, let's see them enforce it".

And his abuse of executive powers during the Bank Wars to punish political enemies led to the formation of a new political party.

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> "they made their decision, let's see them enforce it"

This was one lesson the common people never wanted to learn because it was so much easier to live on the belief that their system is intrinsically immune to abuse, it's just better, magically almost. It was bolstered by the same people's desire to feel better by pointing fingers at the "weak fools" living under dictatorships, incapable to fight. "We have rights and guns, we'll pick up arms and fight any abuse".

But when the abuses came pouring almost everyone piffled, living on the next belief that time will fix things. Sometimes it did. Or maybe one of these times will bring the shocking realization that it's easy to talk big in good times and hard to act in bad times when your skin is in the game.

  > I don't think corporate election influence or mass media had anything to do with it

Always risky to allow the implication that money or propaganda isn't central to power/influence.

>I don't think corporate election influence or mass media really have anything to do with it.

Is any particular group overrepresented there? Hairy, long hooked nose? I'm talking about white cishetero men of course, this is all their fault. We need to have more, and by more, I mean ALL, such people to be non-cishetero non-white non-men.

You just invert identity politics to your liking and call it a solution without touching problem descriptions, root causes and potential true solutions.

Identity politics is at the core of the right, its a huge part of the problem. And you yield it just upside down...

Dark Money has nothing to do with being able to consolidate power, gerrymander, and reduce the system to a two-party system whose members seem to be mostly under the influence of their own desire for gain? Which brings us back to the money…

Are you kidding? No other democracy spends this much on campaigns.

https://theconversation.com/the-scale-of-us-election-spendin...

Would you like to argue money has no influence on political outcomes? Please go ahead.

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