> The difference now is the openness and also the scale.
Yes, we just need to go back to the good ol' days of corruption with decorum
Yes, we just need to go back to the good ol' days of corruption with decorum
(To be clear, I absolutely believe the scale has increased tremendously, but arguing about this is gonna be fruitless because it’s all subjective, there’s no hard numbers for any of it, and anything I can point out, you can just say “well that’s because they’re doing it in the open now, they were always doing it”, which is just as unfalsifiable. There’s basically no good outcome to debating this.)
I was just genuinely curious what somebody with your set of opinions has in mind for a time frame, because "1/100th the corruption" is too vague for me to quantify in my head.
As for arguing, I generally don't expect to change opinions with comments, especially those of whom I'm engaging with directly, so no worries there.
Since Trump. Entirely.
I generally think there’s actually not that much corruption in politics in the US. Mostly just insider trading, if you count by dollar amount. But I think generally there have been studies on the net worth of people before they are elected to public office versus after, and it’s within a few percentage points of the general population. There’s also the issue of lobbying firms hiring ex politicians but to be honest there’s something to be said for an ex-politician as a lobbyist: they have expertise and connections, they’re valuable to lobbying firms even if there’s no favors involved.
What we have now is:
- The president openly hocking a cryptocurrency and making billions off of it
- Taking money for early access to his posts on truth social, which is essentially how he communicates to the public. “Give me money and I’ll tell you first”
- Giving pardons to his supporters in a brazen and obvious way
- Taking donations from private donors to fund his pet projects like the White House ballroom
I could go on but like I said, I’m not really interested in the actual debate here because nobody’s gonna change their minds if they haven’t already.
in the past politicians would steal a little, and there was enough to go around.
a couple of hundred grand on a land deal was OK. but $250B in crypto is just too much.
America is truly lost when people wish their politicians were lying to them more.