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Comment by xp84 | Hacker News Reader

I’m a lot less worried about corruption in a country that has real elections. Trump is corrupt. He is exceptionally corrupt. But he won’t be President forever. If we elect Trump Jr. or something, well, that’s on us.

In Africa, the winner of elections is usually known up front because they’re not real. One clan/party rules until another one stages a successful bloody coup, and repeat on a 1/5/10/20 year cycle depending on the country.

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Oh, my bad for not considering that America has never had any attempts to meddle with elections[1][2][3], or a bloody coup attempt. Its institutions are strong and irs system of checks and balances is unimpeachable.

1. One of Jimmy Carter's autobiography mentions how corrupt Georgia's elections were/are

2. Jeb Bush stole the election for his brother

3. America has a long history of disenfranchisement

Yes, in our advanced utopia the winning politician is not known up front, we get to pick from the two politicians who managed to accumulate the most debts to corporate interests! It's much better.

I'd like to point out that at least we still have that blunt instrument of a two-party system: The ability to vote The Other Team into power to punish The Current Team. We used this power most recently to punish Team Blue for causing runaway inflation and pushing for unpopular social policies. And we used it 4 years before to punish Team Red for being unprofessional and doing a chaotic job of managing the first year of COVID.

Compare this to China or Russia, where the way to punish the ruling party is "you don't" - or Africa where the way to punish the ruling party is to try to amass enough Kalashnikovs and get enough of the various clans on board to stage the next coup.

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