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Citizens United was a tipping point. If corporations are people and can give without limit to political campaigns, then only corporate choices will win. The others won't even make the ballot. It is 100% a fix.
Was there democracy before Citizens United? Maybe. Certainly more than now.
I'm not super knowledgeable on American donation laws, are there limits to how much a "person" can donate to a campaign? In Canada it's limited to around CAD$3000-$5000 but I guess if corporations (sorry, "people"), can dump tons of cash into campaigns it means there's no limit in the US?
It does.
However, corporations are not people when it comes to consequences.
It's yet another classic example of socialize the risk, privatize the profit.
This. Corporations on paper should have consequences like a person. In practice, they can do whatever they want, because the US Government worships capitalism. More so than the people.
I honestly might make a non-profit that just makes everyone resisting this regime into a corporate entity.
I'ma dumb-fuck so help is needed.
Fun idea, unfortunately what empowers those corporations, besides the system they thrive in, is the fact that they have immense wealth commandeered by a select few, not their sole legal status.
Yeah rip
If corporations are people, they should be able to be given the death sentance. I can think of a few that are directly responsible for the deaths of a lot of people, and all they had to do was pay some fines/lawsuits. DuPont comes to mind.
There are limits on how much can be donated to a campaign and how hidden those amounts and donors can be to an extent. But there are no limits on how much somebody not associated or affiliated with the campaign can spend on messaging for the campaign. This is where Super PACs and dark money come in.
Overturn Citizens United.
This is exactly what people said would happen when citizen united happened yet nobody did anything to stop or reverse it. It's not like Democrats didn't have the option to do so, they just didn't care either
What the US needs is a parliamentary democracy
That is, besides it needing to break up into 50 independent countries because it's obvious by now that a few of the states are dead set of fucking everyone else over just to ensure their racism, bigotry, and religion gets forced down everyone's throat everywhere.
Let it break in into independent states, and the red states will turn into third world banana republic dictatorships within a few years and won't be able to feed their own population. They'll get what they want for themselves and the rest of the US states can independently continue becoming civilized nations.
No, you aren’t, and haven’t been for my entire fucking life.
The U.S. has never been a democracy, never mind within our lifetimes. If voting is all that’s required to be a democracy then so are both China and Russia.
Gerrymandering, the practise of drawing funky voting districts to skew the results has been a practise since the early 1800s. Even so, votes don’t count on an individual basis.
In essence, politicians can manipulate districts to ensure that they come out as a majority despite having a minority base. If your vote loses in a district, it essentially doesn’t count. Further, if you win, it doesn’t go towards a presidential candidate, it goes to a some dipshit electorate who is meant to represent your voice in a separate vote, but they could decide to vote against your interests anyway. Then there’s the whole two party system aspect.
I get why people don’t vote. It’s entirely pointless because the system is a sham. The only winning move is to break it down and build something new.
I keep seeing responses along these lines and I feel that, while essentially correct, they oversimplify the situation in ways that are misleading.
The US government has undergone a huge qualitative change in the last year. It was far from perfect before then, but the rule of law, however badly realized, is now gone. The mechanisms are still there, and could still be restored, but when we have to ask whether the executive branch will abide by court rulings, we do not have it at present.
The current situation had its origin around fifty years ago, when the rich took over the Republican party, stopped acting in good faith, and began seriously gaming the system to take power and become richer. Before that, there were still plenty of issues, but we had been heading in the direction of improved civil rights and better protections for individual citizens. Now we have a two-party system where one of them does not represent most of its own members and is intent on completely subjugating the other party. It does not want to govern, it wants to rule.
Our system of government has always had problems, it has never been entirely fair, but it had been gradually improving over time. Acting as if nothing special has happened with that lately is ingenuous.
Couldn’t agree more.
However, yea, votes don’t count on an individual basis, that’s inherent to any decision making system that evenly splits decision making power between thousands of people of not millions (if not billions if you’d even hope for an actual world wide democracy)
That’s even the whole point of it. And no, I don’t mean that in the sense of how liberal democracies with unbridled capitalism make the average vote/voice meaningless compared to what a billionaire can achieve by spending only the tinyest fraction of his wealth. Indeed, a true democracy would and should make the individual vote/voice of any individual by theirselves meaningless, and that should include billionaires, self-serving autocrats and what not.
Um.... no
Was really hoping he would realize he's old as fuck and just go full out calling for violent revolution. There is still time.
“No.” Responds everyone that tired of stupid fucking question like this- in place of actual action.
Shit or get off the pot- ALL OF YOU.
The US was never really a democracy. It's an oligarchy.
Short answer: No.
Vivian Wilson should run for city council just to watch her father squirm