The Biggest Political Issue No One Is Taking Seriously
Pop Quiz Time.
What was the public's greatest fear in 2016?
Terrorism? The Economy? Russia? A new season of The Kardashians?
Nope and nope.
It's government corruption.
As the presidential election campaign drags on, it may come as no surprise that corrupt government officials are one of the greatest fears many Americans have, according to a new study.
This isn't an aberration. As many as 81% of Americans think the government is corrupt.
75% and 81% means this isn't a partisan topic.
Normally the voter's greatest fear would be the topic for endless policy debates, committee meetings, and political pundits yelling at each other.
Instead we've gotten an oppressive silence in Washington and the news media.
It's as if the entire establishment doesn't want to talk about the most important issue on people's minds.
It isn't just the political establishment.
Progressives and liberals are guilty of not taking this concern seriously.
For example, consider how people consistently support liberal issues by themselves. Progressives and liberals keep scratching their heads why they won't win more elections when they are on the right side of the issues.
In fact, the reason is obvious, if you listen to people's concerns.
a CNN/ORC poll conducted in February of 2016 showed that the vast majority of Americans believe that the U.S. economic system generally favors the wealthy (71 percent) instead of being fair to most people (27 percent). The idea that income and wealth should be more evenly distributed among Americans has won the support of 60 percent or greater since 2012, but Americans are skeptical that government officials will act to protect their best interests.
When you think about it, it makes perfect sense.
People overwhelmingly agree that we need more equality, more social programs, more of everything you normally associate with the government.
But why would you want to hand over more power and money to a bunch of corrupt assholes?
It's an obvious and important question, and if you can't answer it then your stand on the issues don't matter. You don't win elections.
What's more, it isn't just a case of aiding corruption. It's a case of rational fear.
If you believe the government is both corrupt and heavily armed (and most people do), then fear of Big Government is entirely rational.
If you want a progressive agenda to win, you HAVE TO address this issue.
Just getting rid of corporate money IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH. You need to make fighting corruption a centerpiece of your agenda, just like they did in the Progressive Era.
The plan has to comprehensive, transparent, and on-going. Not a one-off agenda item.
Not taking this issue seriously is enough of a sin by itself to doom any progressive agenda, such as Universal Health Care.
On a related note, incorporating Restoring Civil Liberties would also go a long ways toward restoring faith of the government, reducing fear, and pushing a progressive agenda. People would respond to it.
But like corruption, politicians, pundits, and the news media are silent on the issue.
Comments
It is the biggest political issue.
As long as politicians can be bought and money in politics is legal, human nature and greed will assure someone will get screwed; and it won't be them.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
@dkmich Money and politics CANNOT
Money and politics CANNOT be separated. They are one and the same. Money (along with a monopoly on legalized violence) is the source of government power.
This is the historical moment
to get people united on killing both parties. Left, right, center "everybody knows the game is rotten."
The two-party tyranny has to go and the first step is to get everybody to hound the media into talking about the information posted on the essay.
Forget third party or progressive party talk. For one thing a very large part of the current left-right divide is a media fiction. Some of it is real, but MSM pushes the extreme elements and never mentions the non-partisan commonalities of interests. For another, while D-R is still in play, third parties can't do more than get some changes around the edges.
PS: There's a poll somewhere last year that 88% think neither party gives a hoot for the people; they are only out for themselves, end of story.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
We can hound the media all we want
but they won't respond. The media owners are the same people owning our politicians and they don't want to rock their cozy, corrupt boat. They are anything BUT market-driven. They choose instead to drive the market.
Exactly, the media is no different
than any other paid commercial. They have a specific, scripted message that they want to deliver, and won't give any airtime to conflicting or competing views.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
When the talking heads
and editors get two, three and more million emails and letters one week calling them out on hiding the popular disgust with both parties ... It's a different game then.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
Then they'll re-package
the same shit with a shiny new label. Remember Obama? The MSM is a marketing tool for the enemy.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
The omnipotence of our owners
only lasts until the people force things to happen. The option is to roll over and die. No; "nothing can happen" is more the expression of an emotional state than of rigorous analysis of the Needed and the Possible.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
Nice work, g.
Sharing.
The Brock trolls are being turned loose like demons from
the gates of hell. Bring it on trolls!
Other news. CounterPunch published OPOL's last article.
If you are on FB, you might want to drop by to celebrate his news.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
@dkmich The interwebs tell me
The interwebs tell me today is your birthday. Happy Birthday!
Life is strong. I'm weak, but Life is strong.
Shared on FB. Thanks to you and OPAL.
You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again you did not know. ~ William Wiberforce
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Corruption is why we don't have Single Payer.
And many other things, of course.
Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.
Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.
We are ruled by Sociopaths
When the people in power don't have the ability to love, empathize, care, and/or connect with others, and that concept is not understood by the majority of the populace you have the problems we face today.
Our enemies are ruthless and don't follow or care about the rules of a just society. In reality they view those rules as a lie. A lie that others follow and that they can use to control us with.
To sociopaths life is a series of dominance games. Its time we stoped playing their games, reconnect with each other and finally treat the ruthless among us as the enemies they truly are.
Civilization is sadly slipping towards the Norm.
For recorded history at least, the ability of the people to influence the actions of countries has been at absolute best, severely limited.
For the most part, taxes were just protection money, and the services you get were the king and his men NOT taking everything you own whenever they felt like it.
Of course that's when the church gets involved... And the religious wars involved in which group gets to tell others what to do...
Democracy has been such a great experiment. So sad that the authoritarians decided that the people can't be trusted to make up their own minds.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Is it authoritarian to use claims of victimhood and
moral superiority as a justification for mob bullying and violence, accompanied by demands that persons be fired or groups be denied the right to speak or assemble?
People engaged in what passes for “Left” or “progressive” activism on college campuses don’t even recognize how authoritarian they have become.
@lotlizard Yes, and nobody knows
Yes, and nobody knows what the hell "left" is anymore.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
It's just trying to turn the police state towards...
a target which supposedly will make everything better.
Time was protests were to make the authorities go the fuck away, or stop doing the shit they were doing to innocent folks who just wanted to live their lives.
Now they want to turn the apparatus of the police state against others, stifling viewpoints and thoughts other than the approved message.
Closest analogy would be the "Two Minute Hate". Complete with the ringleaders telling everybody else who to hate.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
Well
you give the police enough military hardware, train them to use it, hire ex military (esp. military police) and use maximum force for minor arrests and you get a new "normal". I can't wait to see what kind of bloodbath results from an "extraordinary" police action.
@detroitmechworks Well, that's managed
Well, that's managed opposition for you.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Hypocrisy is a big currency too
some advocate that the oppressed minority should follow a separate set of rules. ie what is forbidden to the majority, can be practiced with impunity by the protected ones. When called on this, they invariably resort to insults and ridicule.
We've always had that camp on the left, but they've grown more visible and obnoxious lately.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
The Evergreen State College controversy
http://www.unz.com/isteve/evergreen-state/
Exactly. n/t
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Evergreen admin caving ↔ recruiting propo for the Alt-Right. n/t
They aren't wrong when they speak of
the "Loony Left" in certain quarters. Some of the extremes of entitlement and hypocrisy hurt us quite a bit. I know a lot of these stories are taken out of context, or exaggerated by a hostile media that serves the alt-right, yet at the end of the day, some mindless snowflake provided the authentic story for those media to cover.
Admin caving in is unforgivable, the lot of them should be fired.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
There is nothing
leftist or progressive about identity politics. Identity politics played a significant role in taking down the most progressive candidate in the Democratic primaries.
It's a refuge
of bullies and scoundrels.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
That ain't hypocrisy--it's political correctness
PC is just hypocrisy and entitlement
with a new name. Even the term itself is hypocritical.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
@detroitmechworks Not sure defining it as
Not sure defining it as "the norm" is a good idea. Defining it, perhaps as "that which we have been struggling to figure a way out of for a long time," is better.
People can do such terrible things with a "norm."
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Fair point.
It's not NORMAL for an enlightened society.
We haven't been one of those in a looooong time.
I do not pretend I know what I do not know.
My brain breaks when we discuss this issue
and try to talk about "Big Business" and "Big Government" as if they were two separate things.
"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha
"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver
Spot on
At this point, they are absolutely intertwined, and the government vs corporation fiction is just as much a lie as the Democrat vs Republican facade. Americans have been told to pick one of two teams and we keep doing so, even though there's really only one team. The Goveration-Republicrats thank us for our continued support.
I'm not sure the Republic will weather this, and we may find ourselves reverting to some sort of loose federation of states.
Try posting this at TOP or any other
DNC mouthpiece site, and the minders or other flying monkeys will shut you down immediately. Talk like this isn't allowed in mainstream party circles, and we have to maintain the fiction that "our" side is clean, it's only the other color team that's corrupt.
This is actually what's killing both party establishments, and why neither Jeb nor Her won the race, despite the establishment's intent to crown one of them. Talking about this issue will generate great interest across the political spectrum, which is exactly why the party establishments and their paid whores will do everything in their power to shut down such talk.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
We Need to Work on Flipping the Corporate & Government Numbers
or at least bringing them to greater parity.
If Drumpf's budget gets passed, we might not have much of a Big Government left. We might just have the FED, Military, and Law Enforcement. And that's not much hyperbole.
Did anyone happen to read this:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/omb/budget/fy2018/...
Super scary shit there.
Anyway, corporate needs at least as great a share of the fear as Big Government or we're only going to further let down our self governing defenses and get more abuse from Big Corporate.
“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu
They not only want to shut down any talk about corruption
They also want to shut down our protests no matter what they are about.
Most of the violence at the protests only happens after the police show up with all their military toys.
What they are doing is both practicing and seeing how much they can get away with. And they are getting away with a lot.
People on the right are okay with the cops brutally breaking up and arresting the 'libtards', at the OWS protests, but especially the protests of BLM and the Native Americans at the DAPL protests.
IMO, that was another practice of martial law. The first one was after the Boston marathon bombings where they used their military toys and went into people's homes without a warrant. Look at how well that went over. The police didn't even know that they were in the area, but they went into people's homes and told them to wait outside while they searched their homes. But hey, fear is a great excuse for let TPTB to see how much they can get away with it.
The people who are cheering these types of protests don't understand that one day they are going to be their target.
In case you haven't heard, one person from the Bundy militia has been sentenced to prison for 7 years. He had made a plea deal with the prosecutors, but when he started talking about gawd being his judge, the judge told him that he wasn't taking responsibility for his actions.
OPOL, congratulations on having your essay posted on counterpunch
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
If they throw a few right-wingers in jail
maybe more will start to get a clue. More than I've ever seen actually have one now, and political prisoners only create more.
Funny thing though, about the police and other authorities trampling people's rights. Most people, even here, with America's legacy of the Bill of Rights, etc, most won't give a damn when the last of our rights are taken, and will cheer and support the police no matter what they do. Most East Germans supported the Stasi, and even if they were terrified of them, they still approved of what they did, and cooperated.
It takes a special sort of people to make a real resistance or revolution. I'm not sure that we are that kind of people anymore.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Amen
Fantastic post gjohnsit. Unfortunately I don't know how the US changes course. The foxes are guarding the henhouse, and any "uppity" hens are quickly put down.
For a global perspective
Here's a Gallup world poll from 2014 on government corruption.