Windy wrote:What possible motive could a politician have for doing what's best for the people? We have absolutely nothing to ensure that politicians hold onto their promises other than voting them out, and other than a few recent exceptions, votes are no longer an issue. People tend to vote for whoever their corporate overlords want them to, there's too many ways for them to manipulate the election when you control the media and information. Does it really matter how many promises your local politician breaks if no one knows about it? You'd have a higher chance of success in getting elected by appealing to your corporate overlords. And even the exceptions will no longer exist once our corporate overlords become more experienced in social media and information control.
What they learned from the 2016 election is that they didn't control the flow of information hard enough. They will rectify that mistake very soon. The solution will be called something like "The Freedom Act for People who Love Democracy", and we will welcome our doom with open arms.
Well, to the first question: politicians are motivated by votes, and even those in safely red or blue seats that never have to worry about competition across the aisle are at perpetual risk of being disposed of in a primary. Of course, this does lead to particularly head-scratching scenarios like...say...low income voters frustrated with a lack of progress voting for a party that always preserves the interest of the rich above all others. I suppose in other words "Voting against your own best interests", but moving on...
As for people voting for whoever their corporate overlords tell them to, they vote for whatever culturally runs in the area they're in. This leads to the above perplexing 'voting against best interests' things and what frustrates me in particular about Trump primary voters, but polarization has little to do with corporations and much more to do with the ability for people to enclose themselves in ideological bubbles on the internet and in real life, as people are increasingly moving to areas where they are surrounded by politically like-minded neighbors. This gets into a much longer screed I have about how the problem is less with politicians and corporations and more with voters being more invested in a game of political football than actual results, but corporations have a profoundly small impact on elections (for reference, see the Bernie Sanders and Trump campaigns, and again, Hillary's speeches to Goldman Sachs becoming a hot button issue).
The corporate elite controls the media, sure, but with the way the media works, they have a vested profit interest in serving an ideologically diverse content to reach as many viewers as possible. There are plenty of publications and even stations that advance socialism, plenty that advance economic libertarianism, nationalism, ethnic nationalism, globalism, you name it. Again, the problem is less with the media and more with consumer habits.
Of course, Trump is particularly incongruous between what he says and what he does with regards to the corporate elite, which you would think would turn his base away from him. But again, while Fox News doesn't cover shit like that, it's not like people can't go out and figure it out for themselves, but again, people don't want to. They want to live in alternate-reality land, which again has less to do with corporations and more to do with the Political Football Game. Still, even a bubble can't mask a recession, war, stagnating wages, etc. Reality will eventually set in, as happened with Bush Jr.
And judging from the Democratic Party's platform (which some people were mocking, but party platforms have always been simple suggestions for future presidential candidates), they do actually understand that there's a problem that needs fixing, and they've incorporated a lot of Sanders-esque appeal into it. Which you may see as a good thing or bad thing, depending on your political stripe, but at least they're listening. As for Trump, well, for all his incongruity he has to keep going out there and promising that everything he does is for the poor/working/middle class. Which is utter bullshit, but again, reality will eventually set in. Hopefully we won't need another recession to drive it home.
If it sounds like I'm saying we need to hit just above rock bottom (rock bottom being another civil war, a dictatorship, or a police state), then yeah, that's what I suspect it will take. But luckily (strange as it is to say) I think we're headed there, so hopefully we'll have this all figured out over the next decade. If Trump and everything the Republicans were doing was popular, then yeah, I'd agree with you. But Trump's the most consistently unpopular president in modern times and will almost certainly continue to be so. An entire generation despises the party that keeps selling us to these corporations and has put the other party on warning. So as long as we're a democracy and this kind of selling out remains unpopular, I don't think all is lost.
As for the whole "Naming something Freedom so Americans will froth all over it", that's a little stereotypical. Republicans practically named everything they've done this cycle the "Freedom and Love Puppies Act" and all the legislation is really unpopular anyways.