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In case you ever wondered why those two positions are our only options:
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind=Q05&recipdetail=S
They've bought out both parties long ago.
They give millions to our most powerful (and corrupt) politicians with no regard for party lines or anything else.
If you back Israel without question, line up and get your money
If you ever dont, they'll throw an insane amount of money to primary and general opponents.
Our system has been broken for a long time by "donations" we might not be able to to fix, but bare minimum we need to acknowledge it needs fixed.
I think it's fair to point out the donation patterns of various superpacs, but we should probably also acknowledge that even independent of campaign finance the US stands to gain substantial benefit of maintaining military superiority in the ME.
Couching your understanding entirely inside finance rhetoric falls dangerously close to a conspiracy theory and should be cautioned.
Yeah, but your line of thinking relies on politicians caring more about the country overall than themselves...
They care about defense spending, because they also get "donations" from weapons manufactures.
By no means did I mean they're only taking money from Israel, just that Israel's money comes with a single string:
Support Israel no matter what
Obviously they get money from more people
Like, did you see the name at number 2 between the Dem candidate for 2016 and the Dem candidate for 2020/2024?
It's the guy (also a dem) that had gold bars lining the suits in his closest.
They're taking the money, because they'll take money for almost anything.
That's not a conspiracy, corrupt politicians tend to care about money over everything else
I'm just saying the alignment of the lobby funding and the broader american imperial interests is an important reason why this particular issue hasn't moved much in 80 years.
No disagreement that politicians are far too eager to take campaign contributions.
What would you say are the broad american imperial interests? Maintaining regional military control for the sake of oil -- thats the obvious one -- but anything else?
Genuine question here, I haven't thought or read much about it, whereas I have thought/read more about the incentives for politicians to continue pushing the ever bloating "defense" budget.
Edit: Here's not a bad article about it that I just read. Basically: the new cold war with china.
Most of the geopolitics of the region revolves around oil, that much is certainly true.
A lot of the rest of it flows downstream from that; oil pipelines and supply from various places and through the red sea, the relative military strength of adversaries in the region (derived from the wealth of their oil supplies), ect. Most of the modern geopolitical relations in the area can be tied to the struggle over oil in some way.
In my experience as an American, "fuck you pay me" is our only practiced and sacred value, and all our other supposed values are just empty feel good platitudes that allow us to play pretend our culture doesn't revolve around greed and greed worship.
Most Congresspeople got into politics explicitly to be bought, and working your way up in local/state elections is a process both major parties use to measure your ability to both be amenable to and effective at funneling that sweet, sweet bribe money into the party.
That's why the few that don't take Superpac money are usually spoiler candidates with economic policy positions both parties loathe, as yes, the economics of political bribery, especially since Reagan converted his former opposition that used to get bribed by unions to rake the bigger corporate bribe checks as Republicans always did creating today's neoliberals, greatly exceed any other force in American politics.
There's nothing ideological about petrochemical subsidies, for example, that industry can and does just write "donation" checks to our elected leaders, and their bribes trump our ballots every time.
I've no hope of this changing, and have accepted this greed rot is going to be our end sooner rather than later, and that greed is creating a swath of vectors, Climate change induced famines/droughts, AI, fascism rising to defend the mass ignorance required to support such thoughtless corporate greed in the face of all evidence, etc to do just that.
but bare minimum we need to acknowledge it needs fixed.
I will never acknowledge the validity of that weird Pittsburg-ism where they omit the "to be"!
I swear people give the south shit for the wrong reasons. Yes it’s racist, and sexist, and homophobic, and transphobic, and corrupt as hell, and WAY too serious about their imaginary friends, and I will happily admit all of those terrible flaws about my homeland and bear the shame of my ancestors for creating that world, but yinzers are the ones that talk weird and make up dumb words. At least y’all makes linguistic sense
Rural areas in all states are all those things. The South is simply a few percentage points more rural than the East or West coasts.
If y'all visited us here in Atlanta, you'd realize we're just as cosmopolitan as anywhere else.
Wouldn’t need to visit I’m from just slightly OTP and lived ITP for 12 years, Atlanta is the exception as is Nashville, but I’ve lived in Hiram and Acworth too, my description is apt. You’re not wrong about the rural urban divide but I would also present you with Jackson, Memphis, August, and the fact that the governors mansion on West Paces in Buckhead is staffed by prisoners (you can probably guess what color skin the vast majority have) are evidence that while the whole country is racist in rural areas, it’s not even close to exclusive.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the south even though I don’t live there anymore, and deeply miss the parts that aren’t terrible especially the food and nights out on the Beltline. But the problems I listed in the previous comment, while existing everywhere in the rural US are baked into the deep south in ways that are different that other parts of the country.
I thought it was a British thing.