What if we find out one day, it was all an organized game, to screw over the citizens?
These large conspiracy theories are always absurd because our government can’t both be eminently incompetent and also full of scheming masterminds, able to keep hundreds or thousands of people from spilling secret plans. You have to pick one.
Overall you’re right. But there are some notable exceptions. Arguably Iran/Contra, the CIA spying on all phone calls, the Drug War. But the big one would be The Manhattan Project, since it employed literally hundreds of thousands of people.
How are they exceptions as we know about them.
Sure, years later. They flew the stealth fighter f-117a around in Nevada for 10 years before it became public knowledge. The government is simultaneously capable and incapable. Different groups have different responsibilities, different budgets, different helpers and detractors, etc.
Same thing with Trump. He is simultaneously capable and incapable. He can barely put sentences together, but has like-minded people who are less incompetent, able to push extreme policies through. And there are other groups using him as a tool as well. They don’t care about and will shove him once he’s no longer useful. But he’s very good at taking attention away from other things.
I’d say defense is one exception. That’s a huge budget with black money that disappears precisely for secret projects. It it still a secret secret if we know they’re using it to make secret things, but we just don’t know what they are yet?
I’d argue yes. And it’s still a combination of “exceedingly competent and yes still incompetent in other ways”. The intelligence is here, to paraphrase William Gibson, it’s just unevenly distributed
Biden effect
Ministry of Magic effect, even. With how full of idiots and bigots it is portrayed in the books, they shouldn’t be able to hide from the Muggles even by spamming the memory erasure spells left and right
Actually, chronic, systemic incompetence is one of the main factors preceding fascism. It doesn’t have to be deliberate to be the manifestation of any given stage of conservatism.
The mechanism of why Republicans and conservative dems work together to degrade our institutions is quite simple; greed. It doesn’t take much more than that really, and they get so caught up taking turns spraying money from the corporate money hose up eachothers asses that they can’t mount any meaningful resistance when the far-right metastasizes into full blown fascism.
I’m sorry, what?
What are you confused about exactly? Fascism always start on the fringe and it works its way into society because the “moderates” become complacent, fat, and greedy. In the US bribery is legal, and Democrats have become more concerned with protecting their corporate bribe scheme than protecting our democracy and stamping down fascism.
That’s how it works every time – corruption renders institutions unable to combat fascism, which is why when the take over actually happens it doesn’t take a ton of force to push things over, they just push the door open and walk in.
I don’t live in the US so i am kinda confused how conspiracies and interactions between opposing parties are synonimous with the development of fascism
It doesn’t have to do with just the US, it’s a very similar pattern wherever fascism rises. People’s dissatisfaction with their corrupt and inept government is leveraged by fascist groups. It’s what happened in Germany in the 20th century, in China, in Hungary etc.
I think this was asked in good faith, but is unfortunately unlikely to produce useful discussion. The down-voters are right but the original poster shouldn’t feel bad for asking.
Short answer: it’s ok to say “maybe, we have no way to know, moving on” when something is unknowable like this.
Longer answer / topic hijack: as voters there are many contradictions in our system, and important and necessary information is often hidden from us. Doing the best we can might take various forms:
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choose government ran by the least-evil people possible and trust the imperfect system formed by the structured interactions of those people
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choose government that follows policies that align the best with your values or your ethical understanding of the world
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choose government that is best able to reduce harms and injustices, in a practical and realistic way that anticipates the acts of other factions
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choose government led by people you hate the least — no, this one is toxic, lazy, easy to manipulate with lies. Manipulators know the longer they keep people hot with emotion the less time people spend learning.
Please do not reply to this with hatred or calls for strong emotion. Leaders at any level can be deliberately evil, sure, but it’s never helpful to dehumanize entire clusters or demographics.
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It’s not as simple as that, but you’re on the right track
inb4 “both sides”
For your title did you try to write :
“What
if
DNC is working with RNC” …?The Democrats and Republicans mostly despise each other, but the establishment from each naturally have a few things in common. I am not a centrist “both sides” guy. However, with rare exceptions, members of both major parties are pro-capitalism, just for starters.
They are not secretly working together, but they do have somewhat overlapping goals. And some of those goals do screw over working people. Private health insurance tied to your employer is something both parties praise and support. That’s one easy example.
And some of them cross the aisle and openly work together on bipartisan issues.
Finally, the “left” in the United States is really not left. Both parties pull rightward. The Republicans pull rightward much harder than the Democrats. A few progressives and democratic socialists try to pull us left.
Many people already know this and can’t do anything about it. Please resume your regularly scheduled busywork routine.
I don’t think it’s as simple as this, but lobby groups of course want to influence both parties. And all of them have a vested interest in keeping the two party system intact.
