It doesn’t take a “sick, depraved society” to give such a man power by any means.
All it takes is a significant number of a society to have been convinced it has been victimized by people of lessor stature, and therefore to blame those people for their lot in life. The right wing media, starting with the abolishment of “The Fairness Doctrine” - from Rush Limbaugh to Fox News and on down, has been exceedingly effective in convincing millions of decent, hard working Americans, people of modest means, who care about their families and their communities, to vote against their better interests.
This is politics 101. And I have never studied it! It just seems irreducibly rational.
The leaders of conservative political ideology in this country have known since the days of FDR that their perspective is a losing one if the masses are allowed to have a free, unfettered say (Edit here: And be well educated! That is important. Can’t have a smart voting populace, capable of critical thinking, not by any means). FDR was elected FOUR FUCKING TIMES! And the conservatives stood up and took notice and realized they just couldn’t allow that to happen again, so they shoved through the
22nd Amendment to make sure those pesky workers could never do that again! BTW, shortly followed by the
Taft Hartley Act ensuring the utter throttling of the labor movement in this country.
So they haven’t allowed it, certainly not to any large degree.
Until now. And even now, it is a serious struggle.
Want to see some serious change in this country?
Make Gerrymandering illegal.
Make voting easy, simple, accessible, a paid day off, occur over multiple days and most of all, MANDATORY. (Punishable by no more than a $10 parking ticket type offense, but the incentive needs to be there, like it is in Australia )
Repeal the Taft Hartley Act and make “Right to work” laws (a misnomer if there ever was one) illegal
Do away with the Electoral College.
Do away with elected Judgeships.
Raise the minimum wage to the $20 it needs to be.
Overturn the tax incentive given to companies that put “Shareholders first”. Put workers and communities first.
Stop giving half the fucking federal budget to companies whose sole purpose it to build mechanisms designed to slaughter other humans. Fuck that bullshit, make-my-dick-hard militarism we have grown so fucking wedded to. I would MUCH rather have my taxes pay to allow a 15 year old teenager from central Texas an abortion than I am to give $10 million a year to the CEO of Raytheon.
That’s enough.
No one will see this anyway.
