"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
I remember learning that in school and not knowing exactly what it meant. But when Lord Acton made that statement in 1887, he could have been talking about our current political climate--both here and abroad. It's the belief that once we allow money and corporate interests to flow freely into our government(s), we begin to lose control of it.
And in 2019, this means we are trying to save democracy while the levers of power are controlled by corporate interests who buy our elected officials in order to advance their agendas. They do that by sticking money in campaign coffers and vowing to keep those politicians in power so that there can be an endless chain of one hand washing another. But that is all at the expense of taxpayers who have their rights trampled on--voting rights, civil rights, free speech rights.
And then to make matters worse, there are always those who become drunk with power and begin to have ambitions of taking over the world--i.e. dictators like Vladimir Putin, who quite frankly owns our president and by association, us. He owns several elected officials like Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Mike Pompeo, and Rand Paul.
It's not just Putin, of course. There are other dictators like Kim Jong Un and MBS and Bashar al-Assad. These are the guys our current president looks up to and wants to emulate--because they are, in his eyes, "strong leaders." But that is a goddamn warped view of strength, when you consider what those leaders do to their own people. Or in the case of MBS, what he did to a writer for the Washington Post who dared to speak out against the crown prince's atrocities.
Look around, but if you pay attention to nothing else, look at the way Trump acts around and when talking about Putin. From the sharing of Israeli intelligence with two high ranking Putin officials in the oval office with NO Americans present, to changing one item on the Republican platform in 2016 thanks to Paul Manafort, to reversing course on bombing Iran a few weeks ago because that's what Vlad wanted, to trying at every turn to squash every probe into the obstruction of justice he committed so that we wouldn't find out how Putin owns him, to defending Putin over our entire country about the election meddling.
Those are all just things off the top of my head. And it's worse when there are moneyed interests starting wars to grab oil, controlling our courts, suppressing votes and voices, and pushing an obvious pro-corporate agenda. Our elected leaders are on the take from these overlords and use our money to keep the cash flowing to the top--which is Corruption 101 and the words of Lord Acton playing out in 2019.
Oh and sure, it's Republicans and Democrats--but generally speaking, Republicans are the ones ruthlessly trying to take away our rights--and lying about it every fucking day. Dems like Chuck and Nancy are just stupidly taking corporate cash while trying to stop the ruthless bullshit from the other side.
I'm not sure how we get out of this, but it's terrifying to think about what could happen in our lifetimes and our childrens' lifetimes if we don't.
