A couple quick things.

[cp]

A) Selfish bit first: it's not often that I find myself in the LJ-Photophile weekly poll, and even less often that I think my photo is actually the strongest of the lot. This is one of those times, and it feels nice

Comments

[nick_101]

A: It does feel nice. :)

B: This country has been under corruption for decades, especially in this century. I'm still not surprised the other party continues to find a way to buy more votes, even with Obama running.

[cp]

No argument that political corruption has been the norm since pretty much day 1 of our republic, but I am disheartened that it seems to be more and more blatant, and even legalized by decisions like this. I think no small part of this is death throes of the Republican Party as it presently exists. Their platform is one that is really only beneficial to (and hence only truly supported by) the wealthy among us, and they've been relying on the fear and ignorance of a portion of our populace to keep them in office. But the demographics they rely on are shrinking, and their platform finds no resonance among the rest of the citizenry. So they're pretty much already have no chance in any fair contest, especially at the national level. So all they have left are these attempts--too often successful--at making the contests increasingly unfair. It's why gerrymandering is the rule among Congressional districts, it's why they keep pretending voter fraud is a problem in order to disenfranchise people likely to vote Democratic, and it's why

[redqueenofevil]

Regarding B, I feel that they are doing this BECAUSE Obama is in the picture. It is appalling how bad it is. I want to speculate that it is racially motivated, since the GOP is not racially diverse, but that is just speculation.

[cp]

I really think all of this--the voter suppression, the gerrymandering, and the attempts to open the floodgates for private campaign money--is simply because the GOP knows they have no chance in a fair contest, especially at the national level. Quite simply, they've been relying on a voting demographic that is fairly rapidly shrinking, while all the Others who they tend to demonize are rapidly becoming the majority. Their only hope is to keep Those People from voting, rile up their base's anger, fear and ignorance, and outspend their opponents.

[redqueenofevil]

I agree with you. The redistricting would seem to indicate as such too.

I just hope things don't get worse, thanks to the strike down. Between this and Citizens United, things are about to get very ugly.

[cp]

The one thing that keeps me hopeful is that we've been here before. In the run-up to the Great Depression, there were the trusts and robber barons, and the level of income/wealth inequality was quite close to what we have now. Plus the political corruption and influence of money and graft. And as a nation, we started the progressive movement and actually changed things: campaign finance reform, progressive income tax, labor and environmental protections, the New Deal and social safety net, so much that we still take for granted today (even though much of it has eroded with time). I'd like to have faith that we can do that again. Indeed, we'll have to or else things are indeed going to get very ugly. The roadblock, even more than the influence of the uber-wealthy, is the general ignorance and apathy of the citizenry. Most people either have no clue what's happening, don't care about anything that doesn't directly affect their own lives, or have gotten cynical and written the whole thing off as outside of their control. Which is