Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned the creator of Silk Road, a dark-web marketplace where people sold heroin, cocaine, LSD, and other illicit drugs by using cryptocurrency to keep the transactions anonymous and avoid being caught by law enforcement.
Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned the creator of Silk Road, a dark-web marketplace where people sold heroin, cocaine, LSD, and other illicit drugs by using cryptocurrency to keep the transactions anonymous and avoid being caught by law enforcement.
I take issue with the quid pro quo nature of the exchange, and politics in general. Politicians need votes, but they also need money. When politicians are courting groups, they’re not just seeking their votes, they’re seeking their money and donations, as well. This incentivizes candidates to seek the support of those with the most money to give. Support for a candidate, through both votes and donations, is an investment, and the expectation is a return on that investment.
Also, while it makes perfect sense that a politician would seek the votes of those with whom they are ideologically aligned, the ideology itself matters. Even if no money is exchanged between the politician and the candidate, if their shared ideology is that some people should be able to get very rich, even at the expense of others, then those voters will give their votes to the candidate believing that it is financially beneficial for them to do so.
Plus, what if the ideology of the politician and the voter group they are trying to court is aggressively hostile to democracy itself? A quid pro quo relationship between them would make sense, but it is antithetical to the overall institution.
That’s a lot of words to say “politics bad.” I’m not disagreeing, I was just responding to your question/comment. You keep asking questions as if the answer isn’t right there. It doesn’t matter if it’s antithetical to the institution. They don’t care about the institution. They care about staying in power. If dismantling democracy is the best way to ensure that, they will do it. You can dislike it, but this seems like a weird time to air your grievance with politics as a whole, seeing as this is an instance of an elected politician taking an action his base wants and that he said he would take.
Would love to see dems do that more tbh.
Ok, I’m willing to admit that a quid pro quo relationship between a politician and their voter base is not necessarily a bad thing. And, yes, you’re also right that it is a bad thing when politicians say one thing to a voter base and then don’t follow through or keep their promises. And, yes, this instance with Trump is an example of a politician making a promise to prospective voters and then keeping that promise. I just don’t think that’s always a good thing. If a bunch of voters want a politician to do some fucked up shit, the politician promises to do said fucked up shit, and then follows through on that promise, that’s not a good thing, even if it is politics working the ways it’s supposed to work.
I similarly don’t like when bad people want bad things to happen and then get those bad things happen, so I think we’re in agreement. Bad things happening gets a 0/10 in my book. Maybe next time we can have more good people and less bad people involved. Fingers crossed lmao.
I think the system is extremely, fundamentally flawed. You disagree. That’s fine. You like things the way they are. I don’t. I think radical changes are necessary.
FWIW, that last comment was actually not intended to be sarcastic. I agree with you. The lmao was directed at the idea that next time the electorate will massively shift towards good people with good aims. I didn’t wanna not respond, but I didn’t have much to add, so I thought I’d top it off by saying I agree with you, but it obviously came across the wrong way. Trust me, would love to see some radical change, but unfortunately I know the direction it’s going to actually happen in. Good luck out there. We’re all gonna need it.