• GinAndJuche
    ·
    11 months ago

    Even in the Roman republic they understood that the candidates had to bribe the people to care about the nobilities power struggles.

    We don’t even have the gracchi equivalents to get murdered for promising us land reform. They ratfucked the moderate with offerings of college and healthcare.

    • PKMKII [none/use name]
      ·
      11 months ago

      Because that’s politics and libs are revolted by icky pedestrian politics. They don’t want a base that has to be satisfied, they want a coalition of the reasonable who vote for blue no matter who not because they’ll get anything out of it, but because the qualified people told them that’s what they have to do to have the respect of the qualified people.

      • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
        ·
        11 months ago

        a coalition of the reasonable

        the qualified people

        They want an oligarchy, plain and simple.

        • PKMKII [none/use name]
          ·
          11 months ago

          Functionally that’s what it ends up with, but I think their fantasy is a meritocracy/technocracy. That the people who went to the right schools with the right degrees, who got the right internships and then jobs at the right firms, with the democratic process as a coronation of that meritocracy rather than an expression of public will. A state run by an army of Buttigiegs.

          Of course, the reality is that system produces more Trumps than Buttigiegs. Which is why he freaks liberals out; metaphorically speaking, he’s the inbred freak the aristocracy keeps hidden in the attic in some Victorian novel to keep up the illusion of their good breeding, and the libs are the other aristocrats scandalized that he got out and made a mess of the gala.

          • infuziSporg [e/em/eir]
            ·
            11 months ago

            I don't think it's incidental, I think liberals have a deep elitism that drives them. They actively dislike democracy.

            • nohaybanda [he/him]
              ·
              11 months ago

              Certainly. That’s why populism is a dirty word to them. Why should the patricians sully themselves with the vulgar demands of the governed?

      • GinAndJuche
        ·
        11 months ago

        All true.

        I guess it shouldn’t be surprisedpikachu.jpg moment when the system built by slave owners with a Rome fetish ends up speedrunning the systemic failures of the republic.