Dianne Feinstein, who served as a senator of California since 1992, died Thursday night at the age of 90. The Onion looks back at 31 years of Feinstein becoming elderly while in office.
LOL @ people whining about other people living longer, as if they didn't live in a Democracy and could just choose to vote these people out of office at any time. If people actually objected to Dianne Feinstein being elected, they could have run someone against her for that seat during those 30 years.
I mean, true. But is the only option to be sitting around hoping that other people die faster, and that this will somehow solve the problem? I feel that it would be easier to vote more or do like an advertising or public awareness drive or something.
Except, they have the huge advantage of incumbency. And isn’t it better to have somebody on your side win, no matter how severely reduced their mental capacity, than to potentially hand the election to the other side by voting for some unknown upstart? Same logic as not voting for a third party candidate who actually represents your views, basically. Vote for the lesser evil that everybody is going to vote for, because the good/younger candidate won’t win because nobody will vote for them.
The entire bourgeois political system is built around leveraging the power of “democratically” elected representatives for their ability to craft business-friendly legislation. A large number of supposedly partisan divides are just a reflection of the divides among the owner class, like to what extent to use government to subsidize their employees.
This system creates a ton of power for incumbants that are reliable funnels for this corporate power, which is what most of them are. After all, when they don’t funnel that power, business interests will back their opponent. The staff for any liberal candidate will gladly and condescendingly explain to you why their vehicle to a career political candidate has to dine with the military contractor lobbyist to get that $$$. I mean, do you want the Republican baby-eater to win!?
Even when they lose, it’s a 2-party system, baby. They’ll be back doing the same kind of shit. They can even fail up! The only thing that really matters is that they can gain the support of large donors, which they do by facilitating their direct fiscal interests.
The complete takeover of the system by a neoliberal order exacerbates this essential issue of American capitalism because there is no real alternative that threatens it. Zero need to pass the torch to some new ghoul because the old one doesn’t break due to public pressure or a primary campaign or a competing system dunking on them. There is less disagreement among the bourgeoisie. The message is simple: be neoliberal but hide it a little. Gloss over it by focusing on issues other than economic. When you do run into economic questions, make it about stimulating “progressive” businesses. Fund the cops so that the fallout from neoliberal policies is contained by state violence.
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