Comment by ToucanLoucan

> My point is that these rich bastards are playing by the rules the American citizens set up.

Mmmmmmm.... yes and no? Like it's cliche to blame everything on Reagan but the number of modern social ills that can be directly traced to the Reagan admin and the political movement behind it really does baffle the mind. Ills such as, for example:

- The deregulation of corporate finances, that permits the massive stock buybacks that allow corporations to kick absolutely stressful amounts of money to their shareholders and executives

- The tying of the hands of the FTC regarding anti-trust/monopoly regulation, which has led to the greatest era of corporate consolidation since Standard Oil, and all the problematic things that come with it

- The citizens united decision, which unleashed the ability for corporate America to pump shit fuck tons of money into political parties that would then work for their interests

- The repeal of the fairness doctrine, which let an entire wing of disinformation networks form and spread, masquerading blatant propaganda as news (sorry, "entertainment")

And like, you're right in one way, because the Republicans didn't come out to the American people and say "hey we want to enable corporations to rat fuck you for every dollar you have, along with every dollar you don't have, and to make them effectively the funding that both parties need to accept in order to have a snowballs' chance in hell of winning an election. Sound good?", obviously. But the various "mandates" that they've received from conservative voting blocs over the years are dubious as fuck, and if you scratch them just a little bit, you oftentimes find that their voters are so incredibly bullshitted at this point that they don't even truly know what the fuck they're voting for. Citation: literally in the last presidential race, there was a shit ton of people after the fact who both:

- Didn't realize tariffs would drastically increase the cost of goods in the United States, because exporters do not pay them, importers do (and in fact, if the rumors are to be believed, neither did their candidate)

- Voted for the party promising to repeal "Obamacare" despite receiving benefits from and in fact, needing the Affordable Care Act, not realizing that Obamacare is literally a made-up bullshit name given to the ACA by Republicans.

So like... yes, technically, the Republicans (and Democrats, make no mistake, their fingerprints are all over this shit too, just to a lesser degree) have built exactly the America that Americans want. However, it is impossible to fully divorce that from the just incredible amounts of propaganda Americans injest, both from the political parties who decide what is "feasible" to the corporate media.