Regan's "welfare queen" comes to mind. More recent examples were those against stimulus checks (but very much for PPP "loans"). Any politician who believes in means-testing, when the bureaucracy adds an overhead greater than the amount saved is arguably out to hurt the undeserving.
You can't deny the politics of retribution exists, because politicians only give oblique references to it; voters certainly believe it, hence one voter who complained about Covid shutdowns thusly: "He's not hurting the people he needs to be"
Politicians who put laws on the books at the whim of a monied few special interests instead of listening to their constituents, and who insist on ceaselessly driving the wedge between rich and poor in their own back yard instead of pursuing policies that would lift up the whole country?
I get the anecdotal impression that bad deeds in politics mostly serve as confirmation for those who already don't like the politician and are largely ignored or excused by those who do like him/her.
another word for that is 'selfish' - they are making laws, enacting rules and enforcing behaviour which their constituents did not really want, simply because it's something they wanted for themselves.
I don't want my politicians to have a perspective which only includes themselves. Unforutnately, its all far too common.
Trump is an extreme example. He basically did everything he could to get himself into trouble. He operated as a troll essentially and instigated the public on Twitter, followed by an attempt to overthrow the government.
If we looked at normal and even favorable politicians like Nancy Pelosi or President Biden, we might find something worth investigating as well but has gotten swept under the rug.
Punishing politicians in itself can be political even...
For many politicians and voters, mere cruelty is the entire point[1] of lawmaking. The government's purpose is to hurt one's opponents, which is more important than helping... anyone.
Absolutely. These do-gooders never consider the unintended side effects of their policies and end up hurting their own constituency. (Though the cynic in me thinks that they understand it perfectly well. They enact these policies just to score cheap brownie points.)
Not just politicians. People don't care whether policies work, they care whether they think the policies are "fair" or "the right thing to do" or "compassionate", etc. They will slide into hell as long as they thought they were doing the right thing, and evidence that their policies aren't working just means that they must double down and do even more.
That's true, but I just think it doesn't have to be that way. The only thing politicians care about more than money is being re-elected, so perhaps if more people took note of the good, populace-serving things that politicians at least supported and made it a point to say that that's the cause of their vote, then maybe politicians would be more inspired to do similar things. As soon as people begin to discount good actions as flukes and uplift negatives as the reason why they aren't voting for someone, both sides get jaded very quickly and lose sight of their purpose.
Voters exist to reinforce positive behaviors in politicians, and politicians exist to exhibit those positive behaviors. You can't teach someone with punishment alone.
I wonder how prevalent the will to "harm a population" is. I think it's more about benefitting oneself financially than trying to harm others. Politically speaking yes politicians try to harm (the popularity of) their opponents. But politicians are a very small slice of the population.
Exploitation of the public's fear, promises to make the country great again, rejection by their own party once they figured out that they might come to power. Those spring to mind as examples.
Politicians will always do whatever is in the interests of the people or companies giving them votes or donations, so unfortunately without voting for the enemy of your enemy (and maybe convincing others to do so), you don't have any other tool to punish these politicians.
And they need to be punished, just like a good spanking at the right time does wonders for spoiled brats.
It is not "feel-good rhetoric". It's a suggestion that it would be better to do the hard, consistent work to humanise the opposition so that their decisions can be criticised without writing them all off as people.
But if I must spell it out to you -- I'll get downvoted for it -- I am saying that, essentially, "othering" politicians as inherently not doing good, or saying that they are all tainted by the actions of some of them, is the precise sentiment that was exploited to allow a corrupt, amoral, malignant narcissist and populist into the White House, who deliberately tried to overthrow the democratic process.
Very few of the politicians tarred in that way are anything like as dangerous as the man this enabled. And the most dangerous of them take part in the tarring.
If you cannot look at politicians and seek to find the good and the common ground in them, you're doing the nihilistic groundwork of future fascists. Don't do that.
You can't deny the politics of retribution exists, because politicians only give oblique references to it; voters certainly believe it, hence one voter who complained about Covid shutdowns thusly: "He's not hurting the people he needs to be"
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