Given the pushback from the right-wing, I can't help but disagree with you 110%. And again, it takes extreme amounts of privilege to even propose such ideas.
Look at parlimentary systems in other countries who hold elections and who have achieved equality- More equality than you have in the US. Privilege has nothing to do with it.
I live in a country that has achieved equality for others through means that are not related coorperate lobbying. And I am telling you that the concept of progress is not tied to social progress. Privilege has nothing to do with it. What has something to do with it, is being open minded and knowledeable enough to realize there are other ways.
I have said before I'm in favor of gutting CU. Even in the post you quoted. I also dislike certain lobbies and the power they wield in regards to our political process. I agree on those basic fundamentals. But to just propose the extreme of getting rid of all of them and acting like what-if scenarios would have benefited minority populations (and benefited them better no less?) is entirely pointless. Your propositions don't live within reality and ignore precisely WHAT has been standing in the way of minorities/women obtaining even basic human rights. I'll give you a hint: It's not what you sure as hell seem to think it is. It's not like the right-wing would suddenly be okay with other individuals existing just because lobbies were gone. That makes less than 0 sense.
It's the right-wing playing to their base. It's their base itself. Without lobbies for us we sure as hell would have made less headway than we did. Don't act like you give a shit for minorities when you want to throw us to the wolves and wash your hands clean of it.
I proposed a hypothetical which you're unwilling to engage in. If you are unwilling to even entertain that the two are not mutually linked and that you cannot have social progress in comparable (or better ways) then that is your choice. I find it to be close minded, but that is on you.
My understanding of modern US political history is that the democrats started engaging mass political lobbying after the republicans had won several presidencies by doing it first, and that was supposedly the reason that led to the Democratic base to embrace mass political fundraising.
You propose that lobbies is what you used to defend yourself, but you're ignoring that the right wingers became powerful by using those very means. Which is why it is deeply puzzling to me that you do not want to engage in a hypothetical at how the landscape would look without lobbying.
It's akin to being told that if you keep taking poison you will also keep getting a cure. but you still keep poisoning yourself, so you can keep taking a cure. Its a unsustainable relationhip that exist in a feedback loop.
There seems to be many issues that a overwhelming amount of Americans agree on, and in a majority contest would create changes for the better, but which doesn't happen because a small segment of conservative influence superseeds the will of the people.
If the right didn't have the economic power to influence election at all, and if it was completely illegal for a politician to have any sort of financial incentive, where would the power come from?
You'd have a lot of selfish greedy people not going into politics since there wouldn't be any money to be made. You'd be more likely to get politicians who actually care about the people.
As soon as you create a place for financial incentive you open the doors for people whose opinions are compromised.
I'm not American, but I am telling you that it is deeply ignorant to think that the US way of doing things and protecting social progress is through counter-lobbying to their lobbying is not rooted in fact. It just isn't.
But you and me probably don't disagree in the sense that we agree about lobbying. We just have a disagreement about the political American landscape could look like if money in politics was not a thing, and our cultural upbringing and experiences probably reflect that.
) blatantly unconstitutional policy he has suggested.