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The American voter shouldn't be treated like a mere link in a strategic chain of cause and effect. They're the legitimate authority in the US.



Sorry I'm confused by your comment. The American voter voted for Congress. A bipartisan majority passed this bill easily. The executive branch signed it. The judiciary branch confirmed it.

Where is the American voter being sidelined?


Congress has a "strained" relationship with the voter. On one hand, the voter put them in that position. On the other hand, the voter is a greater danger to the individual in Congress than any foreign adversary. As a result, politicians try to control the voter, the way an employee would try to manage their manager.

This is done in a number of ways. For example, because the media has a great influence on the voter, politicians seek to influence the media. Journalists who publish unfavorable information are denied valuable interviews, incentivizing them to stay close to the administration. Lobbyists with connections to major advertisers, which have a great influence on the media, are attended to with high priority.

Another method is to close off the voter's access to information that originates outside a politician's sphere of influence. This can be done by encouraging nationalist jingoism and a distrust of outside influence, by outright bans on foreign press, or in this case, by either banning or causing a transfer of ownership of a social media platform that had proven unhelpful to a past administration's intent for the media landscape. For TikTok, this was hosting middle east peace activism.


The American voter is sidelined the second their elected official is sworn in, and immediately reneges on everything they said they stood for in favor of their moneyed interests. 90% of politicians have no intent whatsoever of fixing problems, after all those problems are what got them elected.


It's obviously fine to be this cynical, but I think the particular shape your cynicism takes is incorrect^ and I also tend to think people who are overly cynical willingly reduce their ability to affect change

^ the description of campaign promises feels very 90s to me. We tend to have a lot of information about how our elected officials act. I think most of them believe more of what they're saying or advocating for (although the reasons why they believe those things are fairly widely varied)

Some people think Elizabeth Warren is pure evil incarnate, and I think she considers herself as a policy wonk who loves nuance and is trying to protect citizens from ruthless capitalist entities.

The same is more or less true on the other side (I'm not sure who the analog is exactly, but a republican Elizabeth Warren would imagine she is protecting companies and citizens from government overreach)




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