Unless its asked for by a lobbyist

This is the key.

Political power in the US is openly bought and sold, and wealthy individuals and corporations generally control it simply because they outbid everyone else.

It really is just that simple.

And note this well - he means it.

This isn’t just rhetoric - if Muskntrump and their cronies and patrons have their way about it, Americans are going to start going to prison for criticizing them.

Something that’s been sort of tickling at my brain for a while now just came together with this headline.

Tate, Trump, Musk, Vance, Hegseth, Zuckerberg and a bunch of others of the hard right all share a distinctive personality type.

Essentially they’re incels who somehow managed to get laid.

If it weren’t for particular circumstances (most often undeserved wealth), they would’ve just been typical incels, sitting at home being bitter and hateful and insecure and self-absorbed. But because of those circumstances, they managed to get laid, so they ended up with more or less the same bitterness and hatefulness and desperate insecurity they would’ve had anyway, except it’s countered by a weird situational and entirely undeserved over-confidence, because after all, they’re special, because they can get laid.

That would also go some way toward explaining why they’re so often sexual predators. Essentially they’re bitter incels who don’t have to limit themselves to fantasies alone.

No - actually the west will only survive if we can get out from under the rule of self-absorbed, hate- and fear-mongering psychopaths and clowns.

And it’s not looking good.

Future histories of the collapse of the US will include a section on the utter failure of checks and balances.