According to all kinds of media outlets, the US is more divided now than any time since the civil war. [1] [2] [3] Some even go so far as to say the US is in the midst of a “Cold Civil War”. And it is true that the political climate here is rough, tearing apart families and friends, causing issues for people at their jobs leading to firings and resignations.
The question we might ask on our show is if that divisiveness is organic or manufactured. Phil, I’m sure, would say the turmoil is very much by design. Naturally, I disagree…somewhat. I believe we’re suffering from a conspiracy of convenience rather than planned, coordinated effort to sow dissent.
Power – or is it Cash – Corrupts
I’ve said before, and will again, that the type of people most drawn to running for positions of political power are the very people that should not be allowed to make policy or decide people’s fates. Don’t get me wrong, I think the majority of politicians get into politics in order to make a difference, but they, almost without fail, fall victim to the corrupting influence of money and power.
Any budding politician showing even a hint of promise is flooded with money and campaign contributions as soon as possible in order to begin building that “influence”. That politician is elected using that money, and now the favor is expected to be returned. That means, by the very nature of the system, the people that most often win are the ones most susceptible to corruption. And so begins yet another cycle of abuse, both by the politician over their constituency in exchange for more cash and by the lobbyists and “influencers” over that politician. In many ways this is an indictment of our own system of government, where cash is king. But how did that happen?
The Origin of Money in US Politics[4]
In the early days of American politics, asking for money was unseemly, uncivilized. Most politicians were the gifters rather than the gifted (Washington, for example, used to offer free whiskey in return for votes). It wasn’t until Andrew Jackson, in 1829, that a candidate sought campaign donations, and even then Jackson himself did ask directly, it was all done by his campaign office (though he did help establish the practice of offering positions of power to those loyal to his campaign).
By 1867 the very first campaign finance laws were being drafted, though promises of power and position in exchange for donations were still alive and well (Grover Cleveland was assassinated by a donor who was passed over for an administration job). Though mostly outlawed today, this practice remains in the awarding of ambassadorships to a winner’s biggest backers.
Over the next 110 years efforts were made to curtail and control campaign spending, but a pivotal 1976 case, Buckley v. Valeo, changed the landscape of campaign spending. That case created a distinction between campaign contributions and campaign spending. It ruled that no politician could be corrupted by money spent by somebody else in their favor. The effect was that previously-banned spending by corporations, unions, banks, etc. was now perfectly legal as long as the money didn’t flow directly to the candidate, the so-called “soft money”. And the soft money did indeed flow…like a river.
In 2002 the McCain-Feingold act was signed into law, attempting to reign in the grotesque amounts of soft money being spent in the favor of single candidates. But by 2012 most of that law was gutted, and the controversial Citizens United ruling, lifting the limits on corporate spending in politics, all led to today’s Super PACs.
The result of all this? In 2020, the presidential election is said to have seen $14 billion in spending [5]. To put that into perspective, the entire US economy as a whole did not produce $14 billion until the 1820’s, and that’s adjusting for inflation.
Okay, but is it a Conspiracy?
Yes and no. A conspiracy, as we often deal with on this show, is defined by one or more events involving two or more people working together toward shared interests, where at least some of the activity is done in secret and/or under cover of disinformation .
The move to increase the money in politics was not secret. It was a coordinated, planned effort conducted right out in the open. It was an effort by corporations and the mega-wealthy to buy influence in our government, operated in concert with the very benefits of that spending. It was the opposite of a conspiracy.
What is, I think, a conspiracy of convenience, is the sowing of political division in this country. But not all conspiracies are of the same cloth
A normal conspiracy is an organized effort, where each step of the conspiracy is planned and executed in a deliberate method to execute a specific result (US Dept of Treasury poisoning alcohol during Prohibition, Iran-Contra, MK-Ultra). Then there are the conspiracies of convenience that just kind of…happen. These are the conspiracies where the conspirators didn’t necessarily cause the events of the conspiracy to happen, but they were well positioned to benefit from it.
I think the political temperature in this country is a result of the latter. A series of events where already-corrupted politicians benefited, in the form of increased campaign contributions, from more and more heated rhetoric. It’s the same phenomenon that newspapers work off of: if it bleeds it leads. So in order to keep the campaign cash rolling in, the politicians have to keep the fear and hate high. However, over time, hate-fatigue sets in, requiring the politicians to take it up a notch. The problem is that as new, younger generations begin to run for office, they’ve been steeped in the hate and fear since they were kids, and they actually believe what they are saying, resulting in a runaway train, barrelling towards civil war.
Nobody meant to take us to this level, but they’re also not interested in turning off the flame-thrower because it makes them rich and powerful. A conspiracy of convenience.
So don’t listen to the hyperbolic rhetoric, try to listen to the facts. Try to wade through the dire predictions, the doomsaying, the disaster plots. Those are fictions meant to create votes. Don’t take their word for anything, look it up. Try to find reasonable sources of research.
If we can take the wind of hate from their sails we just might right this ship before it capsizes.
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