> The difference now is the openness and also the scale.

Yes, we just need to go back to the good ol' days of corruption with decorum

> The US has been marching in that direction for a while.

It's trivial to remember corruption issues from 100+ years ago (I learned about one in middle school with Teapot Dome and political "machines", and those are hardly the full extent) so this is another one of those cliches that is easy to claim but is never proven. There's always some. Humans gonna human. But that doesn't mean either (a) there's always a high and critical amount in magnitude-of-impact OR (b) it's been definitely increasing.

Let's stop saying it as a general trend without examples.

On the flip side, let's keep pointing to all the specific Trump examples.

It's naive to believe that corruption is impossible or vanishingly rare. It's also naive to believe that the current administration is not a major step change.

Your counter points span decades. That is not the scale or rate at which we are seeing today.

See this reply:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49572770

wow, in 150 years we find a handful of things much smaller than what has happened in the last 2 years

the whisky ring is definitely relevant to a discussion of today’s problems

this isn’t a ridiculous padded list of whataboutism

I dont think it existed nearly at the same level, not even close. And honestly, even now, i still think it's a handful of actors doing a lot of it.

Kinda like when women say that men harass them in the bars and a lot of men seem confused because we don't think we harass them, when it can be like 1 guy harassing 20 women in a bar on the same night.

So I think it's quite unevenly distributed.

Can you prove any corruption from another President similar to one very obvious case of corruption, where the UAE invested in a very clearly scam crypto company run by Trump's family (who have no crypto expertise) and then very soon after got contentious export licenses for Nvidia chips?

You haven't read his comment if you think that's what he said

It’s so, so much worse now.

Like everyone here said, they just don’t even care about being “caught”. Not ten years ago most of this stuff would likely end a career or land you in prison.

Now it’s just, “So what? Nobody can do anything.”

It’s not better that the corruption is blatant. They’re rubbing our faces in it, and not the least bit concerned about consequences. The message is clear… there aren’t any, anymore.

And the most insulting was how they telegraphed it all. Accuse people of things they clearly didn’t do… and then actually do all those things.

See this reply:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49572770

I get where you're coming from (been there too).

Bad news is, you're probably in the midpoint of that meme bell curve. Grown up structures and institutions are designed well, with accountability built-in. Many many good people work in them, who hate corruption as much as you do. Bad actors are whistle-blowed upon, persecuted, convicted, and imprisoned. It's incredibly difficult in practice to do anything significantly corrupt and stay unnoticed. I don't know if you work (like, at a large-size workplace), but imagine doing something shady at your work, surrounded by your colleagues. It's not easy. The amount of surveillance, paper trail, auditing that government work entails is way more than any normal business.

The irony is that your unending cynicism is actually turning you into a fool for the other side: the populists that constantly discredit institutions. They figured out that your cynicism (aversion to being scammed?) is so strong, that it can be used to scam you. They only need to discredit everyone else, that's easy. Make conspiratorial allegations based on perceived outcomes, not actual proof. Sell you all the cynicism in the world: everything is broken, everyone's bad, and you're one of the smart ones who sees it. US institutions are corrupt and worthless. This lets them pretend to be experts, because you're now a guest in their version of reality. And they directly financially benefit from your attention.

Institutions maintain real internal accountability (none of these alternative media populists do), implement real processes that work, tackle real issues in ways that take into account all stakeholders, and don't just produce slogans and talking points. I know they're old and not cool, but they work. Unfortunately, very few groups are left that actually defend them, you all got scammed by relentless, self-serving, financially incentivized alternative media into thinking that everything is broken.

Just because things are complex, doesn't mean they're broken. Just because measures taken aren't always satisfying, doesn't mean they are malicious. Don't get scammed into this world view by people who directly financially benefit from selling it.

Prove him wrong. Show us documented cases of corruption from, say Obama, or Biden, or Bush Jr. And then we'll compare it to the documented cases of Trump corruption, starting with his 2 crypto pump-and-dump schemes and his family's fake crypto company (3 already very brazenly open ones and there are more!) and let's see if you can pull similar for any of the previous presidents of the 21st century

I think this whole "that half" and "this half" thing makes it significantly harder to hold people in the government accountable. I know plenty of conservative people who think the corruption in the government is out of control.

> I simply do not understand American politics.

You are in good company with most Americans in that regard.

It seems like the whole "we just blame the other side for everything we want to do, and then use that as justification when we actually do it" strategy must be well orchestrated, but the voters themselves legitimately seem to believe it is actually how things work. I am darkly impressed at the skillful manipulation.

Well friend, the current political climate in America might be unprecedented, but is not unique. As someone who lived under a mix of military, monarchy, psudo-democratic and democratic governments for first 30 years of my life, I've seen this played out many times before.

Once I understood that capitalism is (thinly) veiled slavery, and that it creates a system to suppress those that add value, I have found it easier to follow what is happening over there.

We just don’t see the slavery because we are the best compensated slaves. But most of us want to become masters, don’t we. “Entrepreneurs“, right? So at some level we know that that is the system we live in. And we are at the top of the bottom rung of that ladder. But it is still the bottom rung. And it is still a ladder.

It's not comprehensible without understanding that huge amounts of people are watching straight up lies and propaganda all day every day for their 'news'.

If Trump tomorrow says communism is great, then every Fox news host, MAGA content creator, and MAGA bot would be extolling the virtues of communism. The republican house and senate would enable it, maybe with a small bribe here and there. There is no line. There is no integrity. It's just looting.

Imagine there had been no Nuremberg trials. The Nazis just got a slap on the wrist and almost immediately let back into politics as usual. That's how we got here. We're still fighting the remnants of the confederacy. Germany and Japan in particular purged most of those elements from their society. Here we built statues to the evil fucks.

People who feel lost and disaffected would rather see the whole thing burn down than continue with the status quo even if it is objectively worse for them.

And its clearly been building for a while. Trump and Obama are about as opposite as possible, but they both won by campaigning on "change".

This is true in most political systems. Its how most revolutions start. The commoner is always screwed but they still support them.

I dont think america is all that exceptional. All sides just see it through their filter bubble and miss the forest for the trees.

Nobody does. The amount of teenage angst posted in this forum about the current admin is amusingly pathetic. None of it matters. Congress constantly gets a free pass while we focus on a figurehead largely enabled by a passive and embarrassing congressional electorate. “We found the scapegoat, blame that guy!”

It’s really embarrassing

It's a very banana republicy thing and not uniquely American.

> 35% approve

I also gotta wonder what percentage of this group is amplified beyond reality by bot armies and hostile foreign actors. There can't really be that many people so completely detached from reality, can there?

That 35% will change their tune if it screws their stuff up. Trump et al is great in the large unless he's your business partner or boss screwing your money and life up, hitting on your wife or daughter, owes you money etc. Cheap symbolism is appealing in a fog only, not in your face.

> The national favorability rating for the Democratic Party sits around 39% to 41% favorable, with unfavorable ratings ranging from 48% to 54% across recent mid-2026 polls. [0]

And Congress as a whole...

> The approval rating for the U.S. Congress stands at 10%, while disapproval has climbed to 86%, according to data from Gallup. [1]

So not sure what this is really telling us?

[0]: https://fiftyplusone.news/polls/favorability/democratic-part... [1]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/708722/disapproval-congress-tie...

The EPA is a good example of why this is so bad. Even if 90% of the states pass rules to protect the air and water it takes only a small number of states not following environmental regulations to cause a massive amount of harm to air and water quality and the effects of that can be felt in other states.

It also hurts businesses when they suddenly find themselves forced to follow an inconsistent/conflicting patchwork of state laws instead of a single federal law.

That said, it's still encouraging to see states picking up the slack and passing laws to protect their residents, even though I can't help but feel bad for people who become stuck in states where the government doesn't care about them. I hope that people will be begin to flee states where the government chooses to put corporate profits above the well-being of the public or wants to strip them of their rights, but realistically there will be many people who can't afford to move or who feel compelled to stay because of ties to their friends, family, and community.

Dubya did some of the most horrific things in modern American history, and filled the pockets of many of his associates im sure.

But in terms of the letter of the law unfortunately he couldn’t be held accountable for much of it because it was legal! The US legal system has largely agreed that the president, especially with a bloodthirsty Congress behind him, can torture, kill and maim as much as he pleases so long as it’s outside the border.

No one is excusing them. But it's worth pointing out that in every aspect of government ethics reform, from campaign financing to insider trading by government officials, the legislation promoted by Democrats is stronger than that promoted by Republicans, who often not only don't promote reform but actively oppose it. For example, the recent lukewarm ban on insider trading was opposed by Democrats on the grounds that it was too weak, excluded the President and VP, and included unrelated voter regulation measures. And the Democrats have been trying to pass legislation to correct Citizens United for years. So while it's a bipartisan issue, one party is much more pro-reform than the other.

After reading about Ground News, I am starting to gain a real appreciation for how effective "both sides are bad" is at benefiting the right. It may well be the closest I've seen to 4D chess in reality.

When I hear people making these claims (all unproven theories, or misrepresentation of what really happens), I want to know: what happened in democratic administrations that went in favor of a large corporate donor and against the public? Any specific example where they diverged, and a politician ruled in favor of the corp, and against their constituents?

All of that is several orders of magnitude less bad than a normal Tuesday in the Trump administration.

For evidence, refer to TFA.

Fair take, I think.

But we didn’t have to vote DJT into office as a counteracting force. Whether every decision is bad or not, not my point. It just seemed obvious that he wasn’t the right guy.

Some people can’t vote against their party. Some people believe write in is the move.

An under-examined axis of this problem is that people choose to believe in corruption because it's better than the alternative.

It's way more comforting to believe that Bill Clinton's buddies (or whoever) got rich selling industrial America overseas to the cheers of the progressives who thought all that stuff was dirty any way because at least that way it looks sane and planned and rational, albeit selfish, than it was done out of ignorance or malice.

And once enough people believe in the corruption, it manifests itself because it's perceived as how things are.

> short-sighted neoliberal trade deals and hostility to organized labor, which accelerated the process of hollowing out the country

What if they weren't short-sighted and not hostile? Look at Germany, which did not do this and instead kept strong provisions in favor of organized labor and protecting their domestic industry from foreign entrants.

They can't keep doing it anymore. That would have been our future. But we pivoted to high skilled services and it has served us immensely better than if we had tried to defeat other powers in industrial and manufacturing where they had a clear advantage we didn't, in terms of cost.

It's not a path, it's a result. That sucks.

Chief republican politician Mitch McConnell once filibustered his own bill because democrats also supported it. https://theweek.com/articles/469675/mitch-mcconnells-amazing...

>...Republicans dropped from 87% to 83% after their guy was elected, whereas Democrats nearly 1.5x'd their number of skeptics.

This is not surprising; a big reason that Republican voters were able to justify voting for Trump and open corruption was that they were bombarded with claims that there was a "Biden crime family" in office for four years. No real evidence of that was ever uncovered, but it didn't stop Fox News and every Republican leader from constantly referring to the accusations as if they were true. One the other hand, Trump is openly accepting huge payments from foreign governments, and never even bothered to separate himself from his companies. Republicans were at 87% due to general distrust of government and the rumor of phantom corruption, while Democrats (who tend to be more trusting of government) rose to the same level only on clear evidence of real corruption. The authors don't break it out by parties, but the overall level during Trump's first term is about the same as Biden's. Since the article notes that Republican skepticism is higher in general and more consistent, this implies that Democrats' perception of corruption is much higher in Trump's second term than his first. Which makes sense, the Republican leadership was much more responsible in applying guardrails in the first term than the second. Trump is getting away with a LOT more in his second term.

Yes. Democrats at 57% 2 years ago is the abberation.

Depending on how you reckon, you could argue it started much earlier than that. Some people say the downhill decline started with JFK, others say it started with Reagan.

They got it when the PATRIOT ACT was passed. That was the proof that all our rights and liberties are conditional, and Trump uses the revelation of that back then to pull off everything he is doing now

That only matters of you actually do make different choices. But of course in turn even trying to control for that depends on their being meaningful changes in party platforms between elections.

So I'm pretty content calling it a meaningless measure.

This is correct. That is why I changed from independent to an actual political party. There is no point, it is highly improbable that I would ever vote for the party that is against my values. The two main US political parties are diametrically opposed.

>but a rapidly increasing number of "independents" in America are strongly left leaning but feel that the Democratic party has abandoned them.

Then they are listening to the Right. Biden did what he could to help unions and eliminate student debt.

The truth is those "left" leaning want socialism, but only for them, and not brown people. Socialism but only for their in-group. (That's also what you see with recent immigrants voting for Trump against even more recent immigrants. "Leopards eating faces party won't eat my face, etc.)

He's not spot on at all, and that's why he's being downvoted. He's examining the world through a false dichotomy of "if you aren't on my side, you support my enemies". But the reality is that most people who consider themselves independent are actually independent and vote for whomever they consider to be the best candidate.

[they-are-the-same-picture-dot-gif]

Switzerland has much more soft power than the US, due to Switzerland avoiding military entanglements.

From that very same link:

"Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

For some quick and easy evidence, you could look at the history of the Post Office.

USPS has always been the poster child for efficient and effective government agencies. Despite claims otherwise, the agency still manages to deliver letters and other postage to areas private industry like FedEx, UPS, et. al. would never touch.

Unfortunately, over the years, Republican Congresses and Presidents have repeatedly attempted to sabotage the agency. Some recent(-ish) examples:

* The 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which required USPS to create a fund to pay the cost of post-retirement health care costs 75 years into the future.

* The Republican-appointed postmaster general Louis DeJoy overseeing the removal of 711 sorting machines as well as a number of public mailboxes in the lead-up to the 2020 election, which, due to Covid, was expected to have larger-than-normal use of mail-in ballots. Not only did it cause significant concern regarding mail-in ballots, but it also resulted in significant delays and backlogs in general mail delivery.

The reality is one of those two people is going to get elected. Your vote for Mickey Mouse isn't going to affect the outcome.

Of course most elections aren't close enough for your vote to matter at all.