edit: spelling
this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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In case you ever wondered why those two positions are our only options:
https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind=Q05&recipdetail=S
They've bought out both parties long ago.
They give millions to our most powerful (and corrupt) politicians with no regard for party lines or anything else.
If you back Israel without question, line up and get your money
If you ever dont, they'll throw an insane amount of money to primary and general opponents.
Our system has been broken for a long time by "donations" we might not be able to to fix, but bare minimum we need to acknowledge it needs fixed.
I think it's fair to point out the donation patterns of various superpacs, but we should probably also acknowledge that even independent of campaign finance the US stands to gain substantial benefit of maintaining military superiority in the ME.
Couching your understanding entirely inside finance rhetoric falls dangerously close to a conspiracy theory and should be cautioned.
Yeah, but your line of thinking relies on politicians caring more about the country overall than themselves...
They care about defense spending, because they also get "donations" from weapons manufactures.
By no means did I mean they're only taking money from Israel, just that Israel's money comes with a single string:
Obviously they get money from more people
Like, did you see the name at number 2 between the Dem candidate for 2016 and the Dem candidate for 2020/2024?
It's the guy (also a dem) that had gold bars lining the suits in his closest.
They're taking the money, because they'll take money for almost anything.
That's not a conspiracy, corrupt politicians tend to care about money over everything else
I'm just saying the alignment of the lobby funding and the broader american imperial interests is an important reason why this particular issue hasn't moved much in 80 years.
No disagreement that politicians are far too eager to take campaign contributions.
What would you say are the broad american imperial interests? Maintaining regional military control for the sake of oil -- thats the obvious one -- but anything else?
Genuine question here, I haven't thought or read much about it, whereas I have thought/read more about the incentives for politicians to continue pushing the ever bloating "defense" budget.
Edit: Here's not a bad article about it that I just read. Basically: the new cold war with china.
Most of the geopolitics of the region revolves around oil, that much is certainly true.
A lot of the rest of it flows downstream from that; oil pipelines and supply from various places and through the red sea, the relative military strength of adversaries in the region (derived from the wealth of their oil supplies), ect. Most of the modern geopolitical relations in the area can be tied to the struggle over oil in some way.