this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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Especially given that prosecutions are often racially biased, and sometimes politically biased.
If an opponent with a criminal record can't run, you incentivize an immoral president to have their political opponents charged with anything they can think of.
OTOH, the American electorate is filled with idiots. You would hope that people would see through a purely political conviction and not let that stop them. But, the reality is probably the opposite, a serial killer who ate his victims could run, and if the party got behind that candidate, half the electorate would not know he was a serial killer, or they'd vote for him anyhow, or they'd think his conviction was just a psy-op and his victims were crisis actors.
Your second paragraph is the main reason.
I am from the UK and a famous example is Bobby Sands MP. Was a member of the PIRA, but was in prison and got elected MP for his constituency. While I do believe the PIRA to be a brutal terrorist organisation, the people who voted him in wanted to show their support - and I agree with their right to do that as much as I vehemently disagree with their choice
I agree, but I wish there were some way to ensure that voters were making an informed choice.
In the case of Bobby Sands, I assume they were. That was a high profile case. It's even vaguely possible to make the case that he was a political prisoner.
But, almost daily I see interviews with Trump voters who seem to have lost their connection with reality. And, it's not even a wrong but consistent worldview. It's just a bunch of incoherent conspiracy theories that fall apart under the most gentle questioning. Unfortunately, there's probably no way to restrict voting to only sane and well informed voters, because any restriction you put in place could be abused.
I think the main issue was the "don't trust the mainstream media" and "fake news" BS. It was genius if you think about it. Then people will go to him for their info.
I also understand though that the USA has less unbiased reporting, unlike the UK where unbiased is generally the standard for TV reporting, especially for the BBC.
Our newspapers, however......
Yes, I really think a major reason that the US is failing is the lack of an equivalent to Australia's ABC, Britain's BBC, Canada's CBC, all the way to (I wish this were true) New Zealand's ZBC.
Those public broadcasters anchor the news reporting space. Many people think they're biased, and it's probably true that they aren't 100% neutral, and definitely have an institutional bias. But, the kinds of people who work for those public broadcasters really believe in their mission to tell the truth. Normal news consumers still end up in filter bubbles, but it's really easy to pop out of those filter bubbles for a second and check out the public broadcaster. In the US, even the supposedly centrist for-profit broadcasters are heavily biased because they need to make money. The bias isn't necessarily left or right, but it's in favor of whatever's sensationalist and will keep people glued to their TVs.
Interestingly enough, you find a lot of people claiming the BBC is biased, but those people cannot agree on who they're biased towards 😆 so they must be doing something right.
Yeah, I think the truth is that they have an institutional bias. Like, they believe in the value of government, so when people are attacking the government they tend to portray that in a negative light. It doesn't matter if the government being attacked is liberal or conservative.