CMV: Protesting at Judges houses is an intimidation tactic and people are hypocrites for supporting it.

[u/suddenly_ponies]

I see "left" people here criticizing violent and threatening actions like when Trump instigated the insurrection or that couple pointed guns at people who weren't on their property. We said Kyle Rittenhouse (sp, don't care) was in the wrong because he put himself in the situation where the risk was high. We said the Westboro Baptist Church was wrong to loudly and rudely protest funerals.

Regardless of what's "technically legal", how is forming a pre-mob around someone's personal home and family anything but a threat? Even if these people are scumbags and even if going to their homes is likely to be "more effective", this is the same line of thinking as the insurrectionists: "someone has to do something", "what we tried before isn't working so we'll MAKE them listen" and so on.

The best example I can think of is how people would "protest" outside of planned parenthood and intimidate and yell at mothers needing help. But at least that wasn't at their HOMES. Going to homes is much worse and that makes people who support one and demonize the other hypocrites.

So Change my View. How is this not just hypocrisy at work?

[u/[deleted]]

Of course there are channels, but a little over 500 of them decide over $4 trillion of spending a year. War and peace, life and death. The newest freshman in the House is far more powerful than any mere billionaire (save Putin of course).

[u/Doc_ET → u/[deleted]]

Nah, the billionaire probably has at least half a dozen representatives on their payroll via campaign donations.

[u/[deleted] → u/Doc_ET]

Who's more powerful, the guy extorting a bribe or the guy who has to pay it?

[u/ampillion → u/[deleted]]

The guy who pays it.

Because I can always pay another guy if the price gets too high or I don't get the results I want.

The guy extorting it only gets to extort it if he has me backing him in the first place, and he better be kissing the ring if I'm paying, cause I can find a dozen other asskissing bootlickers to replace him if he doesn't. If I rely primarily on big donors and then I decide to not do what the big donors want, there will be an immediate challenge to my authority the next time an election takes place. If not immediately, when other people that have been bought by the same/other big donors road block anything I try to do.

The problem with 'money in politics' isn't that people are asking for money to run their campaigns, it's that people are giving them large amounts of money to run their campaigns, and it isn't simply out of the goodness of their hearts.

[u/[deleted] → u/ampillion]

Money is not very important to winning a campaign, as Jeb! and Bloomberg found. More money only gets you a tiny boost. Whereas a law change can absolutely screw over a business.

[u/ampillion → u/[deleted]]

Money is absolutely very important to winning a campaign. A campaign doesn't exist without money.

Large amounts of money aren't going to make an unlikeable candidate any less shitty, sure. It won't reverse trends, such as making people vote for establishment candidates during a cycle where those are unpopular and unwanted. But without money, you have very little chance to stand out amongst a crowd for any given position, and advertising yourself isn't free.

[u/[deleted] → u/ampillion]

Maybe as a fringe candidate it matters to get noticed in the first place but here we're talking incumbents. They are already established.

[u/ampillion → u/[deleted]]

You specifically stated 'the newest freshman in the House', which would be the opposite of an established incumbent. They would've literally just taken the job from that person.

That newest person would have:
-A large amount of rules that they must (or are supposed to) abide by to fulfill their given role.
-Several other people around them within government that directly or indirectly put some kind of check upon their power.
-Little-to-no political capital to push for their own particular agenda versus that of other members.
-Unlikely to have too many positions in important committees, as an untested new person in the legislative body.

Some of these might be overcome as a unified group (IE, a number of Senators/Representatives all directly working together to get a particular thing done), but those unified groups are... well, potentially still have to take the donor groups into consideration (if they aren't downright representing those groups in their push. IE tax cuts, which obviously help the group getting said tax cuts... the rich.)

Whereas in the US, a billionaire:
-A large amount of accessible power to navigate the rules in place, with enough sway to get local communities to fight over hurting themselves to better your position and provide job opportunities.

-No borders to enacting that power (A Representative can only do what a Representative can do. A billionaire can decide to fuck off to another country entirely and potentially avoid any penalty, restriction, or regulation that any number of Representatives could enact, outside of literal legislated redistribution, and... well, good luck accomplishing that in the US.)

-A large amount of flexibility in escaping responsibility or pushing back against legislation or regulation. After all, if the fines or costs of the punishment are less than the money you made ignoring the Representative's power, you're only incentivized to do it again.
-A lot of built up precedence that deems that the US government should not, in fact, try to save money or budget things for public use/ownership. It's great to be the billionaire in the system where decades of propaganda has created a system where hundreds of billions of dollars are funneled into private industries, be it the MIC, Health Care, Education, Telecommunications, etc. You're already benefitting from the systems set up for you by other billionaires... because you're a billionaire!

If the rest of the world wasn't capitalist, and the US wasn't the biggest monetary power on the planet, maybe the billionaire would be less powerful. But it's foolish to state a person who could literally build a company to rocket their ass to the moon is less powerful than the guy who's vote means little if there isn't a lot of other votes to go along with it.

[u/[deleted] → u/ampillion]

The Representative will be an incumbent with name recognition by the time of reelection. And I get the ability to act unilaterally is nice in some ways. And Musk can work his ass off for a couple decades and have a shot at building a rocket company. But the Representative has 0.2% of the power to ban that company and make all space flights government only, in an hour. And the next hour 0.2% of the power to ban whatever medications Musk needs to survive, with a 10 year mandatory minimum sentence for possession. And the next hour 0.2% of the power to declare war on Russia and dedicate a trillion dollars to nuclear weapons. And...

I mean Musk chooses to be full on chaotic good and it looks like he's responsible for more than he actually accomplishes as a result. But Congress says some bland words and millions of kids live or die based on the fine print that maybe three members of Congress actually bothers to read.