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Have you ever met a truly evil person? What happened? (lemmy.world)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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[–] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (3 children)

I have sat and met with some mid level regional politicians and provincial politicians in the past. They're all the same. There is something pathological with wanting to achieve a high office and then regardless of your political affiliation (I'm socially left and I always vote and support the New Democratic Party, left of the top Liberal left party in Canada) they all act in the best interests or influence of money and monied interests. I know they have to survive politically to do anything but at the same time, they'll support monied interests even if it means the suffering of hundreds or thousands of people.

There is something fundamentally wrong with our modern mentality and social conditioning if our world is entirely based on the accumulation of wealth against everything including human comfort or even the right to life.

And that's not even talking about the political figures who are conservative, very conservative or ultra conservative ... they would rather dump entire segments of society if it meant it would advance their agenda.

It's not fully evil .... but it is a lot closer to evil than anything.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    Are Canadian politics dominated by money like American politics are? If they are, that could explain at least some of what you've noticed. In a system where money wasn't such a huge factor needed to win elections, I think we would see a lot more people who genuinely wanted to help people run for office and win. The problem when you introduce money as such a major factor to win is that unless the candidate is already independently wealthy, they will have to kowtow to wealthy people and money interests in order to win. A system like that will select for people who are willing to compromise their principles for money, even if they deep down would genuinely like to help people.

    I've thought about this occasionally, and feel that it's a tragedy that there are probably many politicians who get into it for the right reasons but at some point (maybe from the start) compromise that by justifying that they can keep helping people even if in some minor fashion if they go along with this.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

    Which is why I look at it as a Plutocracy, a government run by money and the wealthy .... rather than a democracy, a government run by the people.

    It's democratic (which is still a stretch) during an election.

    But for the rest of the time, which is all the time, it's Plutocratic

    We like to play with definitions and we easily are critical of other nations but we never want to admit what our own systems actually represent. We are so blinded by our own status that we never consider that we don't live in a democratic system ourselves.

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