Blurts & Spasms

From Quora answer to: "Is the United States morally good?"

No, the United States government is not morally good. Though I'm sure many people working in our government aspire to do good - even some of the politicians - they are constrained by the following corruptive pressures, all of which could loosely fall under the heading "the coopting of democracy by special interests:"

1. **Distorted political campaigns** - huge (in the billions, as I'm sure you're aware) amounts of money spent by very few individuals to influence election outcomes and the political priorities of parties and candidates.

2. **Rampant clientism and cronyism** - the quid pro quo of backroom deals resulting from "access" granted the wealthiest supporters, sometimes to the point of their being appointed to influential government positions.

3. **Plutocratic legislation** - legislation at all levels of government written by corporations (rather than legislators) to protect their own interests.

4. **Weakened or corrupted regulatory and judicial power** - the ability to countervail the agendas of special interests or their influence has been diluted by the appointment of ideologically sympathetic judges, by the evisceration of existing protective laws, and by active lobbying that discourages regulatory enforcement.

Now if these special interests (in largest part plutocrats) had the promotion of our collective well-being as their core agenda, then the answer to your question might be "yes, it's good!" But they don't. In our current State capitalist system, these elites have demonstrated time and again that they are much more interested in engineering the best possible means of enriching themselves. And, as history documents, this has meant exploiting, enslaving and putting workers at risk; consuming natural resources until they are depleted; caustically polluting water, air, food and other necessities of life; and creating an ever-larger gulf between the rich and the poor. Greed is not good, it is incredibly destructive. But this is how capitalism has always worked, and despite decades of reforms driven by a few courageous leaders, grassroots activism and widespread civil unrest, the tyranny of commercialistic plutocracy keeps marching on.

So even though the U.S. Constitution is a pretty darn "morally good" Constitution, and democracy has proven itself to be a "morally good" system when it functions properly, and we have many folks in our government who aspire to be "morally good," all of this has been undermined by relatively few callous, self-serving, egotistical power-mongers who thrive unchecked within corporate capitalism. It is much easier to destroy than to create. And, as a result, in the course of amassing ludicrously huge amounts of money in unethical ways, the plutocrats have created generations of poor people, people with lung cancer, obese children with Type II Diabetes, people addicted to prescription drugs, poorly educated people, people who vote against their own best interests, a domestic populace armed with increasingly lethal weapons, astounding levels of consumer debt, sweat shops and prison factories all around the globe, a few wars to expand resource and labor availability, foreign populations increasingly radicalized by what they view as U.S. imperialism...and of course climate change. The special interests did it all, and none of it has been "morally good." Well, except for the fact that I can get almost anything I could want delivered to my home in two days using Amazon Prime; I guess that was worth sacrificing the Constitution, democracy, and the well-being of all humanity.

My 2 cents.

(P.S. If you are interested in some source material that supports what I've said, I'd be happy to provide it. Just be specific about what you would like to know.)