I feel all of those are underlined or caused by corruption. The left sees corruption of corporations, the right sees corruption of politicians. All of which leads to exactly the fracturing and ideological positioning that you describe. No nation can survive systemic corruption for very long, it is a cancer that eats away at everything.
Corruption is taking money in exchange of favors. The typical French scandal involved having relatives and friends getting fake jobs, typically paid for by a city government.
Yeah I would actually argue that a minimum amount of corruption IS necessary in real life. Unless you live in a utopian society with perfect laws and application of them, corruption allows to move wheels that otherwise take forever to move or may never move. Of course, corruption can also be (very) detrimental to society. But attempting to remove all corruption from it seems to be the wrong priority.
Russia is not corrupt in the same sense the US is.
In Russia, the bureaucrats can bend and break local laws, siphon out some funds, etc. But they are pretty strictly controlled by the "power vertical", up to the quasi-tzar who is Putin. This structure does not tolerate breaking its internal rules, not keeping promises, etc, and is quick to unseat a bureaucrat which failed to conform, no matter how high in the hierarchy.
This is why a number of things in Russia can be done quickly and relatively efficiently, when the higher-ups demand it. It, of course, is not very democratic and does not always align with the desires of the population, but in many cases it does.
I suspect China has a similar structure: a bureaucrat may engage in corruption as long as he fulfills the orders of CCP; if corruption interferes with it, it is eliminated.
This is the well-known efficiency of authoritarianism, e.g. of monarchy: if the monarch desires something good, that good thing can be completed very quickly and allocation of resources won't be a problem. (The trouble is, of course, that when a monarch desires something bad, the bad thing gets implemented as efficiently, for there's no counterbalance.)
It's true - Standard Oil was just minutes away from closing their doors before the breakup happened.
It depends what kind of corruption we're talking about, nepotism and waste tend to get cleaned out pretty decently in private enterprise, but exploitation along with anti-competitive and unsafe business practices thrive.
Was standard oil corrupt? from my understanding they reduced the cost of oil by a significant fraction. In fact, they out competed their less efficient rivals.
Rep. William Mason, arguing in favor of the Sherman Antitrust Act, said: "trusts have made products cheaper, have reduced prices; but if the price of oil, for instance, were reduced to one cent a barrel, it would not right the wrong done to people of this country by the trusts which have destroyed legitimate competition and driven honest men from legitimate business enterprise."
I think it's very fair to consider them corrupt - they coordinated with other businesses to make competition impossible and, as a result, forced individuals trying to make a living to be forced into bankruptcy through no fault of their own.
Now, business is a cruel world where luck plays a significant role in success, but it's healthy for society for us to try and keep the playing field of business as level as possible and the number of lives ruined by standard oil is a pretty heavy weight.
You underestimate Trump supporter's perception of the existing government's corruption. So long as he existed outside the beltway consensus, and was shaking things up, some nepotism and profiteering was a small price for them to pay.
It's also important to note that Trump supporters and 'Republican Republicans' don't really intersect as much as a lot of people assume.
Republican voters aren't necessarily Republicans. He activated a different base than the McCains and the Romneys of the world. The Neoconservative block that helped build the current order and the populist block that brought about Trump's victory certainly intersect to an extent, but many also broke off in support of Biden. But then you might as well call DSA and Bernie bros Democrats because they settled for Biden, and call them out as hypocrites on account of their principals conflicting with the policies and values of the clinton administration.
> You underestimate Trump supporter's perception of the existing government's corruption. So long as he existed outside the beltway consensus, and was shaking things up, some nepotism and profiteering was a small price for them to pay.
He was shaking things up in terms of dealing with immigration and such. He was shaking literally nothing regarding corruption, except adding a lot of own corruption.
Also, Trump supporters and 'Republican Republicans' are really the same. To the point that there is no opposition to Trump within republican party. Republican voters dont reward that sort of thing now.
