Your president and his wife both separately were involved in blatant crypto rug pulls only 18 months ago. The fact you still have freedom of speech has no bearing on whether the country is comically corrupt.
> Your president and his wife both separately were involved in blatant crypto rug pulls only 18 months ago.
Sadly that isn't even close to the worst of it. Trump regularly pardons people of federal crimes in exchange for money and forcibly shuts down insider trader investigations into his own family.
We are living in a time of unprecedented open corruption in the US government.
Also the funding of Trump Jr’s wedding by a Russian oligarch…
Private sponsorship of personal vanity projects (White House ballroom)…
Jet gifted by a foreign entity (Qatari AF1)…
Ambassadors demanding personal payment for guaranteed audiences (Guilfoyle)…
And that’s just in recent memory. The Left isn’t blameless either. The fix needs to be systemic (repeal Citizens U, re-build independent oversight and nerf the executive), but unfortunately I only see it becoming a deeper and more acrimonious blame game.
> What I'm saying is the US broadly has low corruption. I don't have to pay a bribe to get my drivers license or to get through the airport.
Low compared to who? Third-world countries? Again, just shows how far we’ve fallen that these are the comparisons being made. The problem with the US isn’t direct low-level corruption, it’s systematized high-level corruption.
> Broadly speaking you can't purchase bills or laws, and have to convince the public.
There is a multi-billion-dollar lobbying industry whose purpose is essentially this, but through legal indirect channels. And the public are so ill-informed that spending money = convincing the public.
> The US has issues, but any supposed lack of data privacy laws isn't due to corruption, it's due to the will of the people
I tend to agree with this, but if there ever was broad momentum to strengthen data privacy laws, systematized corruption would stymie it. And is likely already actively suppressing it.
