The divide between the parties is evident to everybody at this point. Every day people become more and more radicalized to their respective parties but what most people don’t realize is that the Republican party and Democrat party are really the same things but one is slightly more conservative than the other. Both parties are right-wing compared to the political parties of Europe and other parts of the world. The real difference between the parties in mainstream politics is which lobbying group they represent. Neither party represents the people. They instead represent the corporations and groups that pay them the most. For example, during the 2020 election, the main interest groups that supported Trump were military industry companies and the branches of the military. Biden on the other hand received tons of money from silicon valley companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google. Biden also interestingly enough received a lot of money from large banks and Amazon. People see all these politicians and assume them to be somebody that represents them but in reality, all they care about is campaign donations and getting elected.

Republicans are just more explicit about not wanting to do anything. The Democrats just lie about it more often. Joe Biden promised to stop Trump’s immigration policy, he promised to raise the minimum wage, and he promised to do something to get us out of the Middle East. So far the minimum wage increase has been abandoned, new detention facilities are being opened on the border, troops are being deployed to Syria and many Democrats have no idea and think that Biden is so much better than Trump. I won’t give my opinion about those policies on their own, but I do think it’s appalling how badly people got duped on those big policies that Biden promised to inact. Every presidency is similar at this point. The wars in the Middle East will remain, universal healthcare will not be passed, and the minimum wage won’t be raised.

The simple and very unfortunate reason for this is simply that it isn’t profitable for politicians to push for any of these monumental and extremely popular policies. In my last blog, I talked about nuclear energy and briefly mentioned the lobbying that drowns it from being mainstream. Solar and wind companies, and fossil fuel and oil companies are lobbying to be chosen while the nuclear energy industry is being completely drowned out. Democrats are getting money from renewable energy and Republicans are getting money from corporations like Exxon Mobil. What’s the worst is while all of this is going on Americans seem to be completely oblivious to it. Instead of seeing the real enemy Americans instead choose to divide themselves over trivial political differences. What this is causing is the radicalization of youth because they’re brought up in this toxic political climate. Political extremism leads to political violence and I don’t think anyone needs to be convinced that political violence is on the rise in this country.

Cites:

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2020/10/cost-of-2020-election-14billion-update/