I know it sounds cliché, often written and even more often mentioned, but… what the hell? Why are there no laws stopping people like Elon Musk from spending millions to buy politicians who will serve them, and forcing them to pay their fair share of taxes to help a health system in ruins, fund pensions, and support the homeless, the hungry, and the millions of poor people suffering and literally dying in the USA today?
The money poured into US’ midterm elections from both political parties could literally save lives, settle thousands of desperate families, heal thousands of wounded and sick people and feed millions for years. And that is before counting the enormous sums already sitting in party coffers, patiently waiting for the next electoral circus. Apparently, the US political establishment has discovered a miraculous economic principle, money is practically unlimited when the objective is winning power, but mysteriously scarce when the objective is helping people survive.
This is not merely an argument about campaign finance. It is an indictment of political priorities, a particularly American contradiction in which wealth becomes a weapon of electoral competition while human suffering becomes an inconvenient background statistic.
Consider what political fundraising actually represents. It is not simply money spent on television advertisements, consultants, rallies, digital propaganda, opposition research and an army of professional persuaders. It is an enormous mobilisation of economic resources around a single question: who gets to occupy the corridors of power? Meanwhile, outside those corridors, millions of Americans confront medical bills capable of destroying a lifetime's savings, families struggling with housing costs, children experiencing food insecurity and communities still waiting for infrastructure, dignity and opportunity.
The grotesque irony is that both parties can recognise suffering perfectly well when it becomes electorally useful. Poverty becomes a campaign photograph. Healthcare becomes a slogan. Veterans become patriotic decorations. Working families become the protagonists of carefully rehearsed speeches. Then the fundraising machinery starts again, swallowing millions in the name of defending those very people.
Democrats and Republicans may disagree about taxation, immigration, healthcare, reproductive rights, climate policy and the proper size of government. Yet their dependence on enormous financial machinery increasingly resembles a shared political addiction. They compete fiercely for donations while the citizens supposedly represented by those donations compete for affordable medicine, decent housing and a future their children can believe in.
The problem is not that elections cost money. Elections require organisation, communication and the participation of citizens. The problem is the scale, the concentration of influence and the grotesque opportunity cost. When political survival demands an endless financial war, governing becomes secondary to fundraising, and public service increasingly resembles a business whose shareholders are wealthy donors.
Imagine redirecting even a fraction of this electoral expenditure towards emergency housing, food programmes, medical treatment, mental health services, refugee assistance and rebuilding devastated communities. Imagine the thousands of families rescued from homelessness, the children whose hunger would disappear, the patients receiving treatment before their conditions become irreversible. These are not abstract moral fantasies. They are measurable human possibilities.
Of course, campaign money cannot simply be transformed overnight into public welfare. Political expenditure and public budgets are different instruments, and private donations do not automatically become government revenue. But that distinction does not diminish the moral question. It sharpens it.
What kind of political culture celebrates billions spent persuading people to vote while treating billions required improving their lives as an ideological battlefield?
US' electoral machinery has become exceptionally efficient at manufacturing political urgency. Every election is presented as the last opportunity to rescue the republic from catastrophe. Every opponent is portrayed as an existential threat. Every donation becomes a patriotic obligation. Yet the catastrophe that rarely receives comparable urgency is the everyday destruction of human potential through poverty, preventable illness, homelessness and hunger.
Perhaps the most revealing feature of US elections is not how much money they consume but how little shame accompanies the consumption.
Democracy should be about the people, not the price of convincing them. If political parties genuinely believe their campaigns are about protecting American lives, perhaps they should occasionally examine what those lives might look like if even a modest portion of their electoral fortune were spent protecting people rather than purchasing power.
The tragedy is not that USA cannot afford to help. The tragedy is that USA can afford both the suffering and the spectacle and somehow keeps choosing the spectacle.
No comments:
Post a Comment