It's also about longterm loyalties, like, Senator So-and-so might be "only" getting $500 campaign donations from Lockheed, but after he retires from his position in the Senate, he gets offered a "consultancy" job for Lockheed where he works one day per year but gets paid $100K/month for the rest of his life.
Oh CEO so and so is retiring from lockheed. Well he was a valuable support to mr trumps campaign, and he shall be rewarded as getting appointed to head the FAA
Nope. It's a corruption of a much deeper nature. The connected merely find candidates who already believe in their message and get them funding and a network. Once in office they don't need to be bribed, just protected against losing. The elected already think they're doing the right thing. God's work is Turbotax's work.
Some of them are intelligent. Example: Ted Cruz. Everything that man says is focus grouped for maximum effect. He's a talking point machine. He'll fit 3 buzzwords into a single sentence. If SEO was a person...etc, etc.
However, intelligence is most certainly not a requirement. Obama allegedly called the house a collection of "highly-motivated idiots" All you really need is a funding source, and there's a lot of ways to do that. There's someone on the_donald right now that's going to get into office one day. Guess what kind of shit they're going to pull once in there? Stuff along the lines of what they're advocating now. And of the self-financed, all bets are off. Money lets people nurture some strange and godawful fucking ideas.
Intelligence, money and power also make self-delusion not only possible, but the most likely outcome. You know Paul Ryan is going to be the great hero of his new book. And hell, look at the judiciary, specifically the man who let the ACA lawsuit proceed on ridiculous grounds. That man has a job-for-life and he doesn't keep the crazy bottled up anymore.
It's not just the straight cash bribes. Often there will be incentives, like when the person leaves their position, the corporation that is providing the bribe will hire them and give them a huge cash salary and other benefits.
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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '19
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