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(or suspect a cabal within their ranks) of 9/11. I suspect them of stealing three straight elections, most recently with Bushite Corpo-controlled 'TRADE SECRET' code voting machines, with virtually no audit/recount controls (fast-tracked all over this land during the 2002 to 2004 period). I suspect that a good portion of our Democratic Party leadership is in collusion on the loss of vote counting transparency. And I don't suspect, I know for a fact, that no person holding public office in the U.S. today can prove that he or she was actually elected (with the exception of New York, which has held out against e-voting).
My fascist government teaches me what to look for in other countries' government/political systems--key requirements of democracy that our fascist Corpos have targeted and have damaged or entirely destroyed here--transparent vote counting, encouraging maximum citizen participation, wide spectrum political discussion, the ability of poor people to run for office, counter-measures to Corpo monopoly of the 'news,' empowerment "from below" (the people set the agenda, leaders emerge from the grass roots), a decent justice system in general and in particular as to handling election issues, government open to and requests international election monitoring, etc.
The leftist democracies of South America have all of these components of a viable, working democracy, and where they are lacking, they are aimed in the right direction--trying to correct problems, unlike our government, which is working overtime to make bad problems worse.
Even with solid achievements in the fundamentals of democracy, all governments should be closely scrutinized, of course, first of all by their own people, and secondly by people who also live in countries which have well-developed democratic institutions. It seems to me that people who live in fascist/Corpo states like the U.S. ought to keep their traps shut as to criticizing countries that have transparent vote counting, and as to calling their transparently elected, democratic leaders "dictators," etc.--because we have nothing to offer those countries and their voters that would be helpful. Clean up our disaster first, then we can critize.
And that goes for corruption as well. At least one billion dollars of our tax money has gone missing in Iraq, and nobody in our government seems to give a goddamn. The corruption here--everywhere you look, in every sphere touched by Bushites or Corpos, on every issue--is colossal, unprecedented, mind-boggling. Further, the worst corruption--the big corruption, and the corruption tied to torture, murder and massive oppression--here, and in South America, is inevitably perpetrated by the rightwing. So, no, I do not agree with your precept that, "Conditions and corruption don't simply change based on the political ideology of those in office." In fact, as to massive theft--the kind that destroys countries, the kind that needs torture, murder and oppression to be accomplished--you can pretty much rely on the rightwing to be many orders of magnitude worse than leftwing governments. Indeed, the difference is like night and day.
This is also true of "conditions"--the transparency of elections and government, the openness to citizen scrutiny, the fairness of the justice system, the freedom to protest and "petition the government," etc. All of these kinds of conditions--which militate against corruption, especially against massive, nation-killing corruption--are not just better under leftist governments, leftist leaders advocate for them, and insist on them, and rightwing governments, whenever they gain power, immediately start with the secrecy--shutting down scrutiny of their actions, controlling the media, using the police to spy on and brutalize the opposition, and twisting the justice system to favor their power and to favor the rich.
Corruption cannot be excised from government overnight, with a change from right to left. But throwing rightwing politicians out of government is a good start. I am speaking here of a limited window of time, approximately the last decade, to now, in the U.S. and South America. The historical picture is not so clear here, although it is in South America (the right = massive corruption). The only true leftwing government we have ever had--that of FDR, which lasted for four terms--was also the least corrupt. So length of time in office doesn't matter. The honesty, decency and good will of the people running the government is a key factor, along with public vigilance. Eisenhower was moderate-right, and ran a very clean government. LBJ, on the other hand, was leftist is some respects, but mega-corrupt in others (slaughtering 2 million people in Southeast Asia, before it was over, as a war profiteer venture). The Soviets were considered leftists (far leftists--communists), and ran a corrupt government in which party members got luxuries while others suffered (with periods of mass murder and other horrors). The dream of a country owned by the people pretty much died with them (probably more because Russia had no experience of democracy whatsoever, prior to the revolution, and immediately fell into dictatorial (tsarist) style communism, which infected the entire international movement--and not so much because economic equality is such a bad idea).
In any case, a mixed picture. People-oriented governments are not necessarily clean governments--although if you gave me a choice between "Tamany Hall" (the poor get jobs) and, say, the Bush junta (the poor get shafted), I probably don't have to tell you which kind of corruption I would prefer. But the current picture in the U.S., and both the historical picture and the recent/current picture in South America, is as plain as it can be: the right is corrupt beyond belief and anti-democratic; the left is pro-democracy and also gives people better reasons to work in government than greed, graft and "living off the oil" (as the rightwing elite has done). The people working for Chavez and Morales and Correa and other leftist leaders are highly motivated about making government work for everybody, and realizing the Bolivarian dream of a "United States of South America." They are like New Dealers. And here, people who work for Obama want to clean up the colossal stinking mess that the Bushites (and collusive Democrats) have made of our government. The rightwing is excessively corrupt; the left has to clean it up.
And it matters which of these gains power--right vs. left--in both places, there and here. It is only Bushites who would like us to think that corruption is everywhere, and linked to neither right nor left. Every leftist government elected in Latin America over the last half decade was elected in part because of excessive corruption on the right--both ordinary graft and major theft and collusion with Corpos. Whether they can solve the problem or not--after decades of entrenched rightwing power and consequent massive poverty--it is at least part of their mandate, as it is with Obama.
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