08/02/2024
As a general rule of thumb, the Republican party tends to roll back regulations and controls that prevent companies for doing things like causing the financial crisis of 2009. Protections that make sure big pharma must follow some sort of standard pricing guidelines are also repealed. So a certain sort of business person will always vote Republican. However, they generally can't say out loud exactly why. It would screw with the cognitive dissonance that allows them to run businesses that are somewhat shady. For this reason, they latch onto some sort of single narrative. Here are two that I have heard recently:
1. Donald Trump/Ken Paxton/etc. is a friend of new emerging blockchain technology and as single issue voters, we should support them.
2. Kamala Harris is not capable of running the American Empire and preventing war in other regions. Donald Trump is especially good at this and can broker peace between Israel and the Islamic world.
These are all nonsense, but they are good enough stories if no one is really listening.
This isn't to say that the US isn't a "Uniparty" or a case of what Sheldon Wolin calls "Inverted Totalitarianism". I believe that hiring a fascist, racist, sexist felon is simply not a step in the right direction.
Inverted totalitarianism is a system where economic powers like corporations exert subtle but substantial power over a system that superficially seems democratic. Over time, this theory predicts a sense of powerlessness and political apathy, continuing a slide away from political egalitarianism.