The real breakdown in the rule of law occurred when the US Supreme Court made the specious decision that amoral business entities (corporations) had the same rights in a democracy as citizens.
All this shit flows downhill from Citizens United.
The real breakdown in the rule of law occurred when the US Supreme Court made the specious decision that amoral business entities (corporations) had the same rights in a democracy as citizens.
All this shit flows downhill from Citizens United.
You must be very young? These issues predate 2010 by millennia.
Citizens United was just the inevitable outgrowth of Buckley v. Valeo 50 years ago, declaring that money == speech.
That was the wellspring of all this shit.
Supreme Court decisions are not a deterministic process like you get with code. Justices twist and contradict precedents to suit their ideological goals all the time; these days they don't even try to hide it much. The Citizens United decision wasn't something that had to happen, it was a deliberate choice by conservatives.