

So in the world where spooky Russians didn’t interfere with our politicians, the parties representing the capitalist class would… not do that? This isn’t new. We’ve seen how capitalism led to the rise of fascism as a direct consequence of the needs of the system wayyyyy before Russia got involved in anything.
If you have a good analysis of how systems work, you don’t need to imagine or uncover conspiracy theories to explain that which can already be explained simply through incentives. Whether or not Russia has been meddling is missing the point.
EDIT: Just to explain my frustration a bit better: When people focus on this over the core class issue, at best it’s running cover for capitalists, but at worst it’s playing into the kind of fearmongering that the government uses to manufacture consent for the military industrial complex. The more they can convince us that there are scary enemies out there who want to destroy us, the easier it is for them to justify giving even more money to defense contractors and expanding the scope and authority of the military, intelligence agencies, etc. It’s giving more and more power to the people actually responsible for oppressing us.
It depends. Consider the inputs and outputs of this judgement:
Inputs:
Outputs:
Just as an example I think about sometimes: Sometimes you will get some older politician running for office. They have done and said some horrific things in the past. You point to that as a reason they shouldn’t be elected again. Someone comes out of the woodwork (I’m sure entirely organically /s) and says something like “can’t people change? Don’t they deserve a second chance?” And sure. People can change. And if that politician wants to go work at a McDonalds or something I’m not going to go out of my way to cancel them, but when we have millions of people who could be elected, most of whom, didn’t, idk, support segregation, why does this guy in particular deserve another chance to be in a position of power when he’s already used it in a bad way? In terms of your example, maybe if the sex offender is remorseful and goes to therapy for the issue, they could go reintegrate into society… just maybe not in a job that involves directly working with children right? That sounds reasonable? We can acknowledge the steps they took to reform themselves but also recognize that they lost the right to be trusted at certain kinds of things?
There are some crimes though that are so bad that they can never be forgiven. I don’t think the oil execs who deliberately lobbied to effectively cause the end of the world so they could keep profiting off of it for decades should be forgiven. I don’t think there is a punishment severe enough to serve justice for such a crime. No amount of work they could do to try to fix the problem could undo the damage which they have already caused. There is no actual means of redemption.