And this is part of the problem. Citizens United was a bog standard first amendment ruling that has been targeted by an aggressive misinformation campaign by a faction that wants the unprecedented power to censor political discourse, and people are eating up the misinformation.
> While his policies are a big part of his platform, what really resonates with a lot of people is his unwavering commitment to first principles values like fairness, equality, social justice, and democracy.
But again, his "commitment" is in the form of talk. The reality of the policy positions he does advance is to set us up for the exact opposite of all of those things. I don't know whether he's a well-intentioned fool or a deceptive manipulator, but either way, the consequences are the same. He's just a mirror image of Trump, using vague emotional appeals to win power, then horribly misusing that power.
> Provide just enough support for folks that they still hold agency in their life. As Fred Rogers put it, "There's a world of difference between insisting on someone's doing something and establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it."
Absolutely correct. And the problem here is that "insisting on someone's doing something" is the fundamental nature of the political state, while "establishing an atmosphere in which that person can grow into wanting to do it" is the task of a dynamic and pluralistic civil society, in all its forms.
The more we allow the assertion of political power to solve problems that ought rightly be solved by bottom-up activity in civil society, the more we set ourselves up to be the victims of abuse (especially as the well-intentioned people who created the system of political dependence are superseded first by indifferent functionaries, and then by corrupt powermongers).