Bribing and influencing by wealthy people in politics is, unfortunately, a largely common occurrence. That said, as the years have gone on, more of these instances have been played in citizens’ faces. That said, with how prevalent these stories are on the news and documented on official records, the number of times the public overlooks this is concerning.
However, to say that the public is simply overlooking these issues would be far too simplistic. Trust in legacy news media is at its lowest, leading many people to flock to alternative news sources. Additionally, the prevalence of misinformation thanks to AI and conspiracy theories has made it hard for regular people to trust any type of information that they see online.
Now more than ever, people put their trust in influencers, podcasters, and other online creators for political information, despite these creators likely having similar biases or non-altruistic reasons, or being paid to report information the way they do. However, as the world gets even more chaotic, people just don’t bother to keep up. For many people, politics has become such an exhausting, tiring topic to research that they don’t bother to get involved. Other times, people don’t see local politics as important enough compared to the big trending headlines of federal news topics.
Fundamentally, it can be summed up to distractions. The general public has to worry about so many things going on in the world, and that list of problems only increases each day. Only a small percentage of people have the time, the capacity, or the desire to thoughtfully and carefully look into the circumstances of billionaires’ influence in the political landscape.
