It's amazing how much this is actually never true. Politics is largely about sincerely-held ideologies.
This "you're just a conspiracy nut" perspective for looking at actual networks of power and sources, became common after journalism pretty much died with local media as they shifted to ownership from a few parent conglomerates all working for elite interest.
Now news is about "ideas" and "events" not key players, money and networks of power ultimately benefiting the richest that kan in turn easily sway public opinion without resistance through PR, think tanks and media ownership.
I don't know when you think this rather beautiful "sincere belief in ideology" became the primary driver of history and politics, to me that's a highly naive after a bachelors in History and a love for the pretty standard historiographical realpolitical and resource oriented lenses adjacent to works like Guns, Germs and Steel.
Generally when I see people use this they're misreading it. For instance, they'll see donations from people working at Google to a campaign and think they're donations "by Google" to a campaign, but companies can't donate to campaigns. It's also unlikely politicians sincerely care that much about a campaign donation capped at $3000.
In general if you think things are about the money you should be happy with politics, because the highest-raising politicians are Bernie Sanders and crew with $25 Actblue donations. But what actually happens is that they raise more money than Republican politicians and then still lose elections in red states. Republican voters and politicians both actually believe what they're saying.
There's never been an alternative to vote for, and every attempt gets smeared in the media owned by the two-party system representing the oligarchs.
Candidates like Bernie who's still in line with most of above policies are showcased as alternatives but the distribution of power is never challenged outside of the arena of identity political circus boosted by conglomerate media.
Obama was also good example of this, PR outsider on the surface but in reality funded by the same bankers and continued global US adventurism.
Politics is downstream from elite interests when they own the media, the parties, the candidates and intermingle with the security state to take care of the rest.
This becomes especially apparent when looking back at the media landscape pre mergers, where a plurality of opinion and research existed from well respected classical journalists challenging local and state power, in what would today be smeared as conspiracy theorising or anti-patriotism while the overton window has become microscopic unless towing the line for the unfathomably rich.
That's why it's a minority position. Most people aren't low-openness conspiracy theorists.
It's like the midwit meme where the people at both ends agree.
Close. Politics is about interests. It’s about who gets the resources and who gets status and dignity and who doesn’t.
There are a lot of sincerely held ideologies that rise up around those questions. But if you don’t analyze politics through that lens you’re fucking delusional.
These three things are all opposing; you can't "and" them. And you shouldn't put the first one first, as people in the first world are generally too rich to care about it, and when they do care they never put any work into figuring out what would benefit them.
Thus you get votes for president based on gas prices, trust fund kids being communists, Mississippi continually voting 100% for the party that keeps them at the bottom of every state ranking, people thinking the Iraq War was for oil, people thinking the current Ukraine War is good for Russia, and so on.
nb when I said sincerely held ideologies I meant for the people in politics; voters largely have sincerely held nonsensical positions they haven't thought about much, or in other words are "cross-pressured".
