Sorry if the premise is inflammatory, but I’ve been stymied by this for a while. How did we go from something like 1940s era collectivism or 1960s era leftism to the current bizarro political machine that seems to have hypnotized a large portion (if not majority) of the country? I get it - not everything is bad now, and not everything was good then. FDR’s internment camps, etc.
That said - our country seems to be at a low point in intellectualism and accountability. The DHHS head is an antivaxxer, the deputy chief of the DOJ is a far-right podcast nutball, etc. Their supporters seem to have no nuance to their opinion beyond “well, Trump said he’d fix the economy and I don’t like woke.”
Have people always been this unserious and unquestioning, or are we watching the public’s sanity unravel in real time? Or am I just imagining some idealistic version of the past that never existed, where politicians acted in good faith and people cared about the social order?
Absolutely. But also something that is not mentioned enough is American anti-intellectualism. Its a culture where its been completely normalized to have opinions on things based on nothing but a feeling or a youtube video, and then regard those views as equal to analysis that come from experts that have studied their whole lives on the matter.
Not everyone gets to be well educated but it takes a special kind of arrogance to be uninformed and proud.
This is present on both sides. So many on the left apparently think that burning Tesla’s owned by random people who bought them way before Elon revealed himself to be a Nazi cunt is going to do something other than drive undecided people to the MAGAts that it blows my mind. Looks like a lot of the left agrees with Elon about empathy being weakness because they have none here. Not understanding how regular/ undecided people feel about having their car burnt up and thinking they are going to do anything but get pissed and join the other side is about as unempathetic as it gets. Musk would be proud of them. I just hope it is a vocal minority doing it and agreeing with it and that they are caught and arrested before they can damage the anti MAGA cause too much.
yes, this plus phones. and it’s not just the right. leftists have become detached from reality too. they live in a insulated bubble of anime and very elementary critical thinking.