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?
People who seem reasonable still say there are good people on both sides. I don’t understand that at all! My hairstylist moved here from vietnam as a kid. Last week i made a comment about bezos and he actually said, “both sides…”. I thought my brain was going to pop.
Vietnamese people are very conservative people, not surprising. When I was a public speech course, we had a Viet guy speak and he was very pro war and Republican( this was pre trump(
They’re talking about the moderates on both sides. I can probably assume you aren’t.
Yes, they’ve always been here. There has always been more stupid ignorant people than educated and intelligent people.
Previously, the stupid had no platform.
The fire hose of stupid shit we are inundated with nowadays used to only trickle through in person.
Someone would say something insanely stupid to you at the bar, at the grocery store, at the barber shop etc… and all we had to do was ignore them or tell them to shut up
Thanks to social media, now they’ve teamed up and have millions of followers.
The question ought to be, How are the the educated and intelligent going to rise above it?
Democracy might be the problem. You could put a threshold to vote in place, something to test that you know all the views from all the parties and the relevant topics. It’s a slippery slope though, because once you enable restrictions on voting, it’s hard to disable it again. If you accidentally get a Trump in power, he might just as easily restrict voting back to cis, white males only.
Democracy isn’t the problem; it’s the money in politics, which is an intended effect of capitalism.
Capitalism is the problem. Capitalism by its very natire is a system of economic distribution where you have an owner class who control a working class via wages, where the working class will never be paid what they are worth due to the profit motive that the owner class has when it comes to the profit of their business. Shareholder capitalism makes this even worse, as the profit year-over-year must ALWAYS go up, as that is how stock price increases. It is to the point where shareholders sue companies not for losing money, but for making less money than they did the year prior, and they win.
Imagine an alternative where you could have democracy in your workplace (worker-owned coops). You would be able to hire and fire your boss with a vote. You will be able to determine the direction of the business, also with a vote. This could be the reality if we just forced all corporations to be worker-owned coops.
This, combined with a hard wealth cap and a UBI, will prevent any one person (or small group of people) from gaining enough power to buy a government, and the addition of democracy in business will also make business interests harder to corrupt as well.
I was wondering if a top age restriction could be good though. People use to not live so damn long that they could fuck over the future generation.
Like shouldn’t people who will actually be alive to see the changes they are making make the decisions? Why are we letting people vote who are on their death bed, probably base their decisions on stuff from 50 years ago, and don’t really care about what the people who will actually live that reality will experience?
Not sure what the cutoff should be. But if 17 year olds aren’t old enough to vote, maybe 60+ year olds aren’t young enough to vote?
Maybe, just maybe, it shouldn’t be an age but a knowledge requirement. Some 10 year olds know that there are (were?) e.g. 3 branches of government, while I kid you not there are some 20+ year olds that are not aware of that plain and simple fact fact. On average, older people tend to be a little bit more knowledgeable than young, if only due to having had more time to figure stuff out, although otoh also society does change out from under them - e.g. which is more trustworthy, something seen on the TV “news”, or something shared on TikTok?
It seems more like an attitude of responsibility to me than an age or anything else. Perhaps make college degree a requirement - while keeping the GI bill offering college funding to people who successfully serve (without being dishonorably discharged) in the military. Or just a test of how government “works”.
Or rather, used to work. We aren’t coming back from this, methinks.
Yeah all good points honestly.
I was thinking changing something age related would be more hard to argue with, but any “test” we give people could feel unfair. Like think about how many languages it would have to be translated to, and what if you accidentally entered the wrong answer?
I kind of love the idea but it’s just hard to imagine the problems at scale.
Maybe we should go after the electoral college instead since ultimately they make the decisions??
Omg, you might not have been paying attention lately, but I 100% guarantee that it will be solely in English. Assuming we are allowed to vote again, which tbf we probably will, it’s just that the options will be preselected for us. As it has pretty much always been, but moar so now.
The citizenship test is only in English, so anyone able to vote will be able to understand English.
Damn I didn’t see that news 😭 I’ve been traveling the last week and honestly trying to ignore the news a bit. Not sure how to productively consume it without just feeling upset!
I hear that. Fwiw, a lot has been broken for a very long time - not merely weeks or months or even years but rather decades, so this is more of a reckoning that is catching up to us than it is a total surprise.
Similar to Brexit I would imagine, and many other similar trends around the globe, with similar causes and effects. People got complacent, the wealthy ignored the plight of the poor, who reacted out of desperation, and now… we’ll see.
Ask yourself what you think your country would look like if the Internet was hyper fixated on every single bad example anyone could find within your borders.
I blame the Left becoming TOO tolerant of all beliefs and allowing this direct to flourish. We really need to acknowledge that some ideas are too far out of mainstream to not be ridiculed into oblivion.
The left has undeniably alienated some of their group (my mum was alienated by trans rights, I was alienated by the DNC, Elon was allegedly alienated by Biden’s EV push ignoring Tesla), but I think the bigger problem is the left doesn’t fight for things people care about.
The right are the only ones in the news cycle (look at how many articles we have about Trump, even when he wasn’t president) which, to anyone who doesn’t treat politics like sports teams, makes you obviously see a thing or true that you support Republicans on. This imo is the critical flaw of the left; I now have no reason to be excited about their platform, and I’m completely numb to anything they say negatively about Trump.
my mum was alienated by trans rights
How in the world does us trying to exist and not be harassed alienate anyone?
Anecdote time: My mother’s wechat have posts claiming schools are doing sex reassignment surgeries on kids in school… (which is obviouly false, I’ve been in school in a blue city)
Yea, facebook and whatever probably have the same shit.
Its the propaganda machine.
She’s not even anti-trans, but she’s “tired of hearing about it” and all the “pandering the left does”
That’s like the most transphobic thing your mother can say, “I’m tired of trans people,” quit your bs, we know your conservative , there’s a reason why your mom is getting that reaction, because shes hateful
🙄
Your mom sounds like kind of an asshole. She was alienated from liberalism because she was tired of hearing about a minority being targeted by a fascist party for existing?
That’s some asshole behavior.
I now have no reason to be excited about their platform
I’m excited about the part where they AREN’T FUCKING FASCISTS.
I’m completely numb to anything they say negatively about Trump.
Then Trump has beaten you through attrition, which was his goal.
Lol @ thinking Elon Musk was ever ‘left’ he was never even left of center.
Compared to outside of the US, this is true, but within the US he was pretty leftist. He publicly supported UBI, pushed for renewables, donated to the Obama and Hillary campaign, etc. Now he’s anti-trans, pro-Trump x1000, but there used to be a time he cared.
And this is why the Left can’t win.
It’s too obsessed with purity and infighting to focus on the true enemy.
The fascists, on the other hand, focus on the true enemy, then focus on purity and infighting!
Most leftists are unarmed finger waggling sign-holders.
We spent the last thirty years making gun control a priority, making anywhere near a blue state or democrat controlled city impossible to buy a gun, making democrat/Leftist protests just impotent and likely helped with police training rather than change policies or influencepoliticians tonl protect LGBTQ.
Meanwhile Bubba and his redneck Republican states allowed him to have his ergonimic advanced arsenals delivered to his front door from online purchases at cheaper prices.
And if you, whoever you are casually scrolling by this random nested comment, as a Leftist who wants to rebuke me, prove it by posting a pic of your gun. That’s right, you don’t have one and can’t protect our trans folk if they needed our help, you think fascist cops would do that. GTFO of here.
Ergonomic is bad now? Should I throw out my ergonomic keyboard? My keyboard might assault someone!
You should work on reading comprehension and I need to work on writing better. If Bubba can shoot you from his diabetic mobility scooter, then ergonomic is good. Don’t know where the fuck you took it as a bad thing
I’m reliably accurate to about 800 yards and I really don’t like fascist assholes.
It’s also not hard to buy a gun, that’s just a bunch of baloney, even here in CA. Yes there are carry restrictions, and yes it’s more involved than other states, but buying one is not as difficult as people make it out to be.
That thing looks cool af and Magpul furniture looks decent, but know that MAGA not only own disproportionately way more guns than you, they also aren’t worried about joining militias and regularly train with their morbidly obese friends, meanwhile you are trying to solo these inbred fucks and will 100% die to them if they start shit.
It’s not a Magpul, I forget the brand but it’s super comfy.
My small town is very heavily armed, but is also way more moderate (purple) than anything. Sure we have our far right wingnuts, but they tend to be on the lower end of the intelligence spectrum in these parts. They tried forming a militia a while back, and most everyone in town just laughed at them. A lot of of us enjoy going shooting regularly (when it’s not freezing out), and I’m certainly not trying to take on the gravy seals by myself lol. My good buddies and I have contingency plans in place in case shit goes sideways in the worst of ways.
It’s not a Magpul, I forget the brand but it’s super comfy.
What? Your barrel shroud is Magpul, your pistol grip is Magpul, your bipod is Magpul, your p-mag might be Magpul, and your stock looks like a Magpul too. Your lower looks like Aero and the upper looks like cheap off-brand. Your Vortex optic likely costs more than your entire gun for no reason i can imagine for such a low caliber, and is too high a magnification for 5.56/.223 unless you use +p+ ammo
Did you just purchase this shit and not know what the fuck you own? Please don’t be a stereotype moron Lefty who bought a gun and knows nothing about it and never trains with it (hint, you definitely are).
Damn dude, chill out. You’re assumptions are out of this world and it’s laughable.
I can tell you’re blowing smoke out of your ass because anyone with eyes and rudimentary gun knowledge would be able to tell pretty quickly this is an ar-10, not 15. This was built for me by a buddy, the optic and stock I purchased after the fact. Yes the optic is overkill for this particular rifle, and will likely get transferred to my 30-06. The image is from the shop where we signed the transfer paperwork.
You’re showing your colors as a stereotypical arrogant keyboard warrior, who takes their assumptions and runs a marathon with them, parading around like a pathetic asshat to make yourself feel better. Grow up and be better.
Explain to me how a gun would help you when police or government agents or even just a rowdy local militia come knocking on your door, I’m genuinely interested in hearing how you think that will play out.
It completely changes how they act with you. It goes from them fearlessly stomping you, to respectfully cautious because they don’t want to die. It’s almost as if people only respond to threats of violence. Otherwise why the fuck do we bother building nukes? If Ukraine never gave up their nukes, Russians would have never invaded. If Vietnamese farmers didn’t fight with AKs, that entire region would look different. Go read a fucking history book. Quit being a pacifist pussy
to respectfully cautious
Lmao to quote you, GTFO out here with that
Please elaborate your nonsense comment
I think you better go ask someone on your opposing political spectrum if they’d leave you alone if they found out you had a gun when knocking on your door to arrest or harm you.
those people you call “fascists” are too selfish to be fascists. Trump and his minions don’t care about their nation or the well being of its state and people.
Fascists are always selfish. The claims about caring about the nation or anything else are always a front. They are the marketing, not the product. The product is always self-enrichment, which is exactly the goal of the Trump regime. They are archetypal fascists.
People are down voting you, but I’m hyper left and also believe this. A big one for me is overly sensitive consideration for things that aren’t truly problematic, such as the use of “LatinX.”
A massive majority of us Latinos do not give a shit about this or think its idiotic. A white person definitely decided that the linguistic gendering inherent to Spanish was sexist.
Dude get off lemmy. Go outside, talk to your neighbors.
Nothings changed, we’re still a giant group of humans. Only your perception has changed.
We’ve never elected a felon rapist who attempted to overthrow our government before.
So clearly something has changed.
We still haven’t. He’s not a felon, and he’s not a rapist. You should really actually read the articles instead of the headlines.
Funnily enough, there’s been rapists in office before, like Bill Clinton, a democrat.
Yes, Trump was convicted of multiple felony charges, making him a convicted felon.
He recieved a conditional discharge for his sentence, meaning he didn’t spend time in jail, but he is 100% a convicted felon.
You also ignored the part where he’s a treasonous traitor to his country, that tried to overthrow a democratically elected government.
You’re not a moderate, you’re just blind to how idiotic and treasonous the American right wing is.
Actually he was never convicted in a court of law. Civil court does not have the same requirements.
Completely and utterly wrong.
He was convicted by a jury in New York court of Falsifying Business Records, a felony crime, that carries up to four years in prison as potential punishment.
Maybe try googling what you think you know before posting next time. Evidently, whatever method you use to inform yourself of things has led you to be confident of multiple blatant falsehoods.
Before micro plastics and covid, we had hook worms in the south and leaded gasoline everywhere.
America has been under the threat of foreign influence since Day 1 and right now, it looks like we are temporarily under attack by agents of Eastern Europe and South Africa. Literally every noteworthy poll of the last 20 years will show that the majority of Americans are against this and it’s important to remember this harm is coming from outside.
South Africa
Musk is under russian control, South Africa got nothing to do with this
I would say “stupid” is a judgement you should keep between your ears. I think Americans are undereducated before they get released into a mad for-profit higher education system that gives them debts for life (but hitherto also great sciencing at a high level). The strong cultural undercurrent of exceptionalism hardly ever lets them look elsewhere for comparison. And the political system, which is based on who can spend more money, not so much on ideas, is proving to be a system that’s rarely bringing out the best people for top jobs. But it’s a dog and pony show and that favors characters over good policies. The fragmentation of people all watching the same news show at night 3 decades ago, to watching partisan 24h news channels 2 decades ago, to splintering even further on the socials now adds to the problem. There is no largely unified audience with the same facts at their disposal.
It’s also nice that Trump is now dismantling the democratic state because voting in the US always gets filtered through electoral colleges and gerimandered districts, skewing results to favor the two main parties, often only one of them. It was pretend-democratic until now.
Something that gets overlooked easily is the long history of fascist rules that was in place in the south after the civil war. Jim Crow laws masqueraded as democracy for a long time and every time courts tried to put a stop to it, the white people in charge found other ways to be a-holes. That’s part of American culture already.
America has always had a penchant for whacky leaders. Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. None of them fit my idea of a virtuous leader. But at least the ones this century adhered to a decorum, an unwritten standard of how to behave as president. Nixon didn’t want to get caught. Trump doesn’t give a sh!t. So the leadership culture has shifted, not for the better.
All this mixes a large chunk, an uncurious population that still sees itself pretty much as a role model for the world, falling for simple populist messages. It should also be said that tarring all Americans with the same brush is unfair. I think it was the votes of less than a third of eligible voters that made Trump 2.0 a reality, roughly another third just behind it, with the remainder not bothering to vote at all. I would say the often fantasized silent majority is actually not pro Trump.
So calling all Americans stupid is not right. There are a lot of people hurting right now as they watch their country develop in a bad way. We need those people to stand up and fight and calling them names doesn’t help.
(Other countries have gone down similar routes, have had whacky leaders, have done questionable things. The US is not alone on this path.)
I think it was the votes of less than a third of eligible voters that made Trump 2.0 a reality, roughly another third just behind it, with the remainder not bothering to vote at all. I would say the often fantasized silent majority is actually not pro Trump.
That means that a third didn’t bother, though, despite Trump very much being a known quantity. The exact reason why they didn’t vote is up to debate and it’s probably several reasons at once (these people are not a monolith), but it doesn’t say any good things about them or the political system.
I agree. I didn’t mean to imply all of the remainder would be pro just one of the candidates. My guess is that it’s still enough to make up a silent majority. Which sounds great but no one can prove anyways.
I’m inclined to give American voters a limited raincheck on not bothering to show up. Voting is often a booklet of ballots on various issues and elections for office. It takes forever to fill it in. That explains the long, slow-moving lines outside pulling stations, much rarer occurrences in other democracies. And that’s only the people who are able to come on a workday (and didn’t have the foresight or were unable to get mail-ins). That’s after a registration process that can have Kafkaesque features in many states. So I would forgive the single mother who didn’t have time to do this between working her two low paid jobs. It’s part of a subtle but deliberate disenfranchisement. We’ll add that one to the list of grievances as well.
Yeah, that’s fair. They certainly don’t make it easy to vote in USA, which is deliberate to a large extent. Easy to forget.
That’s for red states, they purposely voter suppression blue areas, in blue states you don’t have voting problems, or any suppression. One of things is red state purging voters and rigging the machines
Even blue states vote on a working day and can have ridiculously long lines due to the booklet voters are asked to fill in. That’s already bad from my POV. All the other shenanigans are extra, on top of that.
It’s insane to me that some people don’t have this day off.
I really appreciate your level headed take.
It should also be said that tarring all Americans with the same brush is unfair. I think it was the votes of less than a third of eligible voters that made Trump 2.0 a reality
But that means all the non-voters are to blame as well.
And why are the streets so empty now? I can’t see and hear all these democrats out there.
https://martin-niemoeller-stiftung.de/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/NiemollerQuoteMonmouthNJ580pxw.jpg
I have stated elsewhere in this thread that I have limited sympathy for the US non-voters. So refer to that if you’re curious. I am trying my best not to condemn everybody equally. A free election, in most democracies, means you’re free not to go. Perhaps we’d all be fine with non-voters if Mrs. Harris had won. Putting blame at their feet is also shutting the barn door when the horse has already bolted. We should motivate the ones willing to stand up and resist. You don’t want to injure their pride and get them to jump on the MAGA bandwagon out of spite.
There are protests taking place. I just saw Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were in the news leading rallies and protests. American and Canadian protesters gathered on either side of one of the lakes, forgot which one. There are people who are saying something. Even GOP voters are shouting down their elected leaders in town hall meetings because Elon chainsawed a benefit that affected them and theirs. It’s easy to draw parallels to 1930s Germany but this Trump 2.0 administration will plot its own despicable course.
One of the reasons why you don’t see so many mass gatherings like you saw in Serbia recently or Slovakia is also US infrastructure. It’s real hard to get thousands of Americans into one place anywhere when there isn’t sufficient public transport and it would statistically be 1.2 people per car - you’d need a Rhode Island just for parking.
“am I just imagining some idealistic version of the past that never existed”
yup.
Americans have always been this stupid, but stupid people aren’t the problem.
everyone is stupid, greedy, or otherwise morally corrupt at some point or another or in some situation or another, that’s why legal rights and protections were so important, to keep the playing field level and the trains running on time when the assholes wanted to run riot.
the successful conservative suppression of civil rights and removal of restrictions on corporate and wealthy political stuff civil activity, particularly the allowance by the Supreme Court of money to dictate political action, has removed the guardrails that used to protect the stupid and keep corrupt people in line.
The descent became a downslide and now it’s an avalanche.
No, it hasn’t always been that bad. Stupidity happens. It is human. Most times people were able to keep stupidity in check.
That’s why democracy was invented, by the way. It was founded on the belief that a collective can be more reasonable than a single or small group.
Not saying that reason were the opposite of stupidity (that would be wisdom), but reason is a means to keep stupidity in check.
The gish gallop has gone mainstream.
What we needed, twenty to forty years ago at the bare minimum, were journalists who were willing to shut that shit down.
I remember being a child watching the news with my parents and seeing an oil company defender accusing the scientists of chasing profits.
Like what the fuck? How did that not end immediately with “And who is currently profiting?” is and always has been beyond me.
…I’m not sure that’s a great example of the gish gallop. Technically.
My point was that we now report the untrue claims rather than saying, from the start, “This candidate said something completely false and not worth repeating.”
For clicks, views, the algorithm, for profit. Nope. It was all to game the system in order to destroy it.
Sorry, this probably isn’t coherent but I’m tired and tipsy, and I’ve chosen to hit save.
Of course this is death by a thousand cuts. For me a lot of blame goes to the Reagan administration. They really set up the next 40 yrs plus with trickle down economics. It really hammered home that government is for profit of corporations, not a non-profit service for the people. Citizens United vs FEC (1988) also opened the flood gates to money in politics with no recourse by the public. It’s been a downhill from there in my opinion.
I should’ve given the full context - when I was a kid watching the news with my parents it was likely late in the Carter administration, or early in Reagan’s. So yeah, fully agreed.
*2010
Woops, you are right the case was 2010, Citizens United was founded in 1988.
Anti-intellectualism has a certain tradition in the USA, it’s kind of well-known.
A German perspective: I think Germans have always been this stupid, they’re mostly just more willing to say the quiet part out loud than they were between 1970 and 2014 (rough estimate). The difference is that the far right extremists have a popular platform now, and the mainstream parties refuse to ban either the far right party or all the media (X, Facebook, local tabloid press etc.) that’s pushing them. If this party had been around in 1960, it would definitely have been banned.
First, your premise is inflammatory and I’m pretty sure it’s intentional, so apology not accepted.
Second, this is not a uniquely American problem. The UK, for example, has been dealing with the rising conservatism, the dismantling of their government, the privatization of major public services like the rail network, etc. This is the natural conclusion of that process: oligarchs gain so much power they can outright buy presidential elections and accelerate the trend toward fascism. Lots of people have seen this coming, but we can only vote so hard.
There was a post on some Lemmy community or other yesterday which stated that most Americnas support ideas like universal healthcare (55%) and getting rid of guns from private ownership (mid 60% IIRC).
In that thread someone said it was awful that even amongst progressives the support for universal healthcare was so low and the very few responses to that were basically - :shrug: we’ve been lied to what are we gonna do about it?
The responses to the gun ownership stat were numerous and declared support for ‘second amendment rights’.
When even US progressives are passionately defending the biggest cause of child death in the USA in 2022 but are apathetic about universal healthcare, that’s a uniquely US problem that speaks very much to the level of thinking power available.
You’re using whataboutism and did not answer the question. Your comment is useless.
The answer is “don’t call Americans stupid without looking in the mirror”
Whataboutism is ‘Well it’s not bad if we did it because these other guys did it too!’. That’s not what this is.
What I’m doing is reflecting that this is a global issue that is not UNIQUELY an American problem (you must’ve missed the word uniquely before.) That phrase, ‘not uniquely American’, means that while I acknowledge that it is also a problem for us - and in fact I have no reservations about saying that it’s worse here than anywhere else (so far) - that it’s happening elsewhere too.
Stupid does as stupid is.
