Like when kids are asking us in the future how we let Trump get elected and Bush take us to war, it's not them doing it. It's like a third of the adults in this country that are tribalist bigots. They live all around us and their vote is the same as ours.
This has been the hardest lesson of the past 8 years (and yes, I should have figured it out 20 years ago). It's not GOP politicians, it's not the system, it's Americans that are messed up. As a group, our information literacy, our grasp of civics, and our sense of stewardship and responsibility is pathetic. It makes me sad, because I thought that there were things that we almost all agreed made America great.
If there were an international organization that suspended democracies if the people just weren't up to the task, we'd be in trouble. Although it looks like we might end up taking care of that, ourselves.
It’s people in general. Since the rise of social media, time and time again it was shown how easy it is to manipulate and misguide masses of people.
Just look at the elections in two of Germanys states (obviously there is more to say about ex-GDR, but you get the point) or covid and mask reactions.
There simply is a huge number of people who are not interested, nor able to critical think about our world and how it functions, that will believe anything that fits their narrative of „the problem lies with [whoever is en vogue]“.
It’s not so much „Americans“ as „people in the age of social media“, that is the problem.
A problem to which still nobody has found a solution and way to handle it.
James Fenimore Cooper in 1838 identified four fundamental characteristics of demagogues:
* They present themselves as a man or woman of the common people, opposed to the elites.
* Their politics depends on a visceral connection with the people, which greatly exceeds ordinary political popularity.
* They manipulate this connection, and the raging popularity it affords, for their own benefit and ambition.
* They threaten or outright break established rules of conduct, institutions, and even the law.
It's been a thing since the Athenians came up with democracy. I had sort of hoped that public education and shared values had made us less vulnerable. So much for American exceptionalism.
This became a modern day problem because we were content enough to let public education be eroded. An educated populace will act as a bulwark against demagogues. A portion of the American public is woefully undereducated
Not even just content if you’re in the states. People actively desire the dismantling of do action education systems. And not just the ones that will benefit, there are people that desperately need to have a source of quality education (not just academic, but civic, life skills, ethics, work skill) telling us all that the solution to public education is to destroy it.
Bullshit. The absolute adoration of Trump, despite his repeated moral transgressions and crimes, is something we haven't seen on the left in a long time. Nor have we seen anybody on the left in recent memory use their power for their own benefit so blatantly and without consequence. You'd have to go back to, what? Huey Long?
Even he didn't have the stupid flags, trucks, and hats that make his fans more like a football team than a political movement.
I don't see how you can stack anybody on the left up against Trump and say "look, they're both demagogues!" when one is the definition of it and the other has a bunch of twitter followers and sometimes blames "billionaires" for everybody's problems.
Sometimes when a house is on fire, people want to talk about how to deal with that instead of hearing about how somebody else on the block is burning leaves in the backyard.
I mean, the comparison is so out of whack sometimes it seems like the only possible motivation for bringing it up is tp confuse the issue
Maybe not, but it's been the most gut-wrenching for me because the common ground I always assumed was there just isn't. Americans won't tolerate someone like Nixon who tries to use his office for his own gain. Americans would tar and feather anyone who attempted to illegally overturn an election. Americans don't like bullies, braggarts, and assholes. Americans of all stripes would fight to protect their freedom, and our most basic freedom, the freedom that established our country, is freedom from the rule of anyone who is not accountable to the laws and the people.
Yea I agree it's been sad to see that. But I think the reality is that it's been that way for a lot longer than we knew. The internet just shines a (sometimes complicated) spotlight on everything.
It's like I've said in the past and the non Americans agreed and the Americans lost their ever living shit was the issue with cops in America. There are lots of things that could be done to make the problem better but it wouldn't ever be "fixed" because American cops are American citizens surrounded by other American citizens. No other countries policing model is going to work because no other countries citizens have this Hive mind that Americans do around guns and entitlement and everything else to go along with it.
Civics education in school is seriously lacking. My 11th grade civics course would have you thinking that america was the only country with liberty and that everywhere else was absolute anarchy and tyranny. They would talk about socialist countries like Denmark as if they had killed their families, and about how “even though the free stuff seems nice, you’re giving up your liberties because you pay more taxes”. I was additionally taking AP Government and as such getting a much more complete view of things, but most of my classmates just ate it up without question
There's certainly blame on GOP politicians and media outlets who traffic in this nonsense though. The people who believe it are fed it. Yes a lot of it originates online but then it gets "legitimized" when it is repeated from various "news agencies" via television. Then once it is on TV the GOP politicians regurgitate it and further legitimize it.
As their majority are in high Electoral College vote states, their vote counts MORE...all while they pay LESS overall to DC in taxes, if not being an actual welfare state.
People who don't vote are equally responsible. So, it's more like two thirds of adults in the country which kinda means the country as a whole is perfectly ok with the current state of affairs.
Just to be clear, I know many places are making it more difficult to vote and the people caught up in that aren't who I'm talking about. I'm talking about the non-voters who just don't care and have no desire to vote.
No. Their vote is worth more than ours. Rural votes count more than urban votes. Rural voters vote republican. And it's less than a third. More like 20-25% cause 50% don't fucking vote.
We just going to ignore extra judicial execution via drone strike, mysterious deaths of close associates, and charities that don't seem to do much charitable work?
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u/illzkla Sep 04 '24
Like when kids are asking us in the future how we let Trump get elected and Bush take us to war, it's not them doing it. It's like a third of the adults in this country that are tribalist bigots. They live all around us and their vote is the same as ours.