Because the rich control an overwhelming amount of the media we consume. They are capable of shaping the narrative to their benefit.
They also successfully killed public education, so literally the citizens are too stupid to understand they’re being conned.
This is the most important part.
And also they push religion hard which is inherently a system of control for the uneducated and exploited.
Not just control, but Christianity specifically (as well as a few others) is really good because it promises a paradise after you die.
You can get idiot plebes to spend their whole lives dreaming about it all being better after they die, because they were pious and accepted abuse during life.
So, control through fear and hope.
EDIT: Also Christianity is inherently misogynistic and that’s very appealing to disaffected young men who hate that women won’t fuck them. Angry young men with no direction or group to belong to are one of the most dangerous and destabilizing groups a country can have.
Exactly. The “love thy enemy” nonsense always got me too:
Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you
- Mathew 5:44
Think about slavery in history. Christianity was forced upon slaves in US history. Think about current era people working horrible conditions, factories, sweatshops, whatever. What a CONVENIENT verse for the slave owners.
Just be good, do what you’re told, don’t fight back, and love your enemy (exploiter/persecuter). If you do, promise of heaven like you said.
But if you disobey (commit murder, dare I say of the person exploiting you), infinite and eternal torture and suffering in hell.
Also don’t commit suicide, that’s a sin too so straight to hell if you do.
Its just so fucking obvious.
What a CONVENIENT verse for the slave owners.
reminds me of the joke that in another two thousand years, future archeologists will have no idea what is the difference between butt dial and booty call.
and yet here we are with piece of shitty fiction written two thousand years ago, being passed in oral tradition and rewritten and retranslated multiple times, and some morons are trying to use it and force it upon others as a guideline how to live a life in 21st century…
It’s just as good as any modern piety. Mormons, scientology, or any other weird sect or cult that’s emerged in the last 100 years isn’t more substantial to the modern person. I do hold a special place in my heart* for the love has won people.
*this was a joke if you are affiliated with love has won take your crazy ass mother god and stay the fuck away from me
The sooner you realize the vast majority of humans are simply not very intelligent, the more everything starts making sense. And the more depressed you will be.
I have no science behind this (and am therefore a hypocrite) but I’m giving up on the assumption that people think. I suspect that most people feel and make decisions on those feelings.
Thinking happens later, if at all.Humans are animals that navigate life through the lens of emotions with logic being something that we have to work towards - so you may be closer to the truth than you think.
Half of all people are dumber than
averagethe median.Keep in mind that if you are in a public space, about half the people around you have an IQ below 100.
It is a combination of this and the power of propaganda.
When you can control the information that people consume, you can have a huge influence over what they think.
If you can influence the thoughts of a big portion of the populous, you can create control structures. You use these control structures to move people into their emotional decision making more often. The more often you can keep people in their emotional decision mode, the easier you can control what they do.
The thing is, the easiest way to keep people in their emotional thought mode, is to pull the fear and anger levers. Keep people afraid and angry, and you can steer society.The other problem with this is, the people who see through this kind of thing are not the majority.
The people who can see through the techniques, are not always the traditionally “smart”; but higher intelligence is certainly an advantage.
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
–Lyndon B. Johnson
Because powerful people turned politics from a policy / representation in to politics as an identity. People will almost anything for their two minutes of hate.
religion is a big part of it. how many millions of people only vote for the candidate who promises to criminalize abortion without knowing (or caring about) a single other goddamn thing about the person
I’m going to start a 3rd party. This party is going to be the “Fuck America” party. My party is going to run on the ideals that America is awful, and that trump is not a problem, he’s a symptom. America is the one who overwhelmingly approved of his ideas. I’m going to openly state FUCK GOD, THERE IS NO GOD. I’m going to take the stance of FUCK EVERYBODY. You guys want to argue about if boys and girls and trans should all be allowed to play high school sports together? Ok, here’s what we’re going to do, assholes. Boys and girls and trans can all play on the same teams together now. BUT!!! Every school district will also have one new team. This team won’t have students on it. You want to play basketball with boys and girls and trans, that’s fine, but we’re going to also make you play games against professional athletes who are trying to qualify for the national olympic teams. Why? Because then no matter which high school team you’re on, you lose. Everybody loses. That’s the message here. Equality for all, and fuck all of you because humans are the worst.
Then I hear people argueing about abortions. Can a woman have an abortion, or is it against gods will? You know what? Fuck that! Forced abortions for men. All men will now have their balls smashed by the youtube show Hydrolic Press. We put all your balls into the hydrolic press, and let an industrial size piece of machinery squish them flat. No more babies.
And as for women, we’re going to treat you equally too! No more opening the doors for you, or holding your chair. No more weddings, or divorce. No more considering your opinion on stuff. What? You thought when a bunch of guys get together, we all sit around and consider each others feelings? No. We wrestle each other and punch each other to decide where we’re going to eat that night. Doesn’t matter if your vegan, we’re eating at a place called gut busters meat emporium. Because Steve, with the biggest bicepts broke your nose, and you were too much of a pussy to get up and punch back.
Dogs are now manditory in government. Every government position is now held by a dog, because dogs are better than people, and they’re the only good boys!
…what? Why is everybody staring at me? Oh my god, was I talking outloud?
At first I was going to ask if you were okay.
But then I got to the dogs and realized that I’d like to sign up to your newsletter.
Republicans didn’t start caring about abortion until they decided they could go after the Catholic vote. Even Evangelicals didn’t have a position on it until Republicans started to target them with misinformation about it. Those people think that they literally take screaming babies and putting them into a blender. There’s a video they made in the 80s called “the silent scream” that they used to scare kids with.
Because they’ve successfully been conned into thinking that what’s in the best interests of the rich is in their own best interests too.
Because the rich do a LOT to make it turn out that way.
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News is largely controlled by capitalists.
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Education has been gutted in a lot of places to make way for private schools.
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Corporations can contribute tons of money to candidates. Setting aside the possibility that these are effectively bribes, even if that weren’t the case, the candidates who get that money get to put out more ads and have more campaign infrastructure such as travel funds, staffers, etc.
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Various kinds of voter suppression.
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From the very founding of the country, the election system and government has been set up to hamper political participation. Obviously there was the fairly narrow franchise at the start. But even with that expanded, we have the electoral college, unequal apportionment, gerrymandering, first past the post, closed primaries, a court that’s specifically there to slow down popular will, etc.
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Just being a representative “democracy” puts a barrier between people and the policies they want. You rarely if ever get to vote on policies. You have to vote for a candidate. And the candidate is a whole bundle of policies, but also a record, a personality, etc. So there can be all sorts of political messaging about candidates which has nothing to do with what their policies are. Because of the duopoly party system that is all but ensured by the aforementioned voting system, you aren’t even going to have a candidate you can vote for that will represent your interests. And after all that, even if you manage to vote for someone who says they’ll do the things you want… then they get into office and you’re back on the sidelines. They go and do whatever it was they actually wanted to do, and you have fairly limited recourse for holding them accountable. The most you can do is decide to vote against them next election, but now you’re back to square one.
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Broader, more participatory forms of political organizing have been violently repressed. Just look at the history of union busting or the police violence during the civil rights movement or even now, etc. In the workplace, where you’re most likely to find others who share your class interests, your boss has a lot of control over you and it’s in their interest to make sure employees don’t talk politics and view each other as competition rather than potential allies.
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Along similar lines, racism has been used as a tool to divide people who would otherwise share class interests so they wouldn’t focus their attention on capitalists.
Moral of the story: There is a long history of people struggling against capitalists for a better life and an equally long history of capitalists using every trick in the book to keep them from that goal. The political landscape you see today is the result of that history. Learn from it.
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Because propaganda works. If propaganda didn’t work, companies would not advertise products and politicians wouldn’t run campaigns. Rich sponsors fund politicians who promise to look after their interests. Well-funded politicians run better campaigns and win.
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Because politicians are, nearly without exception, above middle class, if not outright rich. They won’t act too radically against their own class interests.
The only solution I know comes from ancient Athens. Sortition -> you hold a lottery to draw representatives. A few extremely stupid people will be drawn into parliament, but idiots are far better than sociopaths, and the current system gives undue representation to sociopaths (willing to climb over bodies if that gets them to power). If one then dislikes the idea of a considerable percentage of bumbling fools (as opposed to cunning predators) in parliament, one must feed everyone well, treat all childhood diseases and educate everyone as well as possible. As if their rational decisions were needed tomorrow.
Randomized representatives can still be propagandized, bribed, and have hunger for power.
True.
Hunger for power would exist, but a critical feature that currently exists - the means of returning to power - would be absent.
Bribes would be a concern, so good pay and anti-corruption mechanicms would still be required.
the means of returning to power - would be absent.
Unless the randomized reps decide they like their newfound power, and change the rules to allow them to maintain/extend/return to power.
Bribes would be a concern, so good pay and anti-corruption mechanicms would still be required.
Direct bribes are only part of the problem. Corporations would still do the things they’re doing now, where they bribe politicians with cushy jobs once they leave their government positions. Good pay on the job while at the government doesn’t stop that.
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Let’s say I’m an American male. I like football. I like the NY Jets, because I also like to suffer.
I don’t have to read the news, or go to news websites, or listen to news radio, to hear about my Jets. I don’t have to risk accidentally learning about what’s going on in the world watching the 6 o’clock news every evening when all I really want to know is the latest saddening Jets news.
I can listen to podcasts that tell me about jets players health, fantasy picks, gossip, the latest games, and betting strategy. In the offseason my podcasts don’t go off air. I can go to websites where algorithms that have already identified me as a Jets fan bury any news about politics or social issues under a mountain of roster updates and advertisements for beer (because Jets fans need it).
Then it comes time to vote. These democrats all seem to talk about stuff I don’t care about or understand. This Trump guy says he will do stuff. I hate the way things are, but I don’t know why they are that way. Corporate monopolies? Antitrust? Voter suppression? All that shit got buried under Aaron Roger’s passing stats. And Trump wasn’t all that bad when he was president. Certainly better than I feel now, and while I’ll pore over individual player stats to take matchups into account when I set my fantasy football roster I’m not gonna go pore over statistics on the economy or anything. That shit is complicated and boring, and football stats are definitely not. So I never have to risk remembering that Trump was pretty fucking bad.
On Election Day I vote for the guy who says he’ll do stuff, and it’s easy to do it, and it’ll be fast, and I’ll like the outcome. I won’t vote for the party that gave up 30 years ago and whose message is basically “come on guys we’re trying really hard but this governing thing is impossible!”
That’s how, basically. That and bigots.
This exactly. One of the houses on my commute had had TRUMP spelled out on the lawn with tiles for months, and after he won put up a sign that says “Daddy’s home.”
Democrats don’t do that for Biden, nor would they have if Harris won. A lot of conservatives seem to want Trump to command them, tell them what to do and think, and that’s what’s truly scary.
Generally people tend to focus on one thing and don’t pay any attention to the side effects. Morons want lower taxes for themselves and don’t pay attention to the fact that the wealthy get the most benefit out of conservative cuts or that they just defunded the benefits of having a government like enforced food safety regulations. Or they care about abortion because they buy lies about post birth abortions and ignore everything else. Or they just teally hate immigrants and want to be mad and don’t care that the party of hate works against their other self interests.
Many people are stupid. Like really, really stupid.
looks around
That checks out.
Stupidity, cult mentality, “my sports team” mentality, religion, and single issue voters.
A lot of people have aspirations of themselves being rich and if they can vote like rich people they participate in the rich aesthetic.
Ignorance and gullibility. I fall for misinformation all the time, especially when it confirms my own biases and it takes real effort to maintain a mindset of “yes this sounds true, but is it actually?” It is also terribly inefficient. If someone tells me, when I was a kid, that daddylonglegs spiders are the most poisonous, I am likely going to just go “neat” and now I think that and say it. If you stop and verify EVERYTHING EVER you have no time to do anything in life. This makes the filter of critical thinking…critical.
Also, it isn’t about being stupid (though that helps). Some of the smartest people I know are conspiracy theory nutjobs. They can easily draw parallels between disparate facts, but can’t filter their findings or understand correlation doesn’t equal causation.
Yep. Lost a good and very smart friend to the anti vax conspiracies and maybe others by now.
I’ve also had to really pay attention and tell myself that I live in a liberal bubble and need to balance that bias against what is truth.
Here are a few examples of what I’ve seen them do in the time I’ve been alive.
- Lowering the amount of educated people by various means such as cutting (on not properly increasing) funding, restricting access to it,…
- Limiting access to (somewhat) correct information by buying up news media outlets, severely influencing social media, telling people that their “alternative media” is the only way to get correct information, and so much more
- Actively pitting groups of people against each other, black vs white, immigrants vs citizens, women vs men,…
I agree with all of your points but believe there is one more.
Many vote for their party because that is what their family has always done. To them it is like rooting for their Football or Baseball team. They just want the win and feed off any news stories that support that view. No matter how much of complete failure a Republican President is (G.W.B. Comes to mind) their popularity never drops below 28% - 35%.
