I’m an American who has been living abroad for 20 years. I’m shocked, as I watch my home country being dismantled by oligarchs who sold US democracy. And I talk to other Americans and they’re just like “Oh, well, both sides, you know?”
Do y’all not realize what you’ve done? The US literally has no allies now, no rule of law, and no democracy. You’re living in an authoritarian dictatorship now, run by clowns.
How are so many Americans just going on with their lives like normal?
Consider brexit, an idea so dumb in every way every way, and yet it happened. Many journalists pointed out how russian influence and social media formed peoples votes, how it brought out the worst side in many of my countrymen, how many regretted it almost immediately. Turns out its really easy to get stupid people to hate things.
The fundamental issue really does seem to be education, which is why conservatives everywhere try to cripple and dismantle it. Conservatism in the US spearheaded anti-intellectualism, but the ideology everywhere else is not far behind; constantly appealing to the lowest common denominator. This proves that conservatism does not believe it can survive with an educated populace.
I’m guilty of calling them stupid myself, but the only thing that separates anyone from cavemen is education, and the psychopaths and narcissists of society have shown us that our education systems are not fit for purpose, and holding society back from progress. The failure in our ability to educate the majority sufficiently is one of the greatest threats we face.
I’m both cases my view on the people is the same: they do understand. The information has always been there and publicised. People wanted this.
We don’t like what they want and we call them dumb, but it is no easy task to effectively use propaganda on this many people. It’s also easy to label people “stupid”, which is not true. This mindset genuinely exists. America is a Trump supporting nation. UK is a Brexit supporting nation (I don’t know if current regret surveys would translate into votes, Reform has more support than ever and it is increasing, and surveys last time also predicted that the majority didn’t support Brexit).
There have been a lot of podcasts looking academically how this polarisation and thinking has come about in the last 2 decades. I’m really interested in getting to the bottom of answers of how people are so convinced like this rather than the simplistic and inaccurate conclusion that “they are all dumb”.
That’s going to be the byline of this entire era of history. Oof.