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?
I grew up in a small Utah town. The only four adults I ever remember hearing admit they were wrong especially when it came to politics or science or religion were my father and three of my high school teachers.
All the rest would literally tell me that the research papers and encyclopedias I tried to cite as evidence were made up by either satan or some government deep state conspiracy. Or they’d say we can “agree to disagree” about shit like animals feeling pain and the flaws in eugenics (I wish I was joking)
Yes, they have always been this stupid. Learning requires accepting when you’re wrong and the vast majority of people I knew growing up saw that as weakness.
I thought it would be different when I got out of that place, and while living in a larger city is better, it’s not better by all that much.
You forgot Satan. They also like to blame anything bad on Satan’s apparently limitless power and also Satan being so unbusy that they’d devoted time and energy into stealing your shoes.
They literally mentioned that.
Blame Satan.
Grew up in southern Idaho. Yeah that’s pretty much what I experienced growing up, too!
Wasn’t just admitting wrongness that was seen as weakness, though - honestly I came to find that most empathetic, society benefitting behaviors are spun and contorted into a weakness.
Ironic to me that, at least thru my eyes, spinning stuff like that into a “weakness” indicates to me that they’re avoiding the work they’d need to put in to be better… Which, is the real weakness here!
I think a significant portion of the problems in the US stems from a lack of willingness to work on themselves, aiming to minimize their impact on those around them (and thus themselves, through societal proxy). On the contrary, people install loud ‘mufflers’ to show they don’t give a fuck. Or leave carts outside the corral. Or scream at fast food workers, display flagrant racism, refuse to wear COVID masks - whatever.
Good ol Golden Rule really would solve it all, I think.