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?

  • Bruncvik@lemmy.world
    77·
    9 days ago

    There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

    • Isaac Asimov, 1980

    There were people warning against the glorification of ignorance in the US nearly half a century ago. It’s nothing new; it just reached critical mass (also thanks to social media where ignorant people can self-organise).

    • bradinutah@thelemmy.club
      19·
      9 days ago

      Excellent point about the ignorance. I would also add ingratitude. People look to whiners like the Donvict and think that complaining about first world problems is a legit reason to destroy founding principles like integrity, justice, and separation of powers. Americans have it good overall and they spoil themselves with greed. Thanksgiving to them is about football and cryptocurrency commercials and not enough about actually giving thanks, giving back, selflessness, service, kindness, empathy, and goodwill. Add a drop of ignorance and social media brainwashing and you get a nation with too many zombie mooks wearing red hats that turn out to vote. Easily conned, they ignorantly vote against their own interests. Bernie Sanders and AOC have been showing that there’s a better way to solve problems and to work for every American. But it takes gratitude, selflessness, and work, not lazy golfing and whining.

    • dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      8·
      8 days ago

      Unsolicited advice, but you have to escape your - to make it not create a bulleted list.

      Lemmy uses markdown for its formatting, and this means - is has special meaning, it is syntax used to create bulleted lists with.

      For example,

      - Isaac Asimov will look like:

      • Isaac Asimov

      If you want it to look like

      - Isaac Asimov

      you have to escape the - character with a \:

      \- Isaac Asimov

      The \ basically says “ignore the special syntax meaning of - as starting a bulleted list, and instead treat it as a literal -”.