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?
The truth is our stupidty is not unusual, it’s just a preview of what is coming down the pipe for some of you. Right-wing populist dipshits are gaining ground in a lot of countries. It tends to go along with economic hardship. People look for other people to blame for their problems. The real truth is that it’s not immigrants, or jews, or woke women that are ruining everything for everybody, it’s a very small number of inconceivably rich people. Sure, the economy looks great (historically speaking) but real measures of happiness, like the cost of medical care, education and household measured in working-hours has shot through the roof, something which “the economy” does not capture very well.
Tl:dr, shit is going bad almost everywhere, and if you don’t get the to root cause of the issue ( a few rich people owning everything) then the stupids in your county are going to elect right-wing dipshits too.