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?

  • ristoril_zip@lemmy.zipEnglish
    7·
    9 days ago

    After WWII there was a halcyon era where nearly every adult in America agreed that nerds had been crucial to our winning. That’s why Operation Paperclip came to be where we stole all the former Axis nerds we could find.

    It also led to an unprecedented boom in education spending, research spending, etc., mostly aimed at beating the USSR at technological development. Sputnik goosed that significantly, and the Apollo program briefly did as well, until Americans got bored of Moon landings…

    That was probably the first major flashing red warning light most of us ignored: Moon landings… boring!!!

    Anyway, educated people started doing things that weren’t directly associated with winning the Cold War, like exposing the dangers of lead in everything, the dangers of smoking, the dangers of chlorofluorocarbons, the dangers of greenhouse gasses, etc.

    That threatened the ability of grotesquely wealthy hoarders to hoard even more grotesque levels of wealth.

    So they started the project to dismantle education in America.

    That project kicked into afterburn once the USSR collapsed and the Cold War ended.

    And so far, nerds haven’t been successful in regaining their status.

    • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
      0·
      9 days ago

      So they started the project to dismantle education in America.

      I’d say it was more of a pushback by the religious right against what they saw as liberalism in the schools. Starting with the late 70s then the election of Reagan you saw a huge rise in the evangelicals and they became affiliated with the republicans.