Because powerful people turned politics from a policy / representation in to politics as an identity. People will almost anything for their two minutes of hate.
Why people consistently vote against their own interests to benefit the rich?
Submitted 4 weeks ago by tigerjerusalem@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
lordnikon@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
solsangraal@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
religion is a big part of it. how many millions of people only vote for the candidate who promises to criminalize abortion without knowing (or caring about) a single other goddamn thing about the person
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I’m going to start a 3rd party. This party is going to be the “Fuck America” party. My party is going to run on the ideals that America is awful, and that trump is not a problem, he’s a symptom. America is the one who overwhelmingly approved of his ideas. I’m going to openly state FUCK GOD, THERE IS NO GOD. I’m going to take the stance of FUCK EVERYBODY. You guys want to argue about if boys and girls and trans should all be allowed to play high school sports together? Ok, here’s what we’re going to do, assholes. Boys and girls and trans can all play on the same teams together now. BUT!!! Every school district will also have one new team. This team won’t have students on it. You want to play basketball with boys and girls and trans, that’s fine, but we’re going to also make you play games against professional athletes who are trying to qualify for the national olympic teams. Why? Because then no matter which high school team you’re on, you lose. Everybody loses. That’s the message here. Equality for all, and fuck all of you because humans are the worst.
Then I hear people argueing about abortions. Can a woman have an abortion, or is it against gods will? You know what? Fuck that! Forced abortions for men. All men will now have their balls smashed by the youtube show Hydrolic Press. We put all your balls into the hydrolic press, and let an industrial size piece of machinery squish them flat. No more babies.
And as for women, we’re going to treat you equally too! No more opening the doors for you, or holding your chair. No more weddings, or divorce. No more considering your opinion on stuff. What? You thought when a bunch of guys get together, we all sit around and consider each others feelings? No. We wrestle each other and punch each other to decide where we’re going to eat that night. Doesn’t matter if your vegan, we’re eating at a place called gut busters meat emporium. Because Steve, with the biggest bicepts broke your nose, and you were too much of a pussy to get up and punch back.
Dogs are now manditory in government. Every government position is now held by a dog, because dogs are better than people, and they’re the only good boys!
…what? Why is everybody staring at me? Oh my god, was I talking outloud?
PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Republicans didn’t start caring about abortion until they decided they could go after the Catholic vote. Even Evangelicals didn’t have a position on it until Republicans started to target them with misinformation about it. Those people think that they literally take screaming babies and putting them into a blender. There’s a video they made in the 80s called “the silent scream” that they used to scare kids with.
water@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
–Lyndon B. Johnson
originalfrozenbanana@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Let’s say I’m an American male. I like football. I like the NY Jets, because I also like to suffer.
I don’t have to read the news, or go to news websites, or listen to news radio, to hear about my Jets. I don’t have to risk accidentally learning about what’s going on in the world watching the 6 o’clock news every evening when all I really want to know is the latest saddening Jets news.
I can listen to podcasts that tell me about jets players health, fantasy picks, gossip, the latest games, and betting strategy. In the offseason my podcasts don’t go off air. I can go to websites where algorithms that have already identified me as a Jets fan bury any news about politics or social issues under a mountain of roster updates and advertisements for beer (because Jets fans need it).
Then it comes time to vote. These democrats all seem to talk about stuff I don’t care about or understand. This Trump guy says he will do stuff. I hate the way things are, but I don’t know why they are that way. Corporate monopolies? Antitrust? Voter suppression? All that shit got buried under Aaron Roger’s passing stats. And Trump wasn’t all that bad when he was president. Certainly better than I feel now, and while I’ll pore over individual player stats to take matchups into account when I set my fantasy football roster I’m not gonna go pore over statistics on the economy or anything. That shit is complicated and boring, and football stats are definitely not. So I never have to risk remembering that Trump was pretty fucking bad.
On Election Day I vote for the guy who says he’ll do stuff, and it’s easy to do it, and it’ll be fast, and I’ll like the outcome. I won’t vote for the party that gave up 30 years ago and whose message is basically “come on guys we’re trying really hard but this governing thing is impossible!”
That’s how, basically. That and bigots.
DarkFuture@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The sooner you realize the vast majority of humans are simply not very intelligent, the more everything starts making sense. And the more depressed you will be.
absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 4 weeks ago
It is a combination of this and the power of propaganda.
When you can control the information that people consume, you can have a huge influence over what they think.
If you can influence the thoughts of a big portion of the populous, you can create control structures. You use these control structures to move people into their emotional decision making more often. The more often you can keep people in their emotional decision mode, the easier you can control what they do.
The thing is, the easiest way to keep people in their emotional thought mode, is to pull the fear and anger levers. Keep people afraid and angry, and you can steer society.The other problem with this is, the people who see through this kind of thing are not the majority.
The people who can see through the techniques, are not always the traditionally “smart”; but higher intelligence is certainly an advantage.Phoenicianpirate@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
This is true. Always has been, always will be. Many Trump voters are already regretting their decision after seeing the early consequences of Trump’s statements. But that won’t be permanent. Many will likely be duped again by another conman using the same tactics.
I need to mention that old school ‘patent medicine’ (ex: snake oil) in the 19th to very early 20th was not destroyed by advancements in actual medicine and education and awareness… it was done by simply banning the patent medicines and forcing others to disclose their ingredients. When buyers of said medicine were aware of the bullshit of old snake oil, they just moved onto another brand of snake oil (which may or may not have been made and sold by the same guy).
If they removed regulations on medicine and legalized many of the old hard drugs we would see a resurgence in patent medicine that caused so many problems in times past. There was actually a reason why people who avoided all medication in the 19th century actually had a longer than average life expectancy.
sudo42@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I have no science behind this (and am therefore a hypocrite) but I’m giving up on the assumption that people think. I suspect that most people feel and make decisions on those feelings.
Thinking happens later, if at all.GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Humans are animals that navigate life through the lens of emotions with logic being something that we have to work towards - so you may be closer to the truth than you think.
ristoril_zip@lemmy.zip 4 weeks ago
Half of all people are dumber than average.
eunieisthebus@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
Replace ‘average’ by ‘median’ to be correct. The average can be distorted by especially dumb people.
Treczoks@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Keep in mind that if you are in a public space, about half the people around you have an IQ below 100.
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
Because the rich pretend like it’s in peoples interest, people believe them because oh they are rich they must know what they are talking about, and because people are stupid.
darthelmet@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Because the rich do a LOT to make it turn out that way.
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News is largely controlled by capitalists.
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Education has been gutted in a lot of places to make way for private schools.
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Corporations can contribute tons of money to candidates. Setting aside the possibility that these are effectively bribes, even if that weren’t the case, the candidates who get that money get to put out more ads and have more campaign infrastructure such as travel funds, staffers, etc.
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Various kinds of voter suppression.
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From the very founding of the country, the election system and government has been set up to hamper political participation. Obviously there was the fairly narrow franchise at the start. But even with that expanded, we have the electoral college, unequal apportionment, gerrymandering, first past the post, closed primaries, a court that’s specifically there to slow down popular will, etc.
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Just being a representative “democracy” puts a barrier between people and the policies they want. You rarely if ever get to vote on policies. You have to vote for a candidate. And the candidate is a whole bundle of policies, but also a record, a personality, etc. So there can be all sorts of political messaging about candidates which has nothing to do with what their policies are. Because of the duopoly party system that is all but ensured by the aforementioned voting system, you aren’t even going to have a candidate you can vote for that will represent your interests. And after all that, even if you manage to vote for someone who says they’ll do the things you want… then they get into office and you’re back on the sidelines. They go and do whatever it was they actually wanted to do, and you have fairly limited recourse for holding them accountable. The most you can do is decide to vote against them next election, but now you’re back to square one.
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Broader, more participatory forms of political organizing have been violently repressed. Just look at the history of union busting or the police violence during the civil rights movement or even now, etc. In the workplace, where you’re most likely to find others who share your class interests, your boss has a lot of control over you and it’s in their interest to make sure employees don’t talk politics and view each other as competition rather than potential allies.
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Along similar lines, racism has been used as a tool to divide people who would otherwise share class interests so they wouldn’t focus their attention on capitalists.
Moral of the story: There is a long history of people struggling against capitalists for a better life and an equally long history of capitalists using every trick in the book to keep them from that goal. The political landscape you see today is the result of that history. Learn from it.
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Hideakikarate@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
“I might be rich one day”
DrownedRats@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Because they’ve successfully been conned into thinking that what’s in the best interests of the rich is in their own best interests too.
CouncilOfFriends@slrpnk.net 4 weeks ago
Moobythegoldensock@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
This exactly. One of the houses on my commute had had TRUMP spelled out on the lawn with tiles for months, and after he won put up a sign that says “Daddy’s home.”
Democrats don’t do that for Biden, nor would they have if Harris won. A lot of conservatives seem to want Trump to command them, tell them what to do and think, and that’s what’s truly scary.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Generally people tend to focus on one thing and don’t pay any attention to the side effects. Morons want lower taxes for themselves and don’t pay attention to the fact that the wealthy get the most benefit out of conservative cuts or that they just defunded the benefits of having a government. Or they care about abortion because they buy lies about post birth abortions and ignore the big picture. Or they just teally hate immigrants and want to be mad and don’t care that the party of hate works against their other self interests.
Many people are stupid. Like really, really stupid.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
looks around
That checks out.
babybus@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Because are brains are not wired for the modern complex world. Most decisions we make, we make thanks to heuristics that are heavily exploited by other people.
GhiLA@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Two camps
- They don’t know any better.
Basically leftists-in-training that haven’t read enough wikipedia articles on Reagan yet.
- People voting with their gut instinct
Don’t bother, and if you see one with a nazi flag, punch them in the face.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
scottmeme@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Lightsong@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
perestroika@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
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Because propaganda works. Rich sponsors fund politicians who promise them to look after their interests. Well-funded politicians run a better-financed campaign.
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Because politicians are, nearly without exception, above middle class, if not outright rich. They won’t act too radically against their own class interests.
The only solution I know comes from ancient Athens. Sortition. You hold a lottery to draw representatives. A few extremely stupid people will be drawn, but idiots are far better than sociopaths, and the current system gives undue representation to sociopaths (willing to climb over bodies if that gets them to power).
Olgratin_Magmatoe@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Randomized representatives can still be propagandized, bribed, and have hunger for power.
perestroika@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
True.
Hunger for power would exist, but a critical feature that currently exists - the means of returning to power - would be absent.
Bribes would be a concern, so good pay and anti-corruption mechanicms would still be required.
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Cowbee@lemmy.ml 4 weeks ago
This is a complex question, but up front first and foremost in any Capitalist country, voting will always benefit the rich, even FDR style Social Democracy came about as concessions to prevent revolution in the context of a decimated working class and a rising USSR.
People, generally, vote along their class interests, but these are handled in a different manner depending on which country you are in. Using the US as an example, the DNC caters to social progressivism, while the GOP caters to social conservativism. On foreign policy, the GOP and DNC are near identical, and when it comes to domestic economic policy, the DNC caters slightly more to urban voters while the GOP caters to rural voters.
This is all, however, in the context of parties that function as businesses that sell policy to Capitalists. Both parties serve Capital, because Capital is what holds real power. It holds power over the media, the state, everything.
The answer to how to fix this is getting workers to organize. When workers organize, they raise their social and class awareness and can accomplish far more than atomized individuals can.
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The root of it is that we don’t teach skepticism or critical thinking in public schools. Seriously.
Question authority. Question everything. But especially question authority. They rarely have your best interests in mind.
sunyata@mander.xyz 4 weeks ago
Informed consent: People are not against exploitation. They just want to switch sides. Why would you vote for something that cripples you once you got rich?.
Uninformed consent: They honestly believe they are voting for their own interests.
Indifferent consent: Usually single issue or ideology-driven voter.
¯\_༼ •́ ͜ʖ •̀ ༽_/¯
ZMoney@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
A lot of people have aspirations of themselves being rich and if they can vote like rich people they participate in the rich aesthetic.
makuus@pawb.social 4 weeks ago
Put simply: They’re being lied to. Consistently and perniciously.
The lie is that their vote is going to benefit them somehow. Or that it’s going to hurt someone else exclusively. And, sometimes, it’s both—that it’ll hurt someone else, while bringing a benefit.
In all three cases, the real truth—that they themselves will still suffer—is neatly hidden away.
Crackhappy@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
In the US at least, the systematic demolishing of the education system has lead to a vast reduction in overall education and critical thinking skills. This was done on purpose. That, combined with the unexpected boon of the Internet, has led to massive wealth shifting from the many to the few.
You see the results of this change everywhere, especially on the Internet. Lack of basic spelling and grammar skills are just one symptom. All of that is to say that humans are primates and easily trained.
jeze3d@sh.itjust.works 4 weeks ago
Hatred for a minority group, such as transgender people, tickles the idiot part of the monke brain.
Freefall@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Ignorance and gullibility. I fall for misinformation all the time, especially when it confirms my own biases and it takes real effort to maintain a mindset of “yes this sounds true, but is it actually?” It is also terribly inefficient. If someone tells me, when I was a kid, that daddylonglegs spiders are the most poisonous, I am likely going to just go “neat” and now I think that and say it. If you stop and verify EVERYTHING EVER you have no time to do anything in life. This makes the filter of critical thinking…critical.
Also, it isn’t about being stupid (though that helps). Some of the smartest people I know are conspiracy theory nutjobs. They can easily draw parallels between disparate facts, but can’t filter their findings or understand correlation doesn’t equal causation.
GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Yep. Lost a good and very smart friend to the anti vax conspiracies and maybe others by now.
I’ve also had to really pay attention and tell myself that I live in a liberal bubble and need to balance that bias against what is truth.
miak@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Often when I see someone accusing people of voting against their own interests, it’s pretty clear that the person making the accusation has not taken the time to understand the values others are basing their choice on.
If I could rob a person and be confident that I would never be caught and punished for doing so, am I acting against my own self interest if I chose not to rob them because it goes against my moral code? No, of course not. But based on the way some people talk about voting against ones self interest, you might think I just cheated myself out of free money. Is it possible that a person might “vote against their own interests” because of a misinformed view? of course, but you’ll never understand a person’s motivations by chosing to paint them with broad strokes based on your prejudices instead of getting to know them individually and trying to understand what it is they truly value.Doomsider@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
You just got to get to know the Nazi to understand them?
Oh wait it is more nuanced than that. You gotta get to know the racist to emphasize with them?
Dang it, we got to dig deeper. You have to get to know the misogynist to get them?
Sometimes getting to know someone is not the magical solution people think it is.
miak@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
There’s those broad strokes I was talking about. I appreciate you providing an example.
Refusing to empathize and understand how people arrive at their views in favor of this kind of prejudice will never contribute to positive changes.
Yes, the best cure to bigotry is love and compassion. Love and compassion start with empathy. It’s easy to empathize with those that think and act like you do - it can be difficult, but all the more important, to empathize with those that don’t. Refusing to do so only ensures polarization of society and a perpetuation of the cycles of violence that permeate society. This is something that has become all the more clear with the rise of social media and the info bubbles they trap people in.yessikg@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
It’s like some people love to pretend they don’t know any of these kinds of people
A7thStone@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
The answer is fear. Fear is what they truly value.
miak@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Fear is often a motivating factor in a person’s choice. This was equally true of the left and right in this past US presidential election.
I haven’t seen any evidence that fear is a value that most people hold though. The source of their fear is concern over the things they do value.
Huschke@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Here are a few examples of what I’ve seen them do in the time I’ve been alive.
- Lowering the amount of educated people by various means such as cutting (on not properly increasing) funding, restricting access to it,…
- Limiting access to (somewhat) correct information by buying up news media outlets, severely influencing social media, telling people that their “alternative media” is the only way to get correct information, and so much more
- Actively pitting groups of people against each other, black vs white, immigrants vs citizens, women vs men,…
Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
I agree with all of your points but believe there is one more.
Many vote for their party because that is what their family has always done. To them it is like rooting for their Football or Baseball team. They just want the win and feed off any news stories that support that view. No matter how much of complete failure a Republican President is (G.W.B. Comes to mind) their popularity never drops below 28% - 35%.
Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 4 weeks ago
Probably unpopular answer, but it’s not some clear cut “this political party has better policies for everyone”. Republican policies usually are better for people living in rural areas, and Democratic policies are usually better for people in cities. I’m sure people will debate this, but this is the reason why people typically vote depending on where they live. At the very least, they believe that their party has better policies for them and their way of life.
My personal (anecdotal evidence) is that I work for a small business in a rural area, and our main customers are other small business owners (usually self employed or under 5 employees). Over the last 3 presidents, the Obama years were rough for our company, we had explosive growth during the Trump years, and then we’ve had stagnant growth over the past 4 years. Our largest competitor went out of business this past year, which sent us a lot of new customers, but we’ve also had a lot of our customers go out of business as well, so we’ve been pretty stagnant. Being stagnant isn’t terrible, we don’t have shareholders or anything, but the cost of living has increased and company profit/wages haven’t which is a problem. That said I know we’re doing pretty well compared to a lot of people here.
Another (once again anecdotal) example is that I have a friend who paints murals full time, for the past 30ish years. He told me that he does well with either Republicans or Democrats in office, but that his customers change. During republican presidents, his customer base is usually local businesses wanting to decorate their stores. During democratic presidents, his customer base is usually towns, state buildings, schools, etc.
Rookwood@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Obama took office during the Great Recession and rebuilt the economy. Biden took office during COVID and rebuilt the economy. You’re kinda dense if you think that as soon as a president from another party enters office it would effect the economy so much as these events did…
tburkhol@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
For small businesses, a president taking power can immediately affect business. Small business owners make decisions based on their expectations of future, colored by their emotional state, so if they believe that a Republican President will be good for business, then they’re more likely to order new machinery, hire an extra person, etc. In an ecosystem of small businesses, that optimism feeds on itself.
Happens in big business, too. S&P500 gained 3+% the day after election, which (if you don’t believe the daily stock market is just gambling) presumably means that ‘the market’ expects 3% more growth out of all those companies, just by Trump’s win being formalized. Stock price up makes it easier for companies to raise capital to expand, buy out competitors, etc
Neither of those things is “the economy,” but they can feel like it, if you’re close enough.
CarbonatedPastaSauce@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Republican policies usually are better for people living in rural areas
I’m surprised you read past this complete fallacy. I stopped there.
Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz 4 weeks ago
I started working this job after Obama had already been in office one term, so I was mainly comparing the final 4 years. I’m really glad I was still in college for the first term when the economy was really rough.
Covid did have an undeniable effect on the economy at the start of Biden’s term, and I don’t consider that his fault or anything. It does feel like we generally haven’t really recovered from it though, gas prices finally came back down but everything else is crazy expensive still. For example, I do electrical work, and a 250’ roll of 12/2 wire went from $35 in 2019 to $140 today.
obbeel@lemmy.eco.br 4 weeks ago
I think it’s funny you call people dense when in fact they see the difference with their own eyes. Like a small business owner is making less money and people try to convince him that it has nothing to do with the elected government. I don’t think Fubar is the dense one here at all.
Red_October@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
Because they’ve been fooled into thinking it will either benefit them, or benefit people they feel “deserve it.”
Fedizen@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
People get more upset about a bad friend than a real enemy.
VerticaGG@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
cracked.com/…/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-t…
Blue States – It’s About The Country Vs. The City
A successful propaganda campaign by the owning class.
And a quote from an anonymous mutual:
many people will unfortunately need to learn this the hard way it seems at the expense of those who take the time to see the writing on the wall those ignorant to their exploitation will seldom listen to those who try to tell them how horribly theyre being fucked “if it were really so bad id notice” theyll say “this isnt so bad” theyll say, standing on the peak of the mountain that is dunning-kruger unknowing all we can do is wait, and watch to find out what what it is that throws them into the valley of unfathomable uncertainty in the meantime we must work for each other, for those who do see how good things could be. maybe then, our greener grass will coax them into giving us a fair listen
eunieisthebus@feddit.org 4 weeks ago
This question is actually pretty old. Already ancient Greek / Roman philosophers discussed this.
Google the word ‘anacyclosis’ if you want to learn more. Alternatively here is a video link. I marked the position where the cycle explanation starts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqsBx58GxYY&t=371
Sundial@lemm.ee 4 weeks ago
Because the rich control an overwhelming amount of the media we consume. They are capable of shaping the narrative to their benefit.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
They also successfully killed public education, so literally the citizens are too stupid to understand they’re being conned.
Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world 4 weeks ago
This is the most important part.
And also they push religion hard which is inherently a system of control for the uneducated and exploited.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 4 weeks ago
I must’ve fallen through the cracks, because I went through the American education system and I’m not completely stupid.
FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 weeks ago
And, social media, these days nearly as important, if not more important.
You (very understandably) a lot about state-sponsored (especially Russian) astroturfing, but very little about billionaire and company sponsored astroturing, which is very much a thing.