Submitted 1 week ago by Lawdoggo@lemmy.world to [deleted]
I grew up in WNC and the rural people are really stupid and myopic in their views. This makes people easy to manipulate through religion. I have there relatives and high school peers to prove it. These people are deeply uncurious. While they are screaming about being a free thinker and not being woke, they are being led around by their noses by their preachers and deacons.
Unregulated food causing them to lose chromosomes
No child left behind + Unregulated social media + 60 years of social and economic regression in rural areas = USA #1. !!!??
It’s not just the US. It’s the electoral system. There are just as many frigging idiots elsewhere, but they’re less likely to gain power.
America is a slavery built colony started by a bunch of bigots.
…Built on liebensraum americans got after genociding all the native americans who are now being forced to live in petting zoos.
Here’s an honest response.
Grew up in South Florida. Shit was pretty liberal back then. Moved to a much more “conservative” state and found the same brain drain happening. At first it was fairly liberal, but has become less so.
Maybe we deserve it. Maybe we don’t.
The one thing I know is not to rely on your fellow human to do what is right.
You mean fellow American, not human.
I don’t think being a shitty person is a uniquely American thing. See “brexit” for more info.
the same % of Americans have always been stupid.
But thanks to the internet connecting disparate crazies, and elevating crazy to a mainstream voice, and then hostile foreign powers elevating that further on social media thanks to the internet, its devolved into a unique bouillabaisse of cromagnum hyper-idiocy the likes the world probably has never seen before.
and thank to isolated media bubbles like Fox News and OANN, it will only continue to get worse and worse.
I think it just comes down to racism. Once the Civil Rights Movement happened all that collectivism disappeared because it had always been white supremacy masquerading as collectivism. Once all the diverse peoples of the USA were to benefit from that collectivism, the whites very quickly changed their minds about the socialist policies they’d put in place. Obviously I don’t mean the whites as if they’re a monolith, but it was enough of them to get the system to go in a different direction.
That’s certainly part of it. I think another part of it is that political theories are nice and sanitary in a vacuum, but once nation states co-opt them and use them to further their interests things get a whole lot messier.
My sad epiphany of late is that not only are my nation’s population largely unevolved troglodytes whom would barely survive if we weren’t the richest nation and able to provide them with bare-minimum comforts or at least utilities, but so is everyone, everywhere, since before recorded history. And if anything, we’re at a HIGH POINT in human intellect and knowledge. Don’t let the current trends and localized issues trick you, objectively we’re at the highest point in human history for literacy, knowledge of the world, peace, prosperity and communication.
But there have never been nations and leaders of nations who have done all they can to immortalize the times they accidentally sent state secrets to the public journalists. Nope, they etch in stone their accomplishments and genius victories.
This tells me that most of what we know about history and leaders across the world is in fact, utter bullshit, and always has been. The reality is everyone is fantastically dumb and it’s only our creative minds working as a group that let us get this far. People like Trump and his cabinet are an unavoidable side-effect of the fact that largely, our population is very easy to manipulate, and people generally care far less about what’s true or not than they do how comfortable they are.
1940s era collectivism
Collectivism? USA was an apartheid state.
Or am I just imagining some idealistic version of the past that never existed,
Absolutely. If you look at the 1940s as some kind of high point, then you’re completely missing the overwhelming racism of USA. This is fundamental to the state which was literally founded by slavemasters trying to violently enforce their disgusting privilege. It is a major contributor to USAians being completely brainwashed and indoctrinated.
And that’s just the racism…
The religious ones
My dude I grew up in a cult in Statesia. Unserious and not allowed to question is my childhood.
America is at new records of stupid.
I’d argue we aren’t at a new level of stupid, we just lost our stupid originality
We are tho. Education today is not what it was in your day or your parents day. People are literally getting dumber by the generation as education continues to erode away.
Theory: this is late-stage capitalism, where the working class are so exploited and overworked that they don’t know who to be angry at. Someone like Trump comes along and (falsely) mirrors their anger and they unwittingly roll out the red carpet for a fascist. I’m really hopeful that once they see what they actually voted for, they’ll not be so welcoming. Trump 1.0 was absolutely nothing compared to what Trump 2.0 is going to be. There are way more puppeteers who are way more prepared this time. Shit’s going down and their constituents are not the ones to piss off. Just feasting on popcorn here.
Somehow related, I have also questions as an European (Belgian) who then observe what is happening right now in the USA with curiosity (and fear to be honest). In my country, we have got a new government almost at the same time Trump was inaugurated. They plan to do some changes to the way some aspects of our society is, changes that are a bit difficult for some categories of the population but really nothing like in the USA. Anyway, since January, there have been strikes, protests, people going in the streets,…
Why are we not seeing such things in the USA? I would have thought that there will be millions of people in the streets protesting against the F-gesture done to democracy, LGBT rights, women rights, nonsense with economy (tarriff, that at the end the “middle class workers” will have to pay) and foreign politics but, as far as we are aware here in Europe, I seen no such protests. The only action I seen is some boycott of Tesla.
Is it a cultural difference with Europe (and other parts of the world) to not go in the streets?
Yes, it’s not like it’s entirely unheard of here in the USA (look at what happened with the killing of George Floyd) but for systemic issues, it doesn’t generally get people in the streets, I think at least partly because there’s so many we’ve put up with for so long. There’s also the economics of it where we have less or no time off from work to get out for such events.
Are those occurring but the medias do not inform us on it?
There are protests happening but there does seem to be, putting it charitably, a lack of interest to report on such things, and the protests that are happening don’t seem to be of very notable size (again, that could be media spin).
Are people scared to protest?
Yes, I imagine plenty are, especially those who may be targeted by ICE or have friends/family who may be targeted by ICE.
Or, people just don’t care or are even, in majority, happy with what happens now?
To an extent, yes. I don’t know if I’d say that the majority are happy with the things happening, but a majority are probably okay with it, or just going along in ignorance (willful or otherwise), or too busy or tired just trying to survive rather than make things better.
Before micro plastics and covid, we had hook worms in the south and leaded gasoline everywhere.
Yes
1960s leftism of having race separated water fountains?
They aren’t stupid, they know exactly where they interests are. Short term, sure, it sucks, but long terms, they will benefits from a tough immigration, economically.
I’m not americans and I think nazism suck. I’m saying you can’t deny it’s to the benefits of americans as a whole. Your country’s supremacism means you gets at least something in return.
But hey, go tell that to the covert racists
Long term, Americans have been bad at making idiots feel shame for their idiocy. There is less of a societal push to make people conform to societal pressure. On one end, this leads to great creative freedom for artists. On the other end, it creates the born again movement.
Medium term, LBJ oversaw the collapse of economic leftism as he was trying to include civil rights legislation and the Vietnam War. This lead to the stagnation of American salaries, but it took a while for people to notice that quality of life wasn’t improving for everyone. Also, conservatives realized they could create parallel media in a way to control public sentiment.
Short term, the Great Recession and COVID made it clear that quality of life wasn’t as bulletproof as people thought. As a response, some people want to bring back “the good old days”, not realizing/remembering that the good old days had a lot of bad to it that was covered up.
I blame social media. Though not specific social medias like Facebook or twitter, but the general concept of social media. I think people in general are easily manipulated in a social level (not just Americans, but everybody). But social media allows this to happen en mass and personalized to every single person. With minimal effort.
It’s almost like social media was designed specifically to enable fascist agendas.
Have americans always been stupid? Yes. Have americans always been this stupid? No.
The comments are very interesting. I’m just an outsider looking in but isn’t today’s political climate in the US more of a result of more democratic voters having lost so much faith in the democratic party that the majority just stopped voting? Rather than more people turning Republican? After Biden their downfall became so apparent (does anyone best Biden in incompetence? The man could barely string words together) and Kamala just seemed like a reflection of that.
There is no one thing. Democrats have floundered for… decades. They did a thing during Obama but largely as a party they’ve done nothing for most of America except maintain.
Then there’s MAGA which is kind of a new thing. It goes beyond ideology. I’d argue there is no ideology, beyond maybe a few wedge issues that are just used to build ranks. To me it kind of looks like useful idiots being wrangled by those that control information. But the idiots are at the top and the bottom of the chain so it’s confusing.
People also got soft, complacent, and poorer. Lots of people just completely checked out of their civic duties. Either because they can’t be bothered, or because they’ve got more important things to worry about.
There’s probably also lots of other topics leading into the current political climate that I haven’t even touched on. Trying to explain it away as one thing doesn’t really work.
I see… Fair enough. I like to know the why behind things, even if it doesn’t help anything. Thanks for the added insight/perspective!
Americans have never lied. They have ALWAYS said its about the money. The rest of the world just didnt want to listen
If there aint quick bucks, they give zero f*cks
Ever since the lead in gas…
Dude get off lemmy. Go outside, talk to your neighbors.
Nothings changed, we’re still a giant group of humans. Only your perception has changed.
We’ve never elected a felon rapist who attempted to overthrow our government.
So clearly something has changed.
We still haven’t. He’s not a felon, and he’s not a rapist. You should really actually read the articles instead of the headlines.
Funnily enough, there’s been rapists in office before, like Bill Clinton, a democrat.
Thought there were always jokes about it
Bro wall e is based on the premise Americans are fat lazy and stupid and somehow bumble into taking over the world with our bullshit.
LOL
As if those sweaty fatfucks on their mobility scooters aren’t the smelly ones.
And how do their millions of homeless and junkies smell?
American cope
I’m confused who is talking about scent?
It’s always about the money.
Can’t you see It all makes sense Expressed in dollars and cents Pounds shillings and pence Can’t you see It all makes perfect sense
-Roger Waters
America had an election and made its choice. Democrats want to transform America into Europe 2.0 but most Americans do not want that. We have a binary political system so that only leaves one other choice. It is what it is.
That’s wildly misrepresenting the mainline Dem platform.
Bernie Sanders would be a centrist or social democrat in a general European perspective and most Dems are to the right of that, in some cases very much so.
Yes. Am Americans, can confirm.
Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Parties and what they represent evolve over time. America is going through a rapid evolution currently.
Since the end of the Cold War America has pursued or engaged in free trade and Neo Liberalism and the War on Terror.
The result is there are significant sections of the populace that feel left behind by our economy as wealth inequality builds. They see their jobs going over seas and an ineffectual government that has failed at protecting them economically and has failed in the War on Terror. Add to it a powerful propaganda machine in the form of our news and social media and it is a recipe for change… What that change will end up shaping into may not be the future you want.
This is the backlash. After the Democratic establishment has ignored unions and the working man. Leaving them open to the populist out reach of Donald Trump.
Never mind that Trump will never deliver any of what he promised. The fact is he now has the power and is using it to break up the system that has been in place since WW2. Which benefits a small number of oligarchs who want to cement their power over the US.
I suspect we will see a shift in the next mid-term election (if it takes place) and a realignment of the Democratic Party toward populism. We as a people have to figure out how to fight corporate propaganda and their hegemony over social media.
That is if Trump doesn’t kill our Democracy first.