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Comments

• Bytemeister@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  The real 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 alomg 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.

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• Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I’m willing to bet one of the largest factors is the isolation we now live in. We used to have third places on every corner, we interacted with our neighbors, and public transport made us connect during commutes. We also relied on talking to people for most of our news and information and generally just were forced to be part of a community, or multiple.

  Now we drive alone in a car to work, drive alone back to our house that’s isolated from others and don’t speak to neighbors, we have no third places left, and we get all our information from the internet or TV. Most people don’t have a community larger than a handful of close friends. We can’t organize and we don’t see the struggles other people are going through or help each other out. There’s no social bonds, and everyone only looks out for themselves.

  I order to progress, we need to figure out how to form communities again. We need to be able to organize. This is all constructed to keep us thinking about ourselves as an individual rather than the collective us. We think about what I can do, which is pretty minor, not what we can do, which is almost anything we want.

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  • SabinStargem@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I was raised in a rural area. The amount of friends I made in life after forty years is…zero. Aside from a sibling, I don’t have anyone to count on. I am also too poor to afford visiting bars or other social things, so I can’t learn how to be around people, let alone establish ties. It is my belief that America’s shitty economy is the source of these issues, because a person can’t blossom if they don’t have the fiscal agency to escape a tiny bubble.

    The internet let me develop as a person, but that can only go so far. I can’t afford risks, such as trying beer, an escort to lose my virginity, or travel. Poverty is a prison without walls.

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    • Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      That sucks. If I were you I’d try to move to somewhere more dense and it could help you out. I know, easier said than done. You can try applying for jobs online and maybe get lucky though.

      Good luck out there!

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  • fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    The internet should help with this, but we need to run our own stuff and not use corpo websites

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    • Cethin@lemmy.zip ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      To an extent, but it isn’t a replacement. Talking to random strangers online is not the same as talking to real local people.

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• WuceBrillis@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  They wanted less government interference, but instead got an authoritarian state with no funding for education, healthcare or police training.

  It has been building to this for a while. When the republicans are in office it escalates a lot, and when the Democrats are in office it escalates less, but it only ever escalates.

  This is what a private education system gets you.

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• aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Read the book “bowling alone” if you’re interested in someone’s attempt at researching why we went from collectivism to individualism as a country. There are a large amount of factors but if I were to take a crack at it, I’d list a few: TV, the Internet, smart phones, air conditioning, capitalism, and (last but certainly not least) racism. Racism is foundational to the country and its history.

  As far as the stupidity, some of the same factors apply, but there are also additional ones like environmental factors (US citizens eat more microplastics than any other major country since like 2016 and we lead poisoned ourselves for a century), a deep-seeded anti-intellectualism, and we’re a large part cultist/religious idiots that see everything through the lense of “some guy” being the best thing ever and the source of all truth.

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  • nodiratime@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Driving in a car/metal box instead of sharing the space or walking/cycling and connecting to others is another one.

    Othering of others is super easy in a car. There are studies about how much more violent and vitriolic people are when driving.

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    • turmacar@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Yeah lack of third spaces and class mixing is big. Everyone is segregated into their own existing (shrinking) in groups, that then get concentrated by the webiverse.

      The 70s oil crisis was an inflection point for Europe and a lot of cities/countries started moving back away from cars as the sole transportation option but the US didn’t have the same reaction.

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    • AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Not to mention the rise of vehicle violence, running over protesters and such.

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  • turnip@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Every country suffers from this, America is just the most rich due to geographic benefits and the Bretton Woods system.

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    • aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Every country suffers from what? Mass stupidity?

      Maybe that’s true but it certainly seems like we are more individualistic and stupid than most…and I don’t think those two things are entirely unrelated.

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  • slackassassin@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Lead was used in Europe too, and is still used by some member states. If there’s anything we know about micro plastics, it’s that they are ubiquitous. What we don’t know is what effects, if any, they have on health/cognition.

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    • aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      America is more car-oriented than most other western countries and leaded gas is how we did the majority of our poisoning.

      Yes, of course microplastics are everywhere, but I’ve read studies saying that internationally they’re eating about the same amount of plastic as we did years ago, but they kind of plateaued whereas here in the good ol USA people still don’t know that it’s not a good idea to eat three meals a day of microwaved food cooked in plastic containers.

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• JehovasThickness@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Image

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  • Tehdastehdas@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Every country has enough gullible people to vote for a professional liar with a Hollywood face.

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    • Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Especially one that has a early onset dementia

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• SabinStargem@lemmy.today ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I think it is because the wealthy have constantly reduced the wealth of the average American. Each individual has to spend more time working, for less pay. This deteriorates their mental and physical health, prevents socialization, saps energy, limits the amount of money, time, and travel they can spend on politics.

  IMO, the “lazy” European gets about 95% of an American’s work efficiency for the time spent, but are not nearly as damaged by their work/life ratio. This lets them have far greater agency in the politics of their land. If this continues, I think the assorted cultures of Europe will be far more documented in history than their American peer. The corrosion from beating the good life out of American workers, means that there is little incentive for Americans to want their culture to survive nor spread.

  Current politics are partially driven by apathy, one born from the learned helplessness that life won’t get any better. We will need French cutlery to be deployed, so that the blood of tyrants can water the tree of liberty. Just as with the French, I think America can recover from a dead end. Whether that happens…well, we will see within a decade.

  Here’s hoping the good guys destroy Dogey America, and replace it something that people can take pride in.

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  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    The wealthy reduced access to education and increased economic instability for the average person.

    They wanted less taxation, so they made taxation evil. Taxation paid for education and could have been used for more. They also made sure things that would stabilize the middle and lower classes were cut or never materialized - free higher education, unions/pensions, and health care. They created an environment that pitted people against each other where you “get yours” and fuck everyone else, crabs in a bucket.

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  • Ledericas@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I’ve seen people when I was college spend 60-80hrs working and going to school. They end up sleeping during class or become so sour because they aren’t advancing academically they drop out of their major anyways, hard to do if your working and not looking for experience in your field, and some of delusional goals too.

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  • Mallspice@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    And when you make education expensive standards slip everywhere.

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• Teppichbrand@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  “My Chancellor says we should not indulge in superficial anti-Americanism now, but I assure you: Mine is not superficial at all.”

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  • kerntucky@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Thanks for that quote.

    I wanted to know who said that so I looked it up and here’s the full quote with attribution:

    Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has several times made statements to the effect that we Europeans should not cultivate a superficial anti-Americanism.

    But mine isn’t superficial at all.

    Personally I have nothing against the US itself - it’s a beautiful country - it’s the people who live there that are the problem.

    I guess you could say it’s the same thing with Bavaria.

    – Volker Pispers, a German kabarett artist who is well known for his political satire.

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    • Teppichbrand@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Impressive, thanks! I’ve cited this from my memory for at least a decade. I used to listen to him when I went to sleep. :)

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• KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  no, it’s been a thing brewing since effectively the end of ww2 and the rewriting of “american culture” more broadly since then. It’s only gotten worse over time as we have less and less of a defined and agreed upon societal structure.

  Which has eroded the importance of institutions like the government over time. Which the right specifically has aggressively capitalized on.

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• el_bhm@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  What had happened is nothing new.

  Thing is, USA never had a pure dictatorship. Or were affected by imperialism. People in Europe take to the streets far faster because there are generations that remember the boot of russia. Or were under imperialist rule. See again russia and/or nazi germany.

  And while what had happened is nothing new, propaganda fuel hate circle had happened in such a short timespan and force humans has never seen before.

  Further more. Explaining lies takes way longer and much more effort than spreading them around.

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• NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  The descent became a downslide and now it’s an avalanche.

  No, it hasn’t always been that bad. Stupidity happens. It is human. Most times people were able to keep stupidity in check.

  That’s why democracy was invented, by the way. It was founded on the belief that a collective can be more reasonable than a single or small group.

  Not saying that reason were the opposite of stupidity (that would be wisdom), but reason is a means to keep stupidity in check.

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• FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I would say “stupid” is a judgement you should keep between your ears. I think Americans are undereducated before they get released into a mad for-profit higher education system that gives them debts for life (but hitherto also great sciencing at a high level). The strong cultural undercurrent of exceptionalism hardly ever lets them look elsewhere for comparison. And the political system, which is based on who can spend more money, not so much on ideas, is proving to be a system that’s rarely bringing out the best people for top jobs. But it’s a dog and pony show and that favors characters over good policies. The fragmentation of people all watching the same news show at night 3 decades ago, to watching partisan 24h news channels 2 decades ago, to splintering even further on the socials now adds to the problem. There is no largely unified audience with the same facts at their disposal.

  It’s also nice that Trump is now dismantling the democratic state because voting in the US always gets filtered through electoral colleges and gerimandered districts, skewing results to favor the two main parties, often only one of them. It was pretend-democratic until now.

  Something that gets overlooked easily is the long history of fascist rules that was in place in the south after the civil war. Jim Crow laws masqueraded as democracy for a long time and every time courts tried to put a stop to it, the white people in charge found other ways to be a-holes. That’s part of American culture already.

  America has always had a penchant for whacky leaders. Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George W. None of them fit my idea of a virtuous leader. But at least the ones this century adhered to a decorum, an unwritten standard of how to behave as president. Nixon didn’t want to get caught. Trump doesn’t give a sh!t. So the leadership culture has shifted, not for the better.

  All this mixes a large chunk, an uncurious population that still sees itself pretty much as a role model for the world, falling for simple populist messages. It should also be said that tarring all Americans with the same brush is unfair. I think it was the votes of less than a third of eligible voters that made Trump 2.0 a reality, roughly another third just behind it, with the remainder not bothering to vote at all. I would say the often fantasized silent majority is actually not pro Trump.

  So calling all Americans stupid is not right. There are a lot of people hurting right now as they watch their country develop in a bad way. We need those people to stand up and fight and calling them names doesn’t help.

  (Other countries have gone down similar routes, have had whacky leaders, have done questionable things. The US is not alone on this path.)

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  • rumschlumpel@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I think it was the votes of less than a third of eligible voters that made Trump 2.0 a reality, roughly another third just behind it, with the remainder not bothering to vote at all. I would say the often fantasized silent majority is actually not pro Trump.

    That means that a third didn’t bother, though. The exact reason is up to debate, but it doesn’t say any good things about them or the political system.

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    • FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      I agree. I didn’t mean to imply all of the remainder would be pro just one of the candidates. My guess is that it’s still enough to make up a silent majority. Which sounds great but no one can prove anyways.

      I’m inclined to give American voters a limited raincheck on not bothering to show up. Voting is often a booklet of ballots on various issues and elections for office. It takes forever to fill it in. That explains the long, slow-moving lines outside pulling stations, much rarer occurrences in other democracies. And that’s only the people who are able to come on a workday (and didn’t have the foresight or were unable to get mail-ins). That’s after a registration process that can have Kafkaesque features in many states. So I would forgive the single mother who didn’t have time to do this between working her two low paid jobs. It’s part of a subtle but deliberate disenfranchisement. We’ll add that one to the list of grievances as well.

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  • Condiment2085@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I really appreciate your level headed take.

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  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    It should also be said that tarring all Americans with the same brush is unfair. I think it was the votes of less than a third of eligible voters that made Trump 2.0 a reality

    But that means all the non-voters are to blame as well.

    And why are the streets so empty now? I can’t see all these democrats out there.

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    • FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      I have stated elsewhere in this thread that I have limited sympathy for the US non-voters. So refer to that if you’re curious. I am trying my best not to condemn everybody equally. A free election, in most democracies, means you’re free not to go. Perhaps we’d all be fine with non-voters if Mrs. Harris had won. Putting blame at their feet is also shutting the barn door when the horse has already bolted. We should motivate the ones willing to stand up and resist. You don’t want to injure their pride and get them to jump on the MAGA bandwagon out of spite.

      There are protests taking place. I just saw Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were in the news leading rallies and protests. American and Canadian protesters gathered on either side of one of the lakes, forgot which one. There are people who are saying something. Even GOP voters are shouting down their elected leaders in town hall meetings because Elon chainsawed a benefit that affected them and theirs. It’s easy to draw parallels to 1930s Germany but this Trump 2.0 administration will plot its own despicable course.

      One of the reasons why you don’t see so many mass gatherings like you saw in Serbia recently or Slovakia is also US infrastructure. It’s real hard to get thousands of Americans into one place anywhere when there isn’t sufficient public transport and it would statistically be 1.2 people per car - you’d need a Rhode Island just for parking.

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• ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I’m pretty sure USA being a fucking evil empire since, at least, 1898, has played a significant hand in making its population stupid bricks, at least when it comes to foreign matters and, often, domestic ones that relate to welfare.

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  • ProfHillbilly@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Oh it goes back even father than that.

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    • dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      was going to say, the invasion of Mexico (like 1848 or so) was naked greed and caused some countries to doubt the U.S. was serious about its supposed founding ideals, lol

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• Coreidan@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  No. Education has been under attack for the last 50 years.

  For every generation that goes by education gets worse and worse. People are literally getting dumber as a result.

  It’s all in the republican playbook. The dumber people are the easier they are to control. That’s how dick wads like Trump get into office.

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• imnotafish@midwest.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Isaac Asimov spoke on it in 1980, and how it had been going on for quite some time by then aphelis.net/…/ASIMOV_1980_Cult_of_Ignorance.pdf

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• SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  People have been stupid for centuries.

  1. The average education level has been low or nonexistant for most people through most of history so everyone was equally dumb. Public education is a relatively new thing. People have been vulnerable to greed, deluded thinking, etc since day 1.

  2. The internet has allowed stupid people to find each other and reinforce each other’s stupidity and create a race of conspiracy obsessed super morons.

  3. The internet has also distilled everything into negativity to the point where everyone and everything isn’t just questioned but warped and rejected. Even the most basic advice on public health is now rejected. You’ve got people rejecting basic facts and science. Everyone who runs for office gets subject to so much hate and lies that no sensible person would want to run for office now leaving only questionable personalities willing to do it.

  I’ll add that America’s obsession with individualism, which ironically becomes groupthink like with MAGA, has become extremely poisonous. It is making it impossible to do even basic things like improve public transportation, gun control, education, healthcare, public health, etc. It is like we’ve become a nation of children who can’t handle being told to go to bed and brush their teeth.

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• RymrgandsDaughter@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  We’ve spent multiple decades making sure our kids didn’t receive the best education and our government officials are complicit in fueling propaganda for pocket change.

  There’s a reason we’ve been the worst first world country in everything that matters except school shootings for a while now

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• Jarix@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Hitler thought america would side with him in ww2, he was a fan of jim crow

  Who knew it just needed to take 60 years to become accurate

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  • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Hitler was very narrow minded when it came to international politics. His mindset barely extended beyond Europe. To him the US was “over there”. He thought though that Britain would side with him as racial peers with similar attitudes (i.e. colonialism).

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  • Nangijala@feddit.dk ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    60?

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    • Jarix@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Im just using today, what would you say?

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• ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I think so yes (there is a stereotype about them for good reason after all), but I think things are trending in an extremely concerning direction and things are going to get worse. I mean, they’re clearly trying to make younger Americans less intelligent, look at what they’re doing with the department of education.

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• nibble4bits@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I don’t fucking get the religious right in my country, all I can say is they’re so fucking gullible by the corporate mainstream media, facts and hit them in the fucking face and they’ll always move the goalposts. They form an opinion and never be swayed by it, despite the strong evidence against it. They picked a guy who cheated on every wife he has, a criminal past, massive security clearance violations, is the most un-christlike in behaviors… And they excuse it all because they don’t like being told they can’t do things that are harmful to ourselves, or they only like receiving socialism but don’t like the responsibility of paying into it. They’re selfish as fuck, and I’m sick of it.

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• SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  In the 60s the counterculture decided that all authority and anything taught to them was wrong and they thought they were smarter than anyone else and their gut feelings were just as valid as education. Hippies and conspiracy obsessed right wingers converged towards things like quack medicines, conspiracy mongering, etc. Anti intellectualism has become the norm. No one with a normal personality would run for office now because the knee-jerk response is to pile hate on them so you only get dysfunctional people running for office. The internet has only made things worse by allowing these people to find each other and reinforce their beliefs.

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• libra00@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  First, your premise is inflammatory and I’m pretty sure it’s intentional, so apology not accepted.

  Second, this is not a uniquely American problem. The UK, for example, has been dealing with the rising conservatism, the dismantling of their government, the privatization of major public services like the rail network, etc. This is the natural conclusion of that process: oligarchs gain so much power they can outright buy presidential elections and accelerate the trend toward fascism. Lots of people have seen this coming, but we can only vote so hard.

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  • leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    There was a post on some Lemmy community or other yesterday which stated that most Americnas support ideas like universal healthcare (55%) and getting rid of guns from private ownership (mid 60% IIRC).

    In that thread someone said it was awful that even amongst progressives the support for universal healthcare was so low and the very few responses to that were basically - :shrug: we’ve been lied to what are we gonna do about it?

    The responses to the gun ownership stat were numerous and declared support for ‘second amendment rights’.

    When even US progressives are passionately defending the biggest cause of child death in the USA in 2022 but are apathetic about universal healthcare, that’s a uniquely US problem that speaks very much to the level of thinking power available.

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    • libra00@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      I think I saw that post, and IIRC it was something like 60% of people own guns, and 90% of people support more gun control - there was no mention of getting rid of guns. But, fair enough.

      Yes, America has been sliding into a hypercapitalist hellhole because the right breaks the rules and wins no matter what and then throws wrench after wrench in the works, while the left has no positive vision for the future and has abandoned the working class, so yeah, it’s not surprising that there’s been little to now resistance and lots of appeasement and collaboration with this bullshit. It’s infuriating. But it’s not uniquely American; as I said, we’re just further along than everyone else.

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• Duamerthrax@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Probably? I haven’t been very impressed with American adult society since I was in high school witnessing how easily they followed Bush II into war.

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• Slam_Eye@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Ive travelled through the states a couple times. You guys have always been quirky. You believe you have X level of freedom, while the rest of the world clearly sees it aint true, huge ugly car infrastructure and massive health problems yet somehow your chins are up high.

  Besides that, i have met a guy nicknamed meat who looked like xmens juggernaut chub an alcoholic 4 loko from a beer bong and then i had a nice long discussion with 2 women who worked on the hillary clinton campaign. In the same town.

  There are extremes everywhere.

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• Tehdastehdas@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Image Image

  Increased blood lead level in children has been correlated with decreases in intelligence, nonverbal reasoning, short-term memory, attention, reading and arithmetic ability, fine motor skills, emotional regulation, and social engagement. … The effect of lead on children’s cognitive abilities takes place at very low levels.

  High blood lead levels in adults are also associated with decreases in cognitive performance and with psychiatric symptoms such as depression and anxiety.

  Lead poisoning # By organ system - Wikipedia

  Image Image

  www.co2.earth/monthly-co2 <- 427 ppm

  Image Image

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  • Thorry84@feddit.nl ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    In my experience, all the Gen X people I’ve ever met were smart and kind people. It’s often the Boomers who are total assholes.

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    • Cryophilia@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Yeah, gen x is by far and away the best generation (saying this as a millenial).

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  • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Nice PSA for understanding the world around us.

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• dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  leaded gasoline was fun, huh?

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  • My_IFAKs___gone@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Image

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  • AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I don’t think he represented leaded fuel in aviation correctly, although he wasn’t wrong. It’s an economic and legal issue

    It’s important to understand this is propeller planes only: jets and turboprops always used jet fuel with no lead. The octane benefits to piston engines really don’t apply to turbines so it was never a concern. However commercial aviation is almost entirely turbines. The most active, profitable and by far the largest part of the industry never had a problem.

    Those piston engined propeller planes though… that entire industry was destroyed by litigation and lack of economies of scale in the 1970s. Not only is this a small part of the industry with less profit, not only was the industry mostly destroyed, but now most of those airplanes in active use are old. Very old. They keep flying much longer than for example a car, and there are very few aircraft produced every year. Also note the small volume of fuel used, and lead contamination means this has few refiners and limited distribution: there’s not much profit

    So there have been attempts to develop an unleaded fuel for decades, but why does it never happen? Everyone seems to support the idea. Economic and legal. To support a new fuel, engines potentially need to be modified, aircraft performance certified, and someone needs to take legal responsibility for any problems. Who’s that going to be?

    • Even if there was an approved fuel, and it was available, and the remaining manufacturers took full legal responsibility, and all new aircraft were certified for that fuel, there are so few aircraft manufactured that it would take centuries to replace the fleet
    • Most of the aircraft fleet is orphaned: theirs is no manufacturer. There’s only an owner and a mechanic, and even if there was an approved fuel and it were available, and there were known engine modifications they could make, there’s no way they could re-certify the aircraft with a new fuel nor any way they could cover the legal part
    • Most of the fleet has been privately owned for many decades. We have a general legal principal that things are “grandfathered” to when they are first sold. For example, building codes change every year but your house is still ok because it’s grandfathered in since it complied when it was new. Same with most of the small aviation fleet: they’re good when they meet the standards in place when they were new. In most industries, this is not too bad since there’s turnover but this industry collapsed so completely that there essentially isn’t turnover

    So because of the collapsed industry meaning very little new development or manufacturing, the high legal bar because of safety requirements, the sheer age of the fleet, and the general legal principal of grandfathering, there’s just not enough opportunity to move forward

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• abbotsbury@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨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

  at least that long

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• impudentmortal@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  This doesn’t answer your question but is more of an interesting observation that fits your question. It seems bar for political leaders’ mistakes has gotten so low over the pass few decades.

  In the early 90s then VP Dan Quayle misspelled potato (though apparently not 100% his fault) and he was labeled an idiot by the entire country. Bush had a lot of funny Bushisms but most are either weird, poorly worded, malapropisms, or a mix of all three.

  Then you have Trump. And while there are definitely people who think he’s an idiot, it doesn’t seem as widespread of a belief as it was for Quayle or Bush. I think part of it is because Trump is far more sensitive to criticism than any president we’ve seen so he’ll go after people who say anything negative about him. But I’m sure there are other reasons as well (ex: politicized news channels, social media, technology etc)

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  • nicky7@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    I often recall Howard Dean’s promising presidential run coming to a screaching halt with one excited and slightly awkward “yyEAH” on stage.

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    • MutilationWave@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      Image

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  • Coreidan@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    You realize that all of that is media propaganda right? People believe and listen to what ever is put in front of them.

    The reason Trump is acceptable today is because of the media.

    If they wanted people to hate Trump then media would look a lot different and you wouldn’t have Fox News pushing bullshit ideas.

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    • impudentmortal@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      I didn’t want to go into all factors that lead to this observation because that would take too long and require more research on my part. Fear of retaliation (and desire for power) is more an explanation of at least why members of his own party won’t criticize him.

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• Prime_Minister_Keyes@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  In authoritarian societies, restricting education serves a purpose as a sort of anesthesia for the minds of the people. Solzhenitsyn, describing the few years just before the Great Terror of 1937 started in the Soviet Union, mostly from the perspective of a political prisoner (from Volume II, Chapter 4 of the “Gulag Archipelago” which can be found in its entirety on the web, in The Archive):

  And the clock of history was striking. […] The Great Leader (having already in mind, no doubt, how many he would soon have to do away with) declared that the withering away of the state (which had been awaited virtually from 1920 on) would arrive via, believe it or not, the maximum intensification of state power! This was so unexpectedly brilliant that it was not given to every little mind to grasp it, but Vyshinsky, ever the loyal apprentice, immediately picked it up: “And this means the maximum strengthening of corrective-labor institutions.” […] And this was not some satirical magazine cracking a joke either, but was said by the Prosecutor General. […] All this was printed in black on white, but we still didn’t know how to read.¹ The year 1937 was publicly predicted and provided with a foundation.
  And the hairy hand² tossed out all the frills and gewgaws too. Labor collectives? Prohibited! […] Professional and technical courses for prisoners? Dissolve them! […] Graphs, diagrams? Tear them off the wall and whitewash the walls.

  1 My take: The author and his peers most definitely knew how to read, but they could not fully comprehend what was being published because of its, at that time, unparalleled egregiousness.
  2 Certainly the one of Stalin.

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  • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Stalin wiped out the officers in the Red Army because he perceived anyone with any authority to be a potential threat. Anyone who had been around for too long was a threat. This set the stage for the Germans to steamroll them in the opening of Operation Barbarossa because you had a Red Army that was completely dysfunctional due to the slaughter of its leadership. He probably would’ve turned on Beria (NKVD) too if he had the chance.

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• Objection@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  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?

  The prevailing economic wisdom after WWII was Keynesianism, which says that the government should increase government spending when unemployment is high and decrease it when inflation is high. What happened in the 70’s and 80’s was that the economy started experiencing both high unemployment and high inflation at the same time, “shrinkflation,” which wasn’t supposed to happen according to Keynesianism, and which it had no real response to. The reason it was happening (at least from a Marxist perspective) was that the US had already developed in the ways that saw the highest returns, and there simply wasn’t as much new ground to cover - this is what’s meant by “the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.” Regardless, the government was faced with a decision of which problem to focus on between unemployment and inflation - and it chose inflation.

  The phenomenon of shrinkflation started under Nixon, who attempted to fight it with price controls, which was perhaps the most anyone ever did. Ford had no idea what he was doing and just asked people to spend less.

  And then we got Carter, and Carter does not get nearly enough hate for his role in this. Carter chose to confront inflation rather than unemployment, the real beginning of “supply side economics” that Reagan would take further. Carter’s whole deal was “restoring the dignity of the office” after Watergate and his focus was on individual morality. His message was essentially, you’re going to have less purchasing power, but it’s ok because we can seek fulfillment in other ways, outside of the economic sphere. He marked the transformation of the Democratic party away from representing the interests of labor and towards the beast that it’s become today, with it’s obsession over norms and procedure and technocracy.

  The result of Carter’s messaging and policy was one of the greatest blowout losses in history against Ronald Reagan. Reagan would do all the same things as Carter, but he at least had the decency to lie about it. He focused on how much more you’d be able to afford with cheaper goods, conveniently ignoring the fact that with lower wages, purchasing power would actually decrease. However, thanks to the Democratic party completely abandoning labor and the common people, there was no real pushback against this, there was no alternative explanation or solution or criticism of the broad direction of policy. In fact, economic policy was moved out of the sphere of democratic accountability altogether by leaving it to the Federal Reserve to set interest rates. Instead, the culture war kicked off and that’s what elections would be about from then on.

  Why did the Democratic party abandon unions? Because the unions like the AFL/CIO stripped themselves of power and radicalism by purging communists during the Red Scare. The Carter administration didn’t view labor vs capital in terms of the fundamental struggle of society but as just another set of competing interest groups and lobbyists, which is honestly pretty much how the unions saw themselves and wanted to be seen anyway.

  So what happens when more and more important questions are taken out of the hands of the voters, who then watch conditions gradually decline? Well, the voters get mad about declining conditions - and at the same time, get dumber from not being engaged in any important questions. There’s a sense that we can just fuck around and do whatever because our actions don’t have consequences, because most of the time what we say and believe seems to have no real effect on policy anyway. Nobody gets to vote on whether or not to keep arming Israel and bombing Yemen or on whether to raise or lower interest rates or anything like that - the only thing we get to vote on is stuff like whether trans women can play sports.

  Trump’s popularity is very easy to understand in that context - he is a rebellion against that declining status quo and a desperate attempt to reassert the power of elected officials over technocratic institutions. Of course, since the left has been purged and is devoid of power, this rebellion can only come from the right. A similar thing happened in Iran (which Carter also fucked up btw but that’s not important right now), where after being installed by the CIA, the shah hunted down and exterminated everyone on the left, and then conditions declined and people wanted change, only that change had to come from the right because the left was powerless. And if the American left can’t materialize and offer an alternative vision, both to Trump and, more importantly, to the failed bipartisan status quo that existed before him, then we’re headed towards the same future as Iran.

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• rational_lib@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Miss Cleo was big in the 90s. And she wasn’t even the dumbest one. Americans have always believed in stupid bullshit. The CIA used to hire psychics too. Go back to the 1920s, and Americans pretty much took it for granted that fairies are real.

  What’s changed recently is that the media went from being a mostly curated place where completely lunacy was hard to find, to a right wing clown show led by con artists. And don’t underestimate the degree to which this was done deliberately - Elon buying Twitter was a pretty clear example of the billionaire mafia taking a platform that was sort of trying to be more attached to reality and making it a lot dumber and more right wing.

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