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?
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.
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.
When you remove economic stability and reduce average income people need to work more and start working younger just to keep food on the table. No time for higher ed.
They created an environment that pitted people against each other where you “get yours” and fuck everyone else, crabs in a bucket, and also have been painting higher education as a bad thing ideologically. They now claim that it doesn’t work economically even though every metric shows higher education raises average lifetime earnings (assuming you don’t pursue a 6-figure education for a low-paying job and/or with poor advancement to higher wage tiers).
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.
When you make education expensive standards slip everywhere.