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this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2024
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Our country is full of proudly ignorant bootlickers
Turns out all you need to do is make up some bullshit about "American dreams" and "bootstraps," make them believe they too can (and probably already should!) be a billionaire, and the one thing stopping that are those goddamn Marxist Democrats and their "progressive taxation," and "social safety nets for the blacks (please ignore the fact that I'm on disability, it's different)".
Republicans have been sabotaging our country's own public education system for 25+ years at this point. Selling the future prosperity of our nation down the river for a voter-base with cult-like devotion, and a unique ability to ignore objective reality.
Unfortunately for the planet, it seems to have been wildly successful.
The next step is to do away with democracy altogether.
It’s been the Koch brothers and the John Birch Society’s dream (amongst others) to propagandize so many people of the “American Dream” and evils of anything other than capitalism. They were ecstatic when the Tea Party movement worked out for them, but they lost control of it with Trump. It’s a monster of their own making.
*other than WHAT THEY CALL capitalism
They look at monopolies where the market leader buys laws, lobbies for protection and muscles competition out of the game unhindered and then they decry anybody calling it out as communists or socialists or the devil or whatever other bad word is en vogue that day.
You're almost there, comrade...
It's not just what they call it, this is capitalism working as intended. This is the end game. Always has been. It's just now they have the tools to essentially brainwash millions using modern tech, and a wealth disparity that has been growing constantly for what, 100 years now?
That's why it seems different this time; they learned from past attempts. Not only can you just make them not revolt (or shit, why not just Orwell it up and make it so they don't even think they want to), you can direct that hate, anger and vitriol at your "enemies" to sow more chaos and division.
I don't think any of the people responsible for planning and carrying out this decades-long coup could have predicted it would be this wildly successful.
It's like Putin tossing a million bucks to a state sponsored hacker group (because meh why not, what could it hurt?), and ending up with a fucking Manchurian candidate and an army of loyal GOP politicians terrified enough of what might leak from those hacked emails that they are literally willing to destroy their own country from the inside. Unreal.
Oh, this system is definitely doing what it's designed to do, but "capitalism" nominally is this fair competition among equal players where the market decides which ideas and products rise to the top based on merit and whatnot. This would, however, require a level playing field which goes out of the window the moment the strongest player on the market uses their power not to provide the best products and services, but instead uses their power to solidify their top position by legal or illegal means or in ways they make legal by lobbying, bribing and otherwise convincing the legislative. The moment the biggest corporations secure themselves the cooperation of the political parties for one-sided tax cuts, bailouts, deregulation of limits and massive regulation in favour of the corporations' goals, that is the moment where we've left this impossible ideal of capitalism far behind.
But yes, the monopolies reigning from the corpse of the capitalist idea while telling you that capitalism is alive and well have worked hard to shape the status quo to what it is and they are definitely pretending that this abomination perfectly encapsulates the unreachable purity of the perfectly fair notion of "capitalism" every chance they get.
Kochs lost control of Trump to the JBS types. The Kochs are more Mitch McConnell type power brokers, all about the money and corporations. JBS is more MAGA, with the heavy undercurrent of conspiracy.
Exactly - I started noticing prideful ignorance in the early 2010s. People around me made bad choices and would not be corrected. Their ignorance was just as valid as someone else's actual knowledge. That's when, strengthened by their own baseless pride, their shame disappeared. I'm not saying shame is good, but when it's the only thing keeping the deplorables in check, maybe a little of it helps.
It used to be that I'm general, horrible people realised they were horrible and at least went through the motions of being decent. They were like cockroaches scurrying for the shadows when you turned on the light. Now they're like a cat peeing on your bed - they pause long enough to lock eyes with you, then continue peeing.
Speaking optimistically, at least now we know exactly who they are.
Oh, I actually used this comparison once when such people still generally did that. They were pissed. I didn't directly address them BTW, they decided which side they're on for themselves.
It's wild that all it took was one sick, deranged, racist, liar (who hasn't been able to string together a coherent sentence since the early 90s) to lead by example...
Well, to generalize your statement a bit, I've had a conflict with people who thought that the only thing preventing them from living in socialist heaven were jerks like me talking about human rights, market economy, transparency, accountability, governments actually changing, putting thieves in jail and getting activists out of jail, legalization of various substances, any consensual sexual activity, privacy, freedom of speech, competitive judicial system, culture of protest, yadda-yadda once a few years ...
They sincerely thought all this prevented life in my country from being good, while themselves being thieving ignorant intriguing insecure shits was normal. You know, the kind of people who contribute clearly negatively to the society, but think life is unjust to them, they should live better and somebody has stolen everything from them.
The GOP have been selling these people hope and magic since Reagan. It’s no longer about hard work for republicans, now all they have to do is destroy cities and kick out everyone they don’t like, and we will return to the magic that never existed in the 1950’s.