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this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face
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Dumbasses go from not believing everything a politician tells them to believing everything a politician tells them because he's dRaInInG the SwAmP. Zero sympathy for anyone still buying their lies.
It's not an issue of believing/not-believing politicians nearly so much as it is a media environment that's fully saturated with right-wing propaganda.
What do you tell a person who has been listening to AM Radio for 30 years? What do you tell a person that was taught Ayn-Rand-o-nomics in High School while the teacher clutched a copy of Atlas Shrugged alongside her Bible? What do you tell a person who has never actually been involved in the higher levels of business management, because our economic model is so subdivided and the commodities so fetishized?
You can't get mad at the loyal acolyte of a cargo cult for praying to the cargo gods if that's all they've ever known. Neither can you simply ignore the Cult Leader, who has been blaring the message from a megaphone into everyone's ears, for their entire adult lives.
I have immense sympathy for people who are pre-programmed to get hoodwinked by this shit and I count my lucky stars every day that I only get hoodwinked some of the time and mostly on things that don't obliterate my quality of life when they come due.
But more than them, I feel awful for the people who come after us, because we at least got to enjoy that World's Greatest Middle Class Life while it was on offer. The next generation is going to be fed all the same propaganda, but they're going to be doing it from in the pod while eating the bugs.
What do you say to someone who works in a recession proof field? That they made all the wrong moves?
That, even though they looked ahead and made all the right decisions, they are still wrong and should shoulder the burden to supplement the lives of everyone else at the expense of their own families?
I do work that stresses me the fuck out every single day. It's not the field I wanted to get into when I was younger, but the payoff is that my family can live on a single income. My wife and kids have the opportunity to travel and learn. I sacrifice those trips so that they can make them.
Selfishness is labeled as such a horrible quality, yet so many perpetually online people only care about their own situation. They belittle anyone with an "I've got mine" attitude to support their claim that those people should be supporting their lives through taxes!! Simple hypocrisy.
I don't mistake my "selfishness" for a twisted understanding of how the economy should work. I know exactly what I want. I've worked hard to get it. I will not let someone take that from me just because they want it without putting in the work.
You speak to them of how they aren't an island. You speak to them of how even a recession-proof job is still subject to the rising costs felt by everyone. You speak to them of how these rising costs have over time reduced the actual value of what they've been paid, even with regular cost of living increases. You speak to them of how they have to work harder now for the same results. You speak to them of how much less stress having a good safety net provides, since a recession is not the only way one can fall on hard times. You speak to them of how a small decrease in take-home pay results in a much larger decrease in living expenses, resulting in a net gain.
You speak to them of how they need not be the sacrificial lamb, that they deserve to travel and learn and have a good life as well; and that their family should not have to give that up either to protect their health and well being.
You speak to them of how helping everyone is good for everyone, including themselves. The goal is to raise the standard of living across the board.