It’s like being caught in a bizarro world where the things they taught you actually sunk in and you look around at all the idiot kids you went to school with are running the place and they fucking struggled in 7th grade social studies and couldn’t answer the teacher’s questions but here they’re making the laws we get thrown in jail for violating.
No. These are people protecting people with money and power, so they can have money and power. Puritans believed that hard work, discipline, and frugality were godly virtues; these people do not believe that.
Ok, but wasn’t one of the underlying motivations in the Salem witch trials “godly” greedy puritans accusing their neighbors of witchcraft so they could take their land and property after the execution? Godly virtue on display.
You can get the same thing without religion. Mao, Pol Pot, and Stalin all used lies and propaganda. The reality is corrupt men will take any belief or ideology, corrupt it, and twist it.
Christianity teaches that you should love even your enemy. Turn the other cheek. Bless those who curse you. So it takes a lot of twisting to ignore all that and behave like these American Christian Taliban do.
Its hard to do because so many people want to see politics as this thing outside of life where they can just shrug, say both sides and be done with it.
I think people need to talk more about politics, realize its importance, and not be so passive in letting others off the hook for their insane beliefs.
so many people want to see politics as this thing outside of life where they can just shrug
to me this is the most frustrating thing- people that can shrug are the people who don't have to worry about their rights being taken away. you rarely see trans people saying politics aren't important.
for example- there were people who took private jets to go to january 6th. the highest echelon of wealth and power in our society.
fox news... unless they're held accountable for their lies and misinformation, it's gonna be really hard to make any progress.
And I'm not talking censorship here. For example they could spew their lies but there would need to be big bold red letters on the corner clarifying they're not a real news organization, for entertainment purposes only, not factual information etc
Why not just go back to the 50s when they are forced to be honest otherwise their network was to be removed. The whole "we're entertainment and not news" argument is not made in good faith and typically doesn't hold up in any other court argument. The fact that Fox news could make that in court and remain a viable news channel is bonkers. Every news channel should be held to basic fact checking laws.
Right!? If a country can’t come together and agree that news, of all things, should be held to the most basic standard of not being a lie, it’s cooked. It’s the very foundation of journalistic integrity.
While individuals may have integrity and ethical standards, the country as a whole does not.
I mean, what if we treated money that way, and there were no consequences for counterfeiting? Or worse, not only no consequences, but if counterfeiting money was a right?
And it was everyone’s individual responsibility to “do their own research” to verify that the money they were spending, earning, or accepting as payment was in fact, real money… even if that meant hours of research for every single dollar.
For digital transactions, well, you’ll just have to take your chances.
Of course, an economy can’t function if there are no standards or security to determine whether money was real.
Can a society function of there is no objective truth?
Or what about our identities?
What if we could all just make up and change, at will, our own names, identities, credentials, citizenships, credit histories, or whatever else we decided we wanted to change, whenever we chose to change it?
Just say you’re a doctor, and any hospital or patient who challenges your claim is violating YOUR right to be full of shit about who you actually are.
Let’s just get rid of education and credentials altogether.
And while we’re at it, let’s legalize identity theft, because what does it matter? Your money may or may not be real. Your identity is whatever you say it is anyway. And there are no crimes if you never get caught, because the person who committed the crime didn’t really exist. Or at least, they no longer exist since you can just become a different person after committing a crime.
I say defund them. Attach fines to any statement presented as fact that is easily proved to be unfactual, have the fine scale based on funding. That way the loonies can still have their conspiracy fest on late night public access and still afford the five dollar an episode fine while the Koch empire gets hit with enough fines to hit the loss/profit tipping point on propaganda. Obviously this idea needs a lot of work but it's a start.
I wanted to go to college, but I really didn’t wanna be in debt for half (or more) of my life. I can’t even afford to live away from my parents so I couldn’t even think of the type of debt I’d have from more school
Believing that 'absolute power corrupts absolutely', the Founding Fathers designed the constitutional govt with about every type of power base they could think of, with different rules for every federally elected official (and in some cases like SCOTUS, those named by elected officials).
People think the Constitution is some kind of naively idealistic document - it really is the opposite of that, it is pretty cynical about human nature and trying to protect people from their own worst impulses - not for a 'perfect' society but for the best and fairest society possible given human frailty.
IMO there is nothing wrong with the Constitution, IT is fine, the problem is that slowly the rich and foreign interests have slowly bought and paid for all the various power bases that SHOULD be functioning in opposition to each other - it is literally sabotaging the very framework of the govt.
The solution then, is to PUSH BACK against these forces, not change the constitution itself.
In the short term, we can't. There are tens of millions of people that have detached themselves from reality and will probably never come back. Luckily, a Trump loss will likely see an implosion as there is a scramble to be the next messiah and they will eat each other alive with infighting.
In the medium term, we have to get serious about dealing with these people and undoing the damage that has been done through reforms. That means things like expanding the Supreme Court, ending the filibuster in the Senate, and ending the electoral college. But that will require holding the Democrats' feet firmly to the fire should they get power and making sure they actually get something done.
Long term, we have to actually improve people's lives. People that are educated and living comfortably and securely tend not to be in favor of overthrowing their government and upending society.
The first is to hold media accountable, especially social and foreign media. Until that happens, countries are going to struggle, massively.
The second is education. The first won't matter if people were aware of how easily it is end up in an echo chamber and be fed absolute bullshit. People aren't questioning anything and will believe whatever content they're finding most entertaining and engaging, even if it's pure hatred.
The third is eating the rich. Billionaires like Thiel are looking to secure their wealth, and influence for generations upon generations. A modern variation of feudalism and serfdom. It's not going to be landed gentry and autocratic families, but capitalists that own everything and there's going to be no easy way out.
Sherman's March burned a path of destruction from Atlanta to Savannah, and it still hasn't really solved the problem. I'm from Georgia but I am no Confederate sympathizer, I feel like every adult found complicit in the Confederacy should have been executed by firing squad and thrown into a mass grave.
What's insane to me is 24 years ago, the Republican Party actually had a good reputation, between 1988 and 2000 their image reformed and they paired with evangelicals. There are few democrat evangelicals left because they are extremists and attract a specific kind of personality: selfishness. It's exactly as you describe, the natural Conservative position is to maintain the status quo. That sucks for most people, and the only way to get people to vote against their interests is to give them someone to hate. It's why the Republicans only know distractions and fail at governance.
Right now this group feels under attack, they know they've been at a disadvantage and have used underhanded methods to secure the presidency in multiple elections now. Between the Supreme Court ruling in 2000 to the shit today, it's all happening out of fear of falling out of power by the religious right. This has been a long play, the mask is coming off as they move to destroy the remaining strong democratic institutions.
What type of nonsensical bad faith bullshit is this?
One party works to make things worse, and the other is much better.
The party making things worse (republicans) should stop being awful, and the voting system shouldnt be victor takes all/first past the post and all sorts of other fixes.
Because all of that is a pipe dream, in the short term, you obviously support the better option until such options become availible.
That's what a fetish for fully unimpeded "free speech" gets you. And no, I don't know a solution either, but lies and disinformation should not be part of politics.
You enforce the law already on the books and use these laws to regulate social media.
The first amendment does not protect fraud. One user impersonating multiple users to either fabricate support for an issue or a candidate is fraud. A hostile government pretending to be an American and pushing a falsified narrative that leads to the possibility of the toppling of the US government isn't protected free speech but warfare without guns.
Social media knows this stuff happens and they're hiding behind section 230 in order to protect fraud because fraud is paying them billions.
It's past time the department of justice nuts up and stops pretending that fraud is a first amendment issue.
One American citizen, one voice when it comes to influencing our own politics. One person, one voice when it comes to influencing society at large.
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u/HomemadeSprite Oct 02 '24
How do we eradicate this crazy ideology?
It’s like being caught in a bizarro world where the things they taught you actually sunk in and you look around at all the idiot kids you went to school with are running the place and they fucking struggled in 7th grade social studies and couldn’t answer the teacher’s questions but here they’re making the laws we get thrown in jail for violating.
How insane is that?