I apologize for my ignorance but, is the US really this bad and if so, why aren't more people banding together and doing something about it?
I apologize for my ignorance but, is the US really this bad and if so, why aren't more people banding together and doing something about it?
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Would you elaborate more about what you believe is 'bad'?
First a convicted felon as President, the way lgbtq people are treated, the rich controlling the media, constant warfare "for the good", and also taking advantage of third-world counties, ie nestle
Edit
It really does seem like it's turning into fascism
a convicted felon as President
I don't believe that we'll ever know precisely why and how this happened. However, my best guess is that the general public is uneducated and brainwashed by the media.
the way lgbtq people are treated
This one depends on which state you live in.
the rich controlling the media
This one has been going on for a long time. My best guess is that the rich and powerful want to become more rich and powerful.
constant warfare “for the good”
The billionaire oligarchs that are profiting from this have to paint it as such to get all the young people to participate.
taking advantage of third-world counties
The oligarchs are diseased dragons lying atop mountains of gold (see J.R. Tolkien). They don't care about the earth or any life on it. The bottom line for them is power/money.
So, why aren't more citizens trying to change this?
This is quite a complex issue, with multiple layers that compound on eachother.
- Most people are just managing to stave off homelessness, living hand to mouth. They live to work, and have very little energy or time to concern themselves about trying to change fundamental issues, if they are even educated on those issues, which leads into...
- The US education system is failing quite badly. People are not taught well how to critically think, and almost never cover fundamental societal issues or how to organize to improve them. It's a meat grinder that is designed to get you smart enough to be a good employee, and generally kills the flame of curiosity in most people. This is especially true in republican states, where they are actively gutting the public education system in favor of private schools that will teach Christianity, and that slavery wasn't all bad (literally, in Florida they want to teach that slavery gave slaves on-the-job experience)
- The red scare of the 50's and 60's is still effecting older generations, and they view any sort of collectivism as Stalinist communism. This is reinforced by Fox news, which is genuinely fascist propaganda, and is wildly popular amongst the elderly and rural populations.
Saying all that, there are people trying to make things better actively, and we're starting to see an awaking of the working class as unions are making a comeback, and more people are beginning to realize that the system itself cannot pull itself out of this capitalistic nosedive, and that grassroots mutual aid and prefiguration is a more promising way.
Could be several reasons. Most people aren't aware. Some people don't care. There are probably more reasons.
To add one, have fun going to that rally when you are living paycheck to paycheck, working long hours with much exhaustion.
And if you did eke out the time to go do something, and get detained and prevented from coming back to work in time, you’ve lost your job. And your meager healthcare. Soon your home if you can’t bounce into another job.
That kind of living keeps people afraid of peeking outside the box.
Thank you for this. Would this be the case if more of the workers joined together or would they just fire them all? That's not sarcastic, I'm curious.
Firstly, such unity would be hard to organize. Work culture down on the lower rungs where there would be people wanting change, are drowned in a conflict culture. Don’t talk about your wages. Unions are evils. You are Replaceable. The threat of termination is welded like a cudgel. One of my previous jobs had a point system. If you were late, point. Called out without enough sick hours and a doctor’s note? Point. Missed a shift for any reason and didn’t call in? 4 points. 4 points was terminated.
Would they actually follow through with it? A previous manager I’ve had absolutely would. Snow? Late? Should have shoveled your way over sooner. He changed someone’s schedule and they didn’t notice, failed to appear. Arguments were made, there was an appeal system after all to make it fair, right? They compromised on keeping the guy at 3 points. He spent the next while looking for a new job because he knew he was one mistake away from unemployed.
Would they fire the whole team for organizing? I think so. I think they’d quickly offer to re-hire their favorites while they picked up new blood but they’d do it. Everyone would be back on probation and back in line.
Another company taking over the country no longer has a fresh meat butcher department because they wanted to unionize years ago. Company made an example of them nationwide and now just does factory meat.
This is wrong. You maybe right, but it's just wrong. Thank you for the enlightenment.
The last thing I want is for future generations to fix our mess from complacency which seems to be the trend.
For a non-violent option: Go to a rally or protest or something, yell for actual change. Talk your voice hoarse about injustice.
In the good ending, you sat there for a week, maybe were given weak platitudes from your target, and dispersed, went back to work, and were forgotten.
In the bad ending, you were called a disrupter, a terrorist, forced under militarized police order to disperse or have your life fucked up. Maybe you break under the pressure, maybe the situation devolves into a riot. You’ll never be taken seriously again.
For a violent option, look at the recent CEO thing. But even then, look at how disproportionately “justice” is dispensed. Because the victim was one of the elite, the case is being handled very differently than if a lowly serf killed another. An example must be made, of course.
It’s a matter of perspective.
From your, and many rational being’s perspective, there being a felon for president is a bad thing. You trust the judicial system, you think they found and convicted rightly, so now we have a bad man in charge.
From the other perspective, the majority voting perspective, the judicial system has been usurped and politically weaponized, the trial was a sham and the conviction false. He’s not a felon, just an unjustly labeled political martyr. Or maybe even a felon is better than a woman, or, gasp, a colored woman! The racism and misogyny never died, just sat in the back until it was allowed to speak again.
Why do they think this? Well, why do you think opposite? Different upbringing, education, social media exposure, less lead in you/your parents?
Clinton's impeachment didn't get the votes to go through and I still think that is wrong.
I don't care who it is, but the President should be the best of the best of the country.
I agree, the president should be the best we can get, but infortunately we don't elect people to be good at the job. The nature of elections selects the person who is best at elections at that moment. Sometimes that person happens to be really competent but that seems to be the exception and not the rule.
I'd like to think this is a problem with American voting specifically, or maybe first past the post election systems, but I worry that this is the trend of democracy as a whole. It seems like all democracy is sliding that direction, and I can't think of many safeguards in place to resist it.
I sat with it for a moment, and I think parliamentary systems do seem more resilient since they require experts to be appointed or hired to do the real work, while the elected officials are steering the general direction. That falls apart of course when the appointed experts are selected for reasons that have nothing to do with expertise.
I don't know what a solution to this is, and I think that is by design too, though it may just be the way the human brain works, I don't know. It's very hard to imagine new ways of doing things that are very different, and it's even harder to see a clear path to that different future. I'm hopeful because good people are working on it, but I'm worried because the problems are so titanic.
Trouble is, would you consider someone best if they have imperialist values? Socialist ones? Would they require a Ph.D? And no matter what you answer, someone will believe the opposite. Who gets to pick the best of the best? In the current system, supposedly the common people do.
And they picked Felump.
Sure, stats say he wasn’t actually super popular, but the voters that could have gone another way made their vote too by leaving the box empty and giving him no opposition. To paraphrase Rush, “if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice”. So whether by checking the box or not, the people spoke, and here we are.
This just means we need a better educational system to help them understand what they're watching and listening to on the media.
I agree.
But it’s a government system like any other, so like any other piece of it, the people in power ultimately decide what the people below get to have.
Public schools are being defunded and villainized by the powers that want them devalued and replaced with a different systems, where the rich can keep cash flowing through private schools the public gets their knowledge from what is approved by religion, with a preference on teaching the things that will improve dependence on and obedience to power.
The people in power are banning books, slashing budgets, using the already malleable to convince voters that teachers are the ones brainwashing their kids, that (public) education doesn’t work, so they can have another generation of under-educated malleable serfs.
Hopefully other countries can watch the US decay and learn from it, and keep systems like affordable and common healthcare and education available, so that at least some portion of humanity aren’t this gullible. The news is telling me about the attempts for this same crap to rise on other countries and I can only hope they hold strong.
But shouldn't those that do know share the knowledge. This isn't a lost cause. We're in the middle of it and need to do something about it
I see that fight too. Teachers still working despite the issues. Paying out of their own pockets to keep the system limping along. Trying to pack the wound of under supported education.
But there’s only so much you can do when your opponent vastly outnumbers you, and in fact now has the heavyweight punch of government behind it.
“Knowledge” is still being shared. The problem is we are eroding the difference between correct and incorrect “knowledge”, and as things change we are losing the support of the government that used to help with that.
“Truth” is now an opinion. Is Ivermectin a drug with some specific uses that may have had a secondary affected improving health for some patients who also had parasites eating at them, so they got a bit better because the parasites were dead and the immune response could work harder on fighting COVID?
Or is the truth that it’s directly a cure for COVID, cancer, and everything else, so buy it from the pet shop if you have to because “they” don’t want you to have it?
Different households will take different sides as truth. Different communities will take different sides as truth. And teach their young to make it their truth.
Government controlled education is a double edged sword. Right now we are upset that it is or could be used to push an agenda that we see as false, but we depend on a central authority to take in the advice of the educated and enforce true knowledge in the learning halls that educate our next generation.
Thanks. I don't have any more questions. Thank you, again.
60% of the country has no savings
I thought it was higher (80%)?
Probably talking about the social media/traditional media posts & programs.
If that's the case, then my general answer would be that the US is not as bad as social media and other media conglomerates make things out to be. One reason being is the media figured out a while back that tactics such as fear-mongering gained more people's attention. Therefore people were more likely to read their newspapers and see their advertisements, etc. (i.e. clickbait)
Now that I have been, mostly, limiting my self to the Associated Press and National Public Radio I don't feel things such as impending doom.
Statistics do say that it is safer now than ever before, but viscerally it doesn't feel that way, which is by it so.... unpleasant.
I made a similar move a few years ago - none of the for-profit newspapers, and like you said, a stronger preference for national broadcasters who don't have to worry about revenue directly from the populace (even if they are funded by public taxes), and a lesser dependence on advertising. I'm not even from the US and signed up for the NPR newsletters because they were so good and interesting!
I can't help but feel you're correct that clickbait is leading to a decline in the quality of things-that-I-read. In my opinion, it's the manifestation of capitalism in communication and socialization and feels like such a terrible problem. Money may make the world go round -- but it is clear that it doesn't always do it in a sustainable way. I do what I can (with contributions to the DeArrow extension for YouTube for example) to stay focused on mitigating it, but I feel like I'll have to do more in the future.