I think you underestimate the propaganda influence they have. I don’t consider it voluntary by most, any more than I blame a North Korean citizen for hating the west as they’ve been indoctrinated to do, it’s the fault of the power above them.
The power above us isn’t our purchased government, it’s capital. And it propagandizes us to defend this system from Kindergarten to colleges of economics to the for profit news they own. And if that doesn’t work, they control the means of state violence through the government and both major parties they fully own and control to defend their profits and interests against the peasants. We aren’t approaching Orwellian society, we’ve surpassed it. Legions of peasants advocate directly against their own interests because thats what all of us are taught to do, you have to buck that pressure to even truly open your eyes and know whats going on.
Just for context, if you made 100k a year, an extremely enviable salary, and saved every penny somehow, you’d be a billionaire in exactly TEN THOUSAND YEARS.
No one can earn a billion dollars through honest labor and the sweat of their brow. It must be exploited out of others. It must be stolen. You cannot possess a billion dollars and be a decent human being. For any good you do, you can’t approach the harm you’ve already inflicted upon others in the name of insatiable greed.
Oh I’m sorry, they’ve used their wealth to warp the culture and language to their benefit, so greed doesn’t exist anymore. I meant “rational self-interest.” also we have always been at war with Eurasia.
Reminder: AOC was a spoiler candidate, because the DNC and the RNC are arms of our capitalist owner class. Someone who says the truths she says aren’t permitted to climb the ladder within our fully purchased party duopoly.
If the destabilization of socialist regimes through sanctions and political assassinations weren’t enough to convince you that our nation is just another geopolitical baddie, you’re hopeless.
We’re better than North Korea, Russia, and China, but that bar is pathetic. For too many, being better than the absolute worst is just license to rationalize cruelty and punch down.
Wall Street is doing great. Our oligarchs are doing great. Non-wealthy people are not, because the ones making more than they need own our government and have warped our economy into their personal poggy bank.
Leave it to the New York Times to get pissed off that the peasants aren’t vicariously celebrating their owner’s victories.
Of course the New York Times talks about people who don’t own meaningful capital positions as if they were the livestock of those that do, so it’s no surprise.
Wall Street is doing great. Our oligarchs are doing great. Non-wealthy people are not, because the ones making more than they need own our government and have warped our economy into their personal poggy bank.
Leave it to the New York Times to get pissed off that the peasants aren’t vicariously celebrating their owner’s victories.
Of course the New York Times talks about people who don’t own meaningful capital positions as if they were the livestock of those that do, so it’s no surprise.
Fortunately, I also believe he was correct about the natural world, that’s been through far worse than us, ramping up to retaliate against us and shake us off like a bad case of fleas, so maybe it’ll all get set back to zero and nature can start again once it corrects our little evolutionary cul-de-sac.
George Carlin knew exactly why decades ago. No one noticed. No one cared.
“There’s a reason education sucks, and it’s the same reason that it will never, ever, ever be fixed. It’s never gonna get any better. Don’t look for it. Be happy with what you got. Because the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the real owners, the big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.
Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought and paid for the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want.
Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want: They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests. Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table to figure out how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that.
You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers. People who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork, and just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shittier jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and the vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you, sooner or later, 'cause they own this fucking place. It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.”
-George Carlin
good bit. everybody laugh. roll on snare drum. curtains
What? Republicans aren’t satisfied having surgery performed on them by fellow Right-wingers who got their doctorate at the College of Common Sense and did their surgical residency at the Can-Do-Attitude Hospital?
I thought academia in general was a leftist plot to turn kids lgbtq that you wanted to burn to the ground?
Our owners and their paid managers in the Courts, in the Congress, and both major parties have reached the point where rhetorical defense is no longer relevant.
We’ve reached the “So what if I did? Want to cry about it?” stage of this collapse.
You see it everywhere. Corporations used to do damage control after mass layoffs, now they literally insult the employees on the way out the door and brag about their cruelty on the money shows.
The small sect of our society that are in the country club no longer fear consequences, and for good reason, as they’ve captured any governmental bodies that would earnestly seek or inflict them. And if that fails, they still have legions of deluded, self-hating peasants ready to protect their own oppressors out of the sunk cost fallacy.
I’ll vote for Biden, just like the people on the Titanic turned on the water pumps. It might buy slightly more time. Maybe.
Lets not pretend though that either of our only 2 parties, Neoliberal and Fascist, are going to improve our worsening situation.
All we’re voting for is the rate of collapse. At the end of the day, the people who bribe both parties need to be checked to do that. And that’s clearly not going to happen. So collapse is inevitable.