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i don't even want to give people that benefit at this point. used to think that it was education, circumstances, outside forces, culture, etc. like "if only" w

i don't even want to give people that benefit at this point. used to think that it was education, circumstances, outside forces, culture, etc. like "if only" we had XYZ then we can prevent this. at this point i just want to call it "stupidity". not even a left vs right thing. there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work. they will always be taken advantage of, scammed, etc. social media and tech just made this 10x more effective. it's how you have populations repeatedly making the same damn mistakes century after century just in a different form. it's baked into our DNA i suppose. maybe i'm just cynical have given up. it's a really jarring thing to encounter people who refuse to even spend the min effort to attempt to question their own beliefs.

elif 2y ago
Once you see how stupid and useful this group is, it's hard to unsee the deliberate attempts to make this group larger and dumber.
- elif 2y ago
  Thought I should expand to explain the group gets larger as the economy suffers and people are too poor busy and hopeless for anything other than a hopeful narrative. And the group gets dumber when skipping school is glorified, education gets funding cuts, and people mass consume media.
labster 2y ago
Nah, cynicism is the only rational reaction now. Lots of people died from covid and our poor government response, but Trump got a majority because eggs are too expensive.
- myrmidon 2y ago
  > Trump got a majority because eggs are too expensive. I think this trivializes the outcome in a dangerous way. From my view as an outside observer, these were all big factors: - Bad handling of the candidate selection for the democrats (switching to Harris too late) - Having an impossible platform for a lot of single issue voters (mainly: people that want immigration reduced, but also firearm availability) - Thoroughly uninspiring middle-east policy (not a personal opinion, but I think that cost a bunch of votes that would have been democrat) Personally, I also think that some sexism was also a significant factor and that Harris would've had an easier time had she been male. I also believe that the media smear campaign depicting Biden as completely senile was really effective (and a bit ridiculous considering the age of his replacement). Another very effective strategy in riling up their base was the "democrats want to transgenderize all the children" (exaggerated). If the democrats main takeaway is that they just need to campaign for lower egg prices next election they might well lose again IMO.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    > I also believe that the media smear campaign depicting Biden as completely senile was really effective (and a bit ridiculous considering the age of his replacement). Another very effective strategy in riling up their base was the "democrats want to transgenderize all the children" (exaggerated). I'm not sure what they could actually do about these; if the media (or their owners) want to lean heavily on the scale, this is always going to be a problem. We see the same thing in the UK. You can't fight a thing that people have made up in their heads with facts. (I note that there is a platform split on H1-B between Trump and Musk, but that doesn't seem to have been a problem for them) > Bad handling of the candidate selection for the democrats (switching to Harris too late) Many of the democrats are simply too old. Nancy Pelosi, world's greatest stock trader, is 84. Feinstein died in office at 90. There's an entire missing generation, the party should be averaging 50-65. People are supporting them because there's no alternative, which is .. not durable.
    - myrmidon 2y ago
      > if the media (or their owners) want to lean heavily on the scale, this is always going to be a problem 100% agree. But I think you don't even need heavy bias on media ownership to get the whole political landscape distorted; I think the whole attention/outrage-driven ad-economy systematically pushes all reporting on both sides toward the fringes, and this is inherently more helpful for the right side of the political spectrum. > Nancy Pelosi, world's greatest stock trader, is 84 Is this tongue-in-cheek? Because IMO the whole insider-trading exemptions for congress are deeply unethical (and unlikely to get fixed). To be fair, though, it barely even registers on the scale compared to the whole "You get to design and lead a government agency after donating 250M$ to my campaign"-thing... Whole situation just feels a bit like the gilded age is making a comeback right now, just strictly worse :/ > I note that there is a platform split on H1-B between Trump and Musk, but that doesn't seem to have been a problem for them I think this is a really big lesson and something Trump is excellent at: His non-stop BS (annex Greenland, rename the Gulf, take over Canada) keeps media busy and many of his voters from realizing that the whole platform is neither self-consistent (see H1B) nor in the voters interest. It is a really bitter lesson though, because after seeing how "effective messaging" looks like in our current media landscape, I'm absolutely certain that I don't want more of that not even from parties that would perfectly represent my interests :(
- aa-jv 2y ago
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  - 9dev 2y ago
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    - maeln 2y ago
      Eh. Pretty much everyone called what happened in Gaza an attempt at genocide, including many Israeli scholar. The wiki page [1] list some source from the U.N, various NGO, ... Amos Goldberg ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Goldberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Goldberg ) called it a genocide, and the ICC launched an investigation (ofc, blocked by Israel). Is Hamas a terrorist group ? Yeah, by many definitions. But if you accept this, you also cannot not see how what Israel did in Gaza, and has been doing for years with Palestinian, is not genocide: Force displacement of vast amount of population, regularly blockading humanitarian aid, mass destruction of civilian infrastructure, mass imprisonment, often with little to no representation, mass killing of civilian (it is estimated, by many source, that roughly 45000 Palestinian died, of which at least ~80% where civilian) ... This is the textbook definition of genocide. If you accept the Shoah, the Armenian genocide, the genocide of the tutsis, ... You cannot logically not see this as a Palestinian genocide. As for the U.S involvement, that's honestly not for me to say. I am not a us citizen. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_genocide_accusation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_genocide_accusatio...
      - Ste_Tokyo 2y ago
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        maeln 2y ago
        > The Arabs of the Western half of the Palestinian mandate refused to accept a state in 1948 A state that was imposed on them. And which state are you even talking about ? If it is the U.N proposition for the partition of Palestine, Israel also never accepted it and disregarded it entirely. > That is not genocide. Mass displacement of a population, destroying their civil infrastructure, kill civilian on mass is the definition of genocide. > Hamas’s constitution explicitly calls for the killing of all Jews in Israel. And that is why Hamas is a terrorist organization. > Congratulations on siding with the genocidal maniacs, Jew haters, and murderers. Hamas thanks you. I never sided with Hamas. You are just spouting hatred. A sad continuation of this conflict.
- xienze 2y ago
  > but Trump got a majority because eggs are too expensive. You guys need to stop being so disingenuous (and get some new material). EVERYTHING got a lot more expensive under the previous administration. Whether it’s Biden’s fault or not is irrelevant. A poor economy motivates people to vote for the other party, ESPECIALLY when the average person felt they had better economic prospects when “the other team” was in power (again, whether that was Trump’s doing or not is irrelevant).
  - kuschku 2y ago
    (Note: I'm not an american) > Whether it’s Biden’s fault or not is irrelevant > again, whether that was Trump’s doing or not is irrelevant For democracy to work, you need voters with a good enough civics education to understand how the different parts of government interact, and a trustworthy media providing factual news so voters can understand the dilemmas their politicians are facing. If what you're saying is right, and American voters are unable or unwilling to understand how their vote and current events combine to cause certain outcomes, doesn't that mean democracy in the US cannot possibly work? What you're describing sounds closer to a popularity contest or a sports competition than politics. ________________________ Personally, I believe a major part of this issue is caused by the political system and media landscape of the US. In a two-party system as in the US, the legislative only represents half the population (as bipartisan efforts are rare), leading to resentment among the other half. In a mixed-member proportional system[1], as in Germany, New Zealand and many Scandinavian countries, you end up with many more different parties in parliament (Germany currently has 8 [2]). For any law to pass, you need multiple parties to work together, which allows more voters to be represented. Similarly, while in Germany newspapers and public broadcasters still provide high-quality news (less than 20% of the population distrust the public broadcasters and major newspapers as of June 2024 [3]), in the US the media tried to improve their ratings by replacing factual reporting and analysis with ever more emotional content. The level of polarization in the US as it is today will lead to a new civil war, or worse, if it continues. How can a democracy continue if the majority of voters cannot even agree on basic facts? ________________________ The perfect example for this is the discussion around the re-categorization of Pluto. Which has no real-world impact on anyone, yet everyone had an immutable opinion on. The arguments for categorizing Pluto as a dwarf planet were relatively simple: We've found many other objects like Pluto. They're more similar to one another than to the other planets. Some of them are larger and heavier than Pluto. Either our solar system has 17 planets, or it has 8. But the arguments against re-categorizing Pluto were of a very different nature. People had spent a lot of effort memorizing the planets in school, and didn't want all that effort to be wasted. People were emotionally attached to the way things had been. People preferred the emotional comfort of something that wasn't real, over the inconvenient truth. One argument is based on logic and scientific fact, the other on emotional attachment to a middle-school understanding of the world. The Enlightenment once replaced the emotional, religious order of the world with scientific fact and logic. This is the basis the US and modern democracies are based upon. How did we end up in a situation where half of the political spectrum wants to tear down the very foundation of democracy and replace it with emotion, religion and tradition, medieval concepts we had long left behind? ________________________ 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0I-sdoSXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0I-sdoSXU 2. https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/en/bundestagswahlen/2021/ergebnisse/bund-99.html https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/en/bundestagswahlen/2021/e... 3. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2024/germany#datawrapper-chart-CCHeA https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-repo...
trymas 2y ago
Reminds me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr5sTGxMUdo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr5sTGxMUdo Some people won’t change their mind even with contradicting evidence is shoved in their face.
Waterluvian 2y ago
> there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work. I have absolutely no evidence to support this (but I would welcome any for or against it), but I have a loose theory that there is pretty much always a subset of people who are physiologically predisposed to be driven by a fear response more than the average person, and over time they congregate, possibly as a safety mechanism.
- soco 2y ago
  And with the social media of today, they also got a performant platform for wider and broader congregation, with the effects that we see.
- pushcx 2y ago
  This is pretty much the premise of Bob Altemeyer's work: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Altemeyer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Altemeyer His book The Authoritarians is the one that most elaborates on it, so works that cite or respond to it would probably be exactly what you're looking for.
  - Waterluvian 2y ago
    Thank you! This really helps to have an initial breadcrumb into the idea. I can scrutinize it further.
te_chris 2y ago
https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/ https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/
yodsanklai 2y ago
> at this point i just want to call it "stupidity". not even a left vs right thing. there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work. Yet extremists always want to dismantle education to control the population. For instance, in the US, Trump got the votes from the uneducated. He has no interest in an educated country.
thrance 2y ago
I don't believe in this "natural stupidity" theory, many well-educated people voted red. Fascism is not a natural state of mind, it is carefully and relentlessly cultivated over years by a giant propaganda machine, at the hands of the capital class who stands to benefit the most from the current situation. This is no coincidence that Trump's cabinet is the most billionaire-friendly ever. Total deregulation of businesses is the point, fascism is the mean. Eventually, fascism becomes the point and even billionaires become losers. I don't think we're quite there yet, but close.
- deleted 2y ago
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- MrVandemar 2y ago
  > many well-educated people voted red I think, then, there's a difference between "well-educated" and "intelligent" or even "critical thinker". I would go on to argue that most "well-educated" people are perhaps well-educated in generalities only, other than perhaps a narrow special-interest field.
rsynnott 2y ago
> there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work I'm sceptical of that. I tend to suspect that Michael Gove's "the people have had enough of experts" thing was _kind_ of correct; there's a deep strain of anti-expert feeling throughout, at least, the West at the moment. (I don't think this is quite the same as traditional anti-intellectualism; it seems to be almost an active view that it is better that people in authority do not know how to do their job.)
- psychoslave 2y ago
  Expertise can be of great value, but no-one is an expert on every matter and the rest. And expertise don’t make anyone free of committing errors, or to be drawn in a corruption schemes. We can have a thorough and deep expertise on some technical domain, and yet lake the sagacity and humility to judge where it won’t put us in better position than someone else dealing with an issue on the topic in a context the other person is already deeply acquainted with, while we are completely unaware of its many specificity. On the other hand of course someone tightly coupled with a particular situation might easily miss some bigger picture that a relevant expertise could unlock.
- MrVandemar 2y ago
  >there's a deep strain of anti-expert feeling throughout Probably because the experts are telling them that if they want a future, everyone is going to have to compromise their current lifestyle. Not a popular message. People will always be sceptical and hostile towards people who say "you can't have X". People are always happy to believe people who say "Vote for me and you have as much X as you want!"
  - kuschku 2y ago
    Tbh, the Matrix wasn't far off with the portrayal of Cypher. They just didn't expect half of the population to prefer the comfortable lie over the inconvenient truth.
  - jajko 2y ago
    > "you can't have X" More like 'you can't have X anymore' or 'only rich can have X' that brings another level of resentment and emotional kneejerk reactions. The problem is, if 'less smart' need to be baby-sitted through every single unpopular but necessary decision, this is a failure of democracy. Sure normal democracy self-corrects over time, but not when its pushed into some form of dictatorship where the only correction mechanism is death of those in power. That's why all researchers into immortality should be all locked up permanently in prison or to be sure shot in the head right now, however terrible and drastic it sounds. The tyranny that this will bring on mankind will make any absolutely terrible period from the past look like a paradise, and have 0 doubts all dictators ever would gladly scorch whole Earth just to achieve it.
mmustapic 2y ago
I think you are terribly mistaken and, if I may, you are the one who seems to refuse to be educated (I don't say this as an insult). It is very easy to say "they are brutes" instead of looking at what exactly is going on and why democrats lost the elections. As a non-US, I see very little difference between democrats and republicans, except maybe Trump. Democrats are the typical neoliberals: free markets, global capitalism, corporate rule, worldwide patents, etc. There is the famous chart that shows that since around the 80s the productivity went up while wages stagnate. Workers in the US right now are not in a much better position than 20 years ago. Did the democrats campaign for improvements, raising the wages, improving healthcare, education? No, it was business as usual, "please don't vote Trump so we can keep things like now". Thus, many people said "fine, I'll vote for the other, he says things will be like before, literally". So it's the Democratic Party who has baked into its DNA that things should not change, no matter what. I would say they could've won easily with some concessions, but those concessions go against their core beliefs. Unfortunately, and because of this, Trump, a liar and conman, won. If they wanted to win they should've lied better, like Trump did.
- ookblah 2y ago
  yeah i concede i don't know everything, but honestly if you're not from or living in the US i would also re-examine your view of things. you have a different objective view but miss a lot of the context. it's easy to intellectualize the whole situation and come up with these solutions. this kind of reasoning is what i've gone through already trying to make excuses for people and it sounds nice on paper but it doesn't hold. i'll tell you from personal experience there exists huge swaths of people in my community that voted for trump not because of any of his policies or a feeling that dems didn't bring change, but because they worship him like a religious figure. or they demonize anything that isn't conservative and treat it like team sports. it really doesn't seem to be much more complicated than that for some people no matter what angle you try to come in with (lack of education, not tending to their needs, etc.)
  - mmustapic 2y ago
    This idolisation can also happen for the left (not democrats, I mean real left), but I think it's the minority. Unfortunately, people choose something new and potentially bad vs the same as usual. Not because of education, but because of limited choices.
noisy_boy 2y ago
> social media and tech just made this 10x more effective. Social media took away the hesitation of crowing about stupid things. If many people are saying it, maybe I am not stupid after all. The legitimisation and amplification of dumbness is a big contributor to the current state. Among other things of course.
- jajko 2y ago
  When there started to be money made, and even better real power to be gained by herding such crowds then its not anymore just about self-organization over time, the push becomes very proactive
- acadapter 2y ago
  Social media no longer represents "many people are saying it". The early internet could give an overview of what's being said in general on a particular topic - but today's content is often manipulated to support or attack a particular viewpoint.
  - antisthenes 2y ago
    You don't need to explain with malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity. In fact that's one of the roads to fascism - constantly looking for "manipulators" everywhere and other witch hunt types. The longer I live the more I am convinced that the average person has next to 0 ability for critical thinking. They just sort of stumble between local maximas until they end up wherever they are.
    - red-iron-pine 2y ago
      > In fact that's one of the roads to fascism - constantly looking for "manipulators" everywhere and other witch hunt types. Bollocks. Studies suggest as much as 35% of social media posts are fake, and as high as 40% on some forums. This isn't Fascism or paranoia, this is just how large tech companies make money. Like, if you don't understand how AI and scripting align with marketing and propaganda goals then you're gonna get played like a rube every time. The problem is that "marketing works even when you understand how marketing works", and that it is very hard to maintain constant vigilance.
psychoslave 2y ago
>there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work. That’s not what the pointed text is about though. It specifically mention the concern is about those that should be considered of higher education in the context, as opposed for example to a baker¹. ¹ This is the example given in text, not some condescendence of bakers from my part here.
wewxjfq 2y ago
I can only recommend Dietrich Bonhoeffer's essay "Von der Dummheit" (On Stupidity), which he wrote while being imprisoned by Nazi Germany. It's a short read and a terribly accurate description of what's happening.
bsenftner 2y ago
It's the combination of a desire for student obedience and the intellectual damaging power of religion. Far too often a young student is told their youthful and essentially unsocialized behavior is sinful, including their own thoughts, and that coupled with an Orwellian level of obedience socialization with religion and you create crippled intellects that are afraid of their own thoughts and are perfectly obedient church members and employees. They are minions in the most literal sense and the United States is filled with them, obedient and terribly dangerous.
jvanderbot 2y ago
This is a beautiful book. In particular this excerpt is frustrating though. As said directly in the text, it's hard to see the beginnings. Yes, many things are changing right now, but to be fair, if you went to any random trump supporter and showed them this text they would immediately recognize it and tell you all the things the prior admins have done that matches these "sudden" decisions "made in secret" that nobody should disagree with. It discusses tactics, which are easy to recognize in expansion of power, but also in illiberal thinking anywhere, but I don't see in this excerpt (or remember in the original book) discussion of root causes. One thing that really stuck with me though was that many of the interviewees were quite happy with what the party had done for the country, on an individual level. This was rebuilding, providing party benefits, etc. And many joined up because they had to to advance socially or in their career. Again, things that become a Rorschach blot even in hindsight because, I guess, they are always using these tactics to push their agenda over ours until it spirals out of control, regardless of who "we" / "they" are.
- anarchonurzox 2y ago
  I read this book years ago and it had a huge impact on my thought. I agree with your statements here, and I've been trying to figure out how to have some of these conversations with my Trump-supporter friends. "He's planning to put migrants in Gitmo." But Gitmo has already existed through red and blue administrations. It's not like it's a brand new concentration camp. "Look at the laundry list of executive orders." But Biden did a bunch of EOs early on too. Both sides have done tariffs. Anwar al-Awlaki was an American citizen killed in a drone strike under Obama. The Patriot Act and the 100 Mile Border Zone undermined the Fourth Amendment years ago. We've permitted corruption and insider trading for congresspeople for years. The fact is, we've had bipartisan "fascism" creeping up on us for decades. I don't even know where to start with root causes, and everything is so damn historically muddy that it's hard to persuade someone who genuinely believes that "Trump & Elon just want less government spending" that they're not using their exceptional powers for good.
concordDance 2y ago
> it's baked into our DNA i suppose. In the unlikely event it genuinely was then this would be solveable with subsidized genetic engineering for the masses. I also think there's a lot to improve in education. While making everyone a rationalist is unrealistic, most of the ideas such as sampling bias and messy word meanings can be taught to almost all.
throw0101b 2y ago
> at this point i just want to call it "stupidity". At this point people are celebrating cruelty: > We can hear the spectacle of cruel laughter throughout the Trump era. There were the border patrol agents cracking up at the crying immigrant children separated[1] from their families, and the Trump adviser who delighted white supremacists[2] when he mocked a child with down syndrome[3] who was separated from her mother. There were the police who laughed uproariously when the president encouraged them to abuse[4] suspects, and the Fox News hosts mocking a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub massacre[5] (and in the process inundating him with threats), the survivors of sexual assault protesting Senator Jeff Flake,[6] the women who said the president sexually assaulted them,[7] and the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting.[8] There was the president mocking Puerto Rican accents[9] shortly after thousands were killed and tens of thousands displaced by Hurricane Maria, the black athletes protesting unjustified killings by police, the women of the #MeToo movement[10] who have come forward with stories of sexual abuse, and the disabled reporter whose crime was reporting on Trump truthfully. It is not just that they enjoy this cruelty, it is that they enjoy it with each other. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to each other, and to Trump. […] > This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only the president and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process. * https://archive.is/ex0TP https://archive.is/ex0TP * https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/ https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive... * https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/665171/the-cruelty-is-the-point-by-adam-serwer/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/665171/the-cruelty-... People voted for Trump (the first time) because he promised The Others pain, but when you get /r/LeopardsAteMyFace moments: > “I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.” * https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/us/florida-government-shutdown-marianna.html https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/us/flo...
rixed 2y ago
Stupidity is when one fails to genuinely see things from some other perspective than their own. It is not that hard to do, and does not prevent from taking a side eventually, but it helps one to realize that the distance to someone else taking a radially oposite approach is usualy not that large. Unfortunately, this kind of mind gymnastic is rarely encouraged because it goes against the creation of stronger social circles I guess. So, all that to say: don't give up. Cynicism is like a drug that feels right at the begining but that will damage a brain eventually.
JeremyNT 2y ago
> it's how you have populations repeatedly making the same damn mistakes century after century just in a different form. it's baked into our DNA i suppose. I think this is probably correct. It's inevitable. It's who we are - we (some percentage of?) humans simply want to hurt each other. Nobody in the history of humanity has had it as good (by any material metric) as Americans living in 2025, yet here we go again.
scoofy 2y ago
This sentiment is exactly what David Lynch explores over, and over, and over: Why are some people willing to be so evil. I think we tell ourselves it’s environment or inequity or education… but the older I get, the more I think there is a kind of lack of conscientiousness that most people have, and that they are decent folks is only that they have something to lose. Unless a theory can explain the prevalence of litter, which should effectively never happen based on most criteria, than that theory of why bad things happen is insufficient.
- noduerme 2y ago
  There is a theory, and it's called sadistic child abuse. Maybe optimistically only 20% of people who had wicked and abusive parents grow up to take that sadism out on others. But they have a draw on their peers, as sociopaths, enticing them to indulge in or excuse sadistic acts. And of course they perpetuate it through violence on their own children. Once they reach a critical mass in a society, you have Russia. If they do it but they're not quite aware of it, and think they're teaching children a lesson, then you have Germany. And if they do it because they're saving their children's souls, you have red state America. Of course, it's abuse, a psychotic perversion dressed up as a social norm. But the point is it's contagious.

elif 2y ago

Once you see how stupid and useful this group is, it's hard to unsee the deliberate attempts to make this group larger and dumber.

elif 2y ago
Thought I should expand to explain the group gets larger as the economy suffers and people are too poor busy and hopeless for anything other than a hopeful narrative. And the group gets dumber when skipping school is glorified, education gets funding cuts, and people mass consume media.

labster 2y ago

Nah, cynicism is the only rational reaction now. Lots of people died from covid and our poor government response, but Trump got a majority because eggs are too expensive.

myrmidon 2y ago
> Trump got a majority because eggs are too expensive. I think this trivializes the outcome in a dangerous way. From my view as an outside observer, these were all big factors: - Bad handling of the candidate selection for the democrats (switching to Harris too late) - Having an impossible platform for a lot of single issue voters (mainly: people that want immigration reduced, but also firearm availability) - Thoroughly uninspiring middle-east policy (not a personal opinion, but I think that cost a bunch of votes that would have been democrat) Personally, I also think that some sexism was also a significant factor and that Harris would've had an easier time had she been male. I also believe that the media smear campaign depicting Biden as completely senile was really effective (and a bit ridiculous considering the age of his replacement). Another very effective strategy in riling up their base was the "democrats want to transgenderize all the children" (exaggerated). If the democrats main takeaway is that they just need to campaign for lower egg prices next election they might well lose again IMO.
- pjc50 2y ago
  > I also believe that the media smear campaign depicting Biden as completely senile was really effective (and a bit ridiculous considering the age of his replacement). Another very effective strategy in riling up their base was the "democrats want to transgenderize all the children" (exaggerated). I'm not sure what they could actually do about these; if the media (or their owners) want to lean heavily on the scale, this is always going to be a problem. We see the same thing in the UK. You can't fight a thing that people have made up in their heads with facts. (I note that there is a platform split on H1-B between Trump and Musk, but that doesn't seem to have been a problem for them) > Bad handling of the candidate selection for the democrats (switching to Harris too late) Many of the democrats are simply too old. Nancy Pelosi, world's greatest stock trader, is 84. Feinstein died in office at 90. There's an entire missing generation, the party should be averaging 50-65. People are supporting them because there's no alternative, which is .. not durable.
  - myrmidon 2y ago
    > if the media (or their owners) want to lean heavily on the scale, this is always going to be a problem 100% agree. But I think you don't even need heavy bias on media ownership to get the whole political landscape distorted; I think the whole attention/outrage-driven ad-economy systematically pushes all reporting on both sides toward the fringes, and this is inherently more helpful for the right side of the political spectrum. > Nancy Pelosi, world's greatest stock trader, is 84 Is this tongue-in-cheek? Because IMO the whole insider-trading exemptions for congress are deeply unethical (and unlikely to get fixed). To be fair, though, it barely even registers on the scale compared to the whole "You get to design and lead a government agency after donating 250M$ to my campaign"-thing... Whole situation just feels a bit like the gilded age is making a comeback right now, just strictly worse :/ > I note that there is a platform split on H1-B between Trump and Musk, but that doesn't seem to have been a problem for them I think this is a really big lesson and something Trump is excellent at: His non-stop BS (annex Greenland, rename the Gulf, take over Canada) keeps media busy and many of his voters from realizing that the whole platform is neither self-consistent (see H1B) nor in the voters interest. It is a really bitter lesson though, because after seeing how "effective messaging" looks like in our current media landscape, I'm absolutely certain that I don't want more of that not even from parties that would perfectly represent my interests :(
aa-jv 2y ago
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- 9dev 2y ago
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  - maeln 2y ago
    Eh. Pretty much everyone called what happened in Gaza an attempt at genocide, including many Israeli scholar. The wiki page [1] list some source from the U.N, various NGO, ... Amos Goldberg ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Goldberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Goldberg ) called it a genocide, and the ICC launched an investigation (ofc, blocked by Israel). Is Hamas a terrorist group ? Yeah, by many definitions. But if you accept this, you also cannot not see how what Israel did in Gaza, and has been doing for years with Palestinian, is not genocide: Force displacement of vast amount of population, regularly blockading humanitarian aid, mass destruction of civilian infrastructure, mass imprisonment, often with little to no representation, mass killing of civilian (it is estimated, by many source, that roughly 45000 Palestinian died, of which at least ~80% where civilian) ... This is the textbook definition of genocide. If you accept the Shoah, the Armenian genocide, the genocide of the tutsis, ... You cannot logically not see this as a Palestinian genocide. As for the U.S involvement, that's honestly not for me to say. I am not a us citizen. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_genocide_accusation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_genocide_accusatio...
    - Ste_Tokyo 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - maeln 2y ago
        > The Arabs of the Western half of the Palestinian mandate refused to accept a state in 1948 A state that was imposed on them. And which state are you even talking about ? If it is the U.N proposition for the partition of Palestine, Israel also never accepted it and disregarded it entirely. > That is not genocide. Mass displacement of a population, destroying their civil infrastructure, kill civilian on mass is the definition of genocide. > Hamas’s constitution explicitly calls for the killing of all Jews in Israel. And that is why Hamas is a terrorist organization. > Congratulations on siding with the genocidal maniacs, Jew haters, and murderers. Hamas thanks you. I never sided with Hamas. You are just spouting hatred. A sad continuation of this conflict.
xienze 2y ago
> but Trump got a majority because eggs are too expensive. You guys need to stop being so disingenuous (and get some new material). EVERYTHING got a lot more expensive under the previous administration. Whether it’s Biden’s fault or not is irrelevant. A poor economy motivates people to vote for the other party, ESPECIALLY when the average person felt they had better economic prospects when “the other team” was in power (again, whether that was Trump’s doing or not is irrelevant).
- kuschku 2y ago
  (Note: I'm not an american) > Whether it’s Biden’s fault or not is irrelevant > again, whether that was Trump’s doing or not is irrelevant For democracy to work, you need voters with a good enough civics education to understand how the different parts of government interact, and a trustworthy media providing factual news so voters can understand the dilemmas their politicians are facing. If what you're saying is right, and American voters are unable or unwilling to understand how their vote and current events combine to cause certain outcomes, doesn't that mean democracy in the US cannot possibly work? What you're describing sounds closer to a popularity contest or a sports competition than politics. ________________________ Personally, I believe a major part of this issue is caused by the political system and media landscape of the US. In a two-party system as in the US, the legislative only represents half the population (as bipartisan efforts are rare), leading to resentment among the other half. In a mixed-member proportional system[1], as in Germany, New Zealand and many Scandinavian countries, you end up with many more different parties in parliament (Germany currently has 8 [2]). For any law to pass, you need multiple parties to work together, which allows more voters to be represented. Similarly, while in Germany newspapers and public broadcasters still provide high-quality news (less than 20% of the population distrust the public broadcasters and major newspapers as of June 2024 [3]), in the US the media tried to improve their ratings by replacing factual reporting and analysis with ever more emotional content. The level of polarization in the US as it is today will lead to a new civil war, or worse, if it continues. How can a democracy continue if the majority of voters cannot even agree on basic facts? ________________________ The perfect example for this is the discussion around the re-categorization of Pluto. Which has no real-world impact on anyone, yet everyone had an immutable opinion on. The arguments for categorizing Pluto as a dwarf planet were relatively simple: We've found many other objects like Pluto. They're more similar to one another than to the other planets. Some of them are larger and heavier than Pluto. Either our solar system has 17 planets, or it has 8. But the arguments against re-categorizing Pluto were of a very different nature. People had spent a lot of effort memorizing the planets in school, and didn't want all that effort to be wasted. People were emotionally attached to the way things had been. People preferred the emotional comfort of something that wasn't real, over the inconvenient truth. One argument is based on logic and scientific fact, the other on emotional attachment to a middle-school understanding of the world. The Enlightenment once replaced the emotional, religious order of the world with scientific fact and logic. This is the basis the US and modern democracies are based upon. How did we end up in a situation where half of the political spectrum wants to tear down the very foundation of democracy and replace it with emotion, religion and tradition, medieval concepts we had long left behind? ________________________ 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0I-sdoSXU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT0I-sdoSXU 2. https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/en/bundestagswahlen/2021/ergebnisse/bund-99.html https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/en/bundestagswahlen/2021/e... 3. https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-report/2024/germany#datawrapper-chart-CCHeA https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news-repo...

trymas 2y ago

Reminds me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr5sTGxMUdo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr5sTGxMUdo Some people won’t change their mind even with contradicting evidence is shoved in their face.

Waterluvian 2y ago

> there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work. I have absolutely no evidence to support this (but I would welcome any for or against it), but I have a loose theory that there is pretty much always a subset of people who are physiologically predisposed to be driven by a fear response more than the average person, and over time they congregate, possibly as a safety mechanism.

soco 2y ago
And with the social media of today, they also got a performant platform for wider and broader congregation, with the effects that we see.
pushcx 2y ago
This is pretty much the premise of Bob Altemeyer's work: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Altemeyer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Altemeyer His book The Authoritarians is the one that most elaborates on it, so works that cite or respond to it would probably be exactly what you're looking for.
- Waterluvian 2y ago
  Thank you! This really helps to have an initial breadcrumb into the idea. I can scrutinize it further.

te_chris 2y ago

https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/ https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/

yodsanklai 2y ago

> at this point i just want to call it "stupidity". not even a left vs right thing. there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work. Yet extremists always want to dismantle education to control the population. For instance, in the US, Trump got the votes from the uneducated. He has no interest in an educated country.

thrance 2y ago

I don't believe in this "natural stupidity" theory, many well-educated people voted red. Fascism is not a natural state of mind, it is carefully and relentlessly cultivated over years by a giant propaganda machine, at the hands of the capital class who stands to benefit the most from the current situation. This is no coincidence that Trump's cabinet is the most billionaire-friendly ever. Total deregulation of businesses is the point, fascism is the mean. Eventually, fascism becomes the point and even billionaires become losers. I don't think we're quite there yet, but close.

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MrVandemar 2y ago
> many well-educated people voted red I think, then, there's a difference between "well-educated" and "intelligent" or even "critical thinker". I would go on to argue that most "well-educated" people are perhaps well-educated in generalities only, other than perhaps a narrow special-interest field.

rsynnott 2y ago

> there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work I'm sceptical of that. I tend to suspect that Michael Gove's "the people have had enough of experts" thing was _kind_ of correct; there's a deep strain of anti-expert feeling throughout, at least, the West at the moment. (I don't think this is quite the same as traditional anti-intellectualism; it seems to be almost an active view that it is better that people in authority do not know how to do their job.)

psychoslave 2y ago
Expertise can be of great value, but no-one is an expert on every matter and the rest. And expertise don’t make anyone free of committing errors, or to be drawn in a corruption schemes. We can have a thorough and deep expertise on some technical domain, and yet lake the sagacity and humility to judge where it won’t put us in better position than someone else dealing with an issue on the topic in a context the other person is already deeply acquainted with, while we are completely unaware of its many specificity. On the other hand of course someone tightly coupled with a particular situation might easily miss some bigger picture that a relevant expertise could unlock.
MrVandemar 2y ago
>there's a deep strain of anti-expert feeling throughout Probably because the experts are telling them that if they want a future, everyone is going to have to compromise their current lifestyle. Not a popular message. People will always be sceptical and hostile towards people who say "you can't have X". People are always happy to believe people who say "Vote for me and you have as much X as you want!"
- kuschku 2y ago
  Tbh, the Matrix wasn't far off with the portrayal of Cypher. They just didn't expect half of the population to prefer the comfortable lie over the inconvenient truth.
- jajko 2y ago
  > "you can't have X" More like 'you can't have X anymore' or 'only rich can have X' that brings another level of resentment and emotional kneejerk reactions. The problem is, if 'less smart' need to be baby-sitted through every single unpopular but necessary decision, this is a failure of democracy. Sure normal democracy self-corrects over time, but not when its pushed into some form of dictatorship where the only correction mechanism is death of those in power. That's why all researchers into immortality should be all locked up permanently in prison or to be sure shot in the head right now, however terrible and drastic it sounds. The tyranny that this will bring on mankind will make any absolutely terrible period from the past look like a paradise, and have 0 doubts all dictators ever would gladly scorch whole Earth just to achieve it.

mmustapic 2y ago

I think you are terribly mistaken and, if I may, you are the one who seems to refuse to be educated (I don't say this as an insult). It is very easy to say "they are brutes" instead of looking at what exactly is going on and why democrats lost the elections. As a non-US, I see very little difference between democrats and republicans, except maybe Trump. Democrats are the typical neoliberals: free markets, global capitalism, corporate rule, worldwide patents, etc. There is the famous chart that shows that since around the 80s the productivity went up while wages stagnate. Workers in the US right now are not in a much better position than 20 years ago. Did the democrats campaign for improvements, raising the wages, improving healthcare, education? No, it was business as usual, "please don't vote Trump so we can keep things like now". Thus, many people said "fine, I'll vote for the other, he says things will be like before, literally". So it's the Democratic Party who has baked into its DNA that things should not change, no matter what. I would say they could've won easily with some concessions, but those concessions go against their core beliefs. Unfortunately, and because of this, Trump, a liar and conman, won. If they wanted to win they should've lied better, like Trump did.

ookblah 2y ago
yeah i concede i don't know everything, but honestly if you're not from or living in the US i would also re-examine your view of things. you have a different objective view but miss a lot of the context. it's easy to intellectualize the whole situation and come up with these solutions. this kind of reasoning is what i've gone through already trying to make excuses for people and it sounds nice on paper but it doesn't hold. i'll tell you from personal experience there exists huge swaths of people in my community that voted for trump not because of any of his policies or a feeling that dems didn't bring change, but because they worship him like a religious figure. or they demonize anything that isn't conservative and treat it like team sports. it really doesn't seem to be much more complicated than that for some people no matter what angle you try to come in with (lack of education, not tending to their needs, etc.)
- mmustapic 2y ago
  This idolisation can also happen for the left (not democrats, I mean real left), but I think it's the minority. Unfortunately, people choose something new and potentially bad vs the same as usual. Not because of education, but because of limited choices.

noisy_boy 2y ago

> social media and tech just made this 10x more effective. Social media took away the hesitation of crowing about stupid things. If many people are saying it, maybe I am not stupid after all. The legitimisation and amplification of dumbness is a big contributor to the current state. Among other things of course.

jajko 2y ago
When there started to be money made, and even better real power to be gained by herding such crowds then its not anymore just about self-organization over time, the push becomes very proactive
acadapter 2y ago
Social media no longer represents "many people are saying it". The early internet could give an overview of what's being said in general on a particular topic - but today's content is often manipulated to support or attack a particular viewpoint.
- antisthenes 2y ago
  You don't need to explain with malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity. In fact that's one of the roads to fascism - constantly looking for "manipulators" everywhere and other witch hunt types. The longer I live the more I am convinced that the average person has next to 0 ability for critical thinking. They just sort of stumble between local maximas until they end up wherever they are.
  - red-iron-pine 2y ago
    > In fact that's one of the roads to fascism - constantly looking for "manipulators" everywhere and other witch hunt types. Bollocks. Studies suggest as much as 35% of social media posts are fake, and as high as 40% on some forums. This isn't Fascism or paranoia, this is just how large tech companies make money. Like, if you don't understand how AI and scripting align with marketing and propaganda goals then you're gonna get played like a rube every time. The problem is that "marketing works even when you understand how marketing works", and that it is very hard to maintain constant vigilance.

psychoslave 2y ago

>there exists a subset of the population that cannot and will not be educated or have the ability to reason on a certain level to make things work. That’s not what the pointed text is about though. It specifically mention the concern is about those that should be considered of higher education in the context, as opposed for example to a baker¹. ¹ This is the example given in text, not some condescendence of bakers from my part here.

wewxjfq 2y ago

I can only recommend Dietrich Bonhoeffer's essay "Von der Dummheit" (On Stupidity), which he wrote while being imprisoned by Nazi Germany. It's a short read and a terribly accurate description of what's happening.

bsenftner 2y ago

It's the combination of a desire for student obedience and the intellectual damaging power of religion. Far too often a young student is told their youthful and essentially unsocialized behavior is sinful, including their own thoughts, and that coupled with an Orwellian level of obedience socialization with religion and you create crippled intellects that are afraid of their own thoughts and are perfectly obedient church members and employees. They are minions in the most literal sense and the United States is filled with them, obedient and terribly dangerous.

jvanderbot 2y ago

This is a beautiful book. In particular this excerpt is frustrating though. As said directly in the text, it's hard to see the beginnings. Yes, many things are changing right now, but to be fair, if you went to any random trump supporter and showed them this text they would immediately recognize it and tell you all the things the prior admins have done that matches these "sudden" decisions "made in secret" that nobody should disagree with. It discusses tactics, which are easy to recognize in expansion of power, but also in illiberal thinking anywhere, but I don't see in this excerpt (or remember in the original book) discussion of root causes. One thing that really stuck with me though was that many of the interviewees were quite happy with what the party had done for the country, on an individual level. This was rebuilding, providing party benefits, etc. And many joined up because they had to to advance socially or in their career. Again, things that become a Rorschach blot even in hindsight because, I guess, they are always using these tactics to push their agenda over ours until it spirals out of control, regardless of who "we" / "they" are.

anarchonurzox 2y ago
I read this book years ago and it had a huge impact on my thought. I agree with your statements here, and I've been trying to figure out how to have some of these conversations with my Trump-supporter friends. "He's planning to put migrants in Gitmo." But Gitmo has already existed through red and blue administrations. It's not like it's a brand new concentration camp. "Look at the laundry list of executive orders." But Biden did a bunch of EOs early on too. Both sides have done tariffs. Anwar al-Awlaki was an American citizen killed in a drone strike under Obama. The Patriot Act and the 100 Mile Border Zone undermined the Fourth Amendment years ago. We've permitted corruption and insider trading for congresspeople for years. The fact is, we've had bipartisan "fascism" creeping up on us for decades. I don't even know where to start with root causes, and everything is so damn historically muddy that it's hard to persuade someone who genuinely believes that "Trump & Elon just want less government spending" that they're not using their exceptional powers for good.

concordDance 2y ago

> it's baked into our DNA i suppose. In the unlikely event it genuinely was then this would be solveable with subsidized genetic engineering for the masses. I also think there's a lot to improve in education. While making everyone a rationalist is unrealistic, most of the ideas such as sampling bias and messy word meanings can be taught to almost all.

throw0101b 2y ago

> at this point i just want to call it "stupidity". At this point people are celebrating cruelty: > We can hear the spectacle of cruel laughter throughout the Trump era. There were the border patrol agents cracking up at the crying immigrant children separated[1] from their families, and the Trump adviser who delighted white supremacists[2] when he mocked a child with down syndrome[3] who was separated from her mother. There were the police who laughed uproariously when the president encouraged them to abuse[4] suspects, and the Fox News hosts mocking a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub massacre[5] (and in the process inundating him with threats), the survivors of sexual assault protesting Senator Jeff Flake,[6] the women who said the president sexually assaulted them,[7] and the teen survivors of the Parkland school shooting.[8] There was the president mocking Puerto Rican accents[9] shortly after thousands were killed and tens of thousands displaced by Hurricane Maria, the black athletes protesting unjustified killings by police, the women of the #MeToo movement[10] who have come forward with stories of sexual abuse, and the disabled reporter whose crime was reporting on Trump truthfully. It is not just that they enjoy this cruelty, it is that they enjoy it with each other. Their shared laughter at the suffering of others is an adhesive that binds them to each other, and to Trump. […] > This isn’t incoherent. It reflects a clear principle: Only the president and his allies, his supporters, and their anointed are entitled to the rights and protections of the law, and if necessary, immunity from it. The rest of us are entitled only to cruelty, by their whim. This is how the powerful have ever kept the powerless divided and in their place, and enriched themselves in the process. * https://archive.is/ex0TP https://archive.is/ex0TP * https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/ https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive... * https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/665171/the-cruelty-is-the-point-by-adam-serwer/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/665171/the-cruelty-... People voted for Trump (the first time) because he promised The Others pain, but when you get /r/LeopardsAteMyFace moments: > “I voted for him, and he’s the one who’s doing this,” she said of Mr. Trump. “I thought he was going to do good things. He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.” * https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/us/florida-government-shutdown-marianna.html https://archive.is/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/07/us/flo...

rixed 2y ago

Stupidity is when one fails to genuinely see things from some other perspective than their own. It is not that hard to do, and does not prevent from taking a side eventually, but it helps one to realize that the distance to someone else taking a radially oposite approach is usualy not that large. Unfortunately, this kind of mind gymnastic is rarely encouraged because it goes against the creation of stronger social circles I guess. So, all that to say: don't give up. Cynicism is like a drug that feels right at the begining but that will damage a brain eventually.

JeremyNT 2y ago

> it's how you have populations repeatedly making the same damn mistakes century after century just in a different form. it's baked into our DNA i suppose. I think this is probably correct. It's inevitable. It's who we are - we (some percentage of?) humans simply want to hurt each other. Nobody in the history of humanity has had it as good (by any material metric) as Americans living in 2025, yet here we go again.

scoofy 2y ago

This sentiment is exactly what David Lynch explores over, and over, and over: Why are some people willing to be so evil. I think we tell ourselves it’s environment or inequity or education… but the older I get, the more I think there is a kind of lack of conscientiousness that most people have, and that they are decent folks is only that they have something to lose. Unless a theory can explain the prevalence of litter, which should effectively never happen based on most criteria, than that theory of why bad things happen is insufficient.

noduerme 2y ago
There is a theory, and it's called sadistic child abuse. Maybe optimistically only 20% of people who had wicked and abusive parents grow up to take that sadism out on others. But they have a draw on their peers, as sociopaths, enticing them to indulge in or excuse sadistic acts. And of course they perpetuate it through violence on their own children. Once they reach a critical mass in a society, you have Russia. If they do it but they're not quite aware of it, and think they're teaching children a lesson, then you have Germany. And if they do it because they're saving their children's souls, you have red state America. Of course, it's abuse, a psychotic perversion dressed up as a social norm. But the point is it's contagious.