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My experience is that everyone who's not close to any of these impacts is apathetic or treating events like they're reality TV, and even light attempts at convi
by _cenw 1y ago
My experience is that everyone who's not close to any of these impacts is apathetic or treating events like they're reality TV, and even light attempts at convincing that there's more going on and that we might be in a historic and bad situation is met with hostility as if you just told someone's small kid that Santa isn't real.
At best they care about the financial parts of the news.
- i80and 1y agoPeople only caring about immediate financial impacts is so deeply disheartening
- bognition 1y agoWelcome to America where the only God is the greenback
- phkahler 1y agoI see that as a broad trend. Very very few people have guiding principles these days. The "problem" with principles is that living by them sometimes means going against something we want right now. People don't want to concede anything, even for their own ideals.
- ramesh31 1y ago>People don't want to concede anything, even for their own ideals. People cannot concede anything anymore. We are all trapped in survival mode at this point.
- lukan 1y agoIn true survival mode, you likely would not hang out around here.
- ramesh31 1y agoThe people who hang out here are the lucky 90th percentile of our society that are just barely able to tread water at this point. Everyone else is drowning. Try to imagine living on $60k, then think about the fact that that’s a good salary to a majority of US workers.
- ryandrake 1y agoIf everyone was truly drowning, there would be massive civil unrest. As usual, people in general seem to be finding a way.
- DrillShopper 1y agoPeople want to be able to eat, not be homeless, and provide for their families. The safety net in America is tattered and torn, with the current administration working to remove it.
- ericmcer 1y agoIt makes sense for our industry, a bad economy means vast layoffs and a terrible job market in tech. A tech worker who graduated and entered the market in 2012 could easily retire in their 40s with millions. One who graduated in 2022 is going to struggle to stay afloat and employed, and you are surprised people care about that?
- CalRobert 1y agoSome of us are scared shitless but have been called hysterical for years. Some of us emigrated.
- throwaway984393 1y ago[flagged]
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoIt might be wiser to emigrate if you cannot trust your fellow citizens and neighbours to care about your country becoming fascist. If you've got brown skin, then you'd be better off leaving on your own terms rather than being exported to a concentration camp in El Salvador.
- markbnj 1y agoLike using a throwaway account to accuse someone of cowardice.
- myvoiceismypass 1y agoAnd Congress is full of cowards afraid to offend their god-king.
- roenxi 1y ago[flagged]
- _cenw 1y ago
- pjmlp 1y agoWhen events aren't taken seriously, eventually "Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me" There is still time to react, in a year from now it will be like something like McCarthy, only worse.
- belorn 1y agoPolitics and media has for the last two decades been operated on generating engagement through outrage, and it seems that we have arrived at the peak of what that model was able to do, with a very sharp decline into apathy. More outrage will not convince people to care. Even the financial parts had very limited impact towards political engagement.
- ethbr1 1y agoA related change on the people's part has been decreased understanding of how to leverage their own political power. Congress-critters are concerned about losing reelection. (And of being primaried even in safe districts) Yet the minification of attention spans has confused the average American voter that they're impotent, when really they're just lazy, ignorant, and unwilling to muster real-world action. When's the last time you saw someone pepper a House district with self-made signs? There are things every single person can do, but just doesn't. And because of this, media has been able to turn political engagement into profitable passive consumption.
- ryandrake 1y ago> When's the last time you saw someone pepper a House district with self-made signs? Never, because it would be totally ineffective. Incumbents in Congress have about a 95% win rate[1]. For almost everywhere in the country, districts are what they are and no amount of hand drawn signs are going to change it. 1: https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2024:_Incumbent_win_rates_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2024:_Incumbent_wi...
- ethbr1 1y agoConsidering only ~50% of federal legislature primaries and ~16% of state legislature were contested [0], that 97% incumbent win rate looks less impressive. Primaries are the place to beat candidates in most districts. [0] https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_competitiveness_in_state_and_federal_government,_2024 https://ballotpedia.org/Primary_election_competitiveness_in_...
- 1y ago