5 ms·

People do not have justifications for most choices. We watch YouTube when we would benefit more from teaching ourselves skills. We eat too much of food we know

People do not have justifications for most choices. We watch YouTube when we would benefit more from teaching ourselves skills. We eat too much of food we know is junk. We stay up too late and either let others walk over us at work to avoid overt conflict or start fights and make enemies to protect our own emotions. If you want to know why Americans are allowing themselves to be gradually reduced to slavery, do not ask why.

soulofmischief 9mo ago
It's disingenuous to say Americans are "allowing" themselves to do anything in the face of countless, relentless, multi-billion corporate campaigns, designed by teams of educated individuals, to make them think and act in specific ways.
- iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
  This. As much as I would like to say 'individual responsibility' and all that, the sheer amount of information that is designed to make one follow a specific path, react in specific way or offer opinion X is crazy. I am not entirely certain what the solution is, but I am saying this as a person, who likes to think I am somewhat aware of attempts to subvert my judgment and I still catch myself learning ( usually later after the fact ) that I am not as immune as I would like to think.
  - LadyCailin 9mo ago
    Who is most responsible for stopping Trump from doing horrible shit? Besides of course, Trump himself. Surely that must be his base, yes? Then followed by Americans at large. It’s surely not, say, Canada’s responsibility, no? There’s a spectrum of responsibility, and you can find out who is at the top of that spectrum of those that think the thing is bad, and hold them at least morally responsible. In this case, yes, that is individuals.
    - TheOtherHobbes 9mo ago
      His base are the 0.01%. They could end this tomorrow by phoning their pet senators and having a quiet word. The people on the front lines - including the ICE thugs - are entirely disposable. They people using them have zero interest in their welfare or how this works out for them in the long term. (Spoilers - not well.) Of course they don't understand this. But this is absolutely standard for authoritarian fascism - groom and grudge farm the petty criminals and deviants, recruit them as regime enforcers with promises of money and freedom from consequences, set them loose, profit.
      - soulofmischief 9mo ago
        And propaganda is multi-generational; these people have been eating their own filth for decades and have no idea.
        mrguyorama 9mo ago
        30 million Americans on the low end believe the earth is only thousands of years old and specifically deny the existence of plate tectonics and continental drift That is a huge constituency that openly believes in falsehoods and has a premade conspiracy taught to their children that all scientists are in a satanic conspiracy to make you disbelieve god. Not even that scientists are wrong, but that they actively work, all over the world, every one of them, to lie to you. They produce an entire alternative media ecosystem, one where everything they consume is made out of trivial lies you must take as axioms, where scientists have no evidence and just say things (like a preacher), where scientists don't answer questions (or invite learning and experimentation!), where you are violently oppressed (and murdered) for being "Christian", and where only a specific version of the bible is allowed and the doctrine is that anyone is supposed to be able to understand the bible because god made it that way but for some reason people only listen to interpretations from their pastors. They aren't exactly voting for democrats. This constituency is the entire reason Republican administrations and platforms insist on "Parental authority" in education, a thing which should never and not at all be a part of public education, and which literally means they are upset that schools teach their kids that evolution is a well understood and documented and supported phenomenon that directly explains speciation, because their religious doctrine is so far off the norm that it has to reject an earth as old as we know it is, and instead relies on an age of the earth that was incorrectly calculated by a religious scholar making poor assumptions and adding up ages in the bible and was done before we had incontrovertible evidence against it. This constituency needs conspiracy theories because they need to somehow wave away the massive knowledge we gained from science in the time since their cults started. Of course, once you have convinced your 11 year old to internalize your conspiracy theory as ground truth or else be physically abused, it's trivial to then get them to believe any bullshit. They literally were not taught basic things like how to evaluate a source, or how to support an argument. Check out a fundamentalist Christian textbook sometime, or a knock off of a popular movie redone to make Christians the oppressed populace by making up things out of whole cloth. THIS is why the "war on christmas" is a thing. THIS is why they have to play victim and insist that allowing other people to abort pregnancies is somehow an affront to the individual practice of THEIR religion. THIS is why they insist the USA is a christian nation despite all the contrary evidence. They live in a fake reality.
- whatshisface 9mo ago
  It is not you who plants weeds in the garden but the wind, but the wind won't weed them back out again.
  - soulofmischief 9mo ago
    A valid perspective, and I agree that a democracy only works as long as its citizens remain civically engaged. Unfortunately, I think it's too late for the US in its current form, and it might not be long before we see it split up into smaller regions, unless something suddenly kicks Congress into gear and people break ranks to impeach and disparage the Trump administration.
    - steve-atx-7600 9mo ago
      I can’t understand republicans in congress. They’d rather be a powerful dung eater than a respectable ex-congressman. Jan 6th should have been the last straw.
    - trinsic2 9mo ago
      Its never too late, eventually things will turn and when that happens, you will be in either the right position, or the wrong position, depending on your actions.
      - soulofmischief 9mo ago
        That optimism doesn't readily apply to collapsing empires. If Congress doesn't get its shit in gear, the US is over. Our president is a hair away from sending military to arrest multiple governors of US states. Trust in this current government and Constitution are at an all-time low. It's increasingly likely that the US splits up into a few regional autonomous zones, but it's unknown just how insane of a civil war that could kick off. We are very close to the moment two different armed law enforcement groups end up in a skirmish, and that will kick things off.
        trinsic2 9mo ago
- dpc050505 9mo ago
  Don't forget murdering protesters.
- Barrin92 9mo ago
  >to make them think and act in specific ways. with the kind of images that are out in the open for everybody with their own eyes to see, if that does not move you in your heart of hearts, where no government or anyone else can touch you, there is something rotten in that person. Governments and authority figures can show you a lot of things but the amount of people who not just accept it, but gleefully celebrate the most vulnerable people in society beaten by government thugs, there is no excuse. People can show you false images, false numbers but they can't make you feel proud for the strong abusing the weak. It's particularly appalling if you see the amount of them who call themselves Christians.
  - soulofmischief 9mo ago
    The problem is that by the time some people encounter these shocking images and videos of mass human torture, their priors have already been developed to reject their eyes and ears in favor of what the people with whom they've entrusted their safety tell them. These people think Charlie Kirk was on the frontlines of personal freedom, but look the other way when a man gets tackled and shot in broad daylight for trying to help a woman who's just been maced. It's horrible, and inexcusable, but still crucial to understand through a framework that accounts for the effects of multi-generational propaganda peddled by the ultra-rich who have been shaping our thoughts and behaviors through advertisement and capital for hundreds of years.
    - iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
      << shot in broad daylight for trying to help a woman who's just been maced. Yes.. do I get to get between DEA and their intended target? No? If not, why not. If yes, why yes? The framing is silly. The death may be tragic and very much avoidable, but it was avoidable on both ends of this interaction. There is no comparison to Kirk here at all. He came to talk to people. Pretti went there as part of a signal group coordinating to obstruct a federal enforcement agency.. Ngl.. how people choose their heroes is beyond me.
      - soulofmischief 9mo ago

soulofmischief 9mo ago

It's disingenuous to say Americans are "allowing" themselves to do anything in the face of countless, relentless, multi-billion corporate campaigns, designed by teams of educated individuals, to make them think and act in specific ways.

iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
This. As much as I would like to say 'individual responsibility' and all that, the sheer amount of information that is designed to make one follow a specific path, react in specific way or offer opinion X is crazy. I am not entirely certain what the solution is, but I am saying this as a person, who likes to think I am somewhat aware of attempts to subvert my judgment and I still catch myself learning ( usually later after the fact ) that I am not as immune as I would like to think.
- LadyCailin 9mo ago
  Who is most responsible for stopping Trump from doing horrible shit? Besides of course, Trump himself. Surely that must be his base, yes? Then followed by Americans at large. It’s surely not, say, Canada’s responsibility, no? There’s a spectrum of responsibility, and you can find out who is at the top of that spectrum of those that think the thing is bad, and hold them at least morally responsible. In this case, yes, that is individuals.
  - TheOtherHobbes 9mo ago
    His base are the 0.01%. They could end this tomorrow by phoning their pet senators and having a quiet word. The people on the front lines - including the ICE thugs - are entirely disposable. They people using them have zero interest in their welfare or how this works out for them in the long term. (Spoilers - not well.) Of course they don't understand this. But this is absolutely standard for authoritarian fascism - groom and grudge farm the petty criminals and deviants, recruit them as regime enforcers with promises of money and freedom from consequences, set them loose, profit.
    - soulofmischief 9mo ago
      And propaganda is multi-generational; these people have been eating their own filth for decades and have no idea.
      - mrguyorama 9mo ago
        30 million Americans on the low end believe the earth is only thousands of years old and specifically deny the existence of plate tectonics and continental drift That is a huge constituency that openly believes in falsehoods and has a premade conspiracy taught to their children that all scientists are in a satanic conspiracy to make you disbelieve god. Not even that scientists are wrong, but that they actively work, all over the world, every one of them, to lie to you. They produce an entire alternative media ecosystem, one where everything they consume is made out of trivial lies you must take as axioms, where scientists have no evidence and just say things (like a preacher), where scientists don't answer questions (or invite learning and experimentation!), where you are violently oppressed (and murdered) for being "Christian", and where only a specific version of the bible is allowed and the doctrine is that anyone is supposed to be able to understand the bible because god made it that way but for some reason people only listen to interpretations from their pastors. They aren't exactly voting for democrats. This constituency is the entire reason Republican administrations and platforms insist on "Parental authority" in education, a thing which should never and not at all be a part of public education, and which literally means they are upset that schools teach their kids that evolution is a well understood and documented and supported phenomenon that directly explains speciation, because their religious doctrine is so far off the norm that it has to reject an earth as old as we know it is, and instead relies on an age of the earth that was incorrectly calculated by a religious scholar making poor assumptions and adding up ages in the bible and was done before we had incontrovertible evidence against it. This constituency needs conspiracy theories because they need to somehow wave away the massive knowledge we gained from science in the time since their cults started. Of course, once you have convinced your 11 year old to internalize your conspiracy theory as ground truth or else be physically abused, it's trivial to then get them to believe any bullshit. They literally were not taught basic things like how to evaluate a source, or how to support an argument. Check out a fundamentalist Christian textbook sometime, or a knock off of a popular movie redone to make Christians the oppressed populace by making up things out of whole cloth. THIS is why the "war on christmas" is a thing. THIS is why they have to play victim and insist that allowing other people to abort pregnancies is somehow an affront to the individual practice of THEIR religion. THIS is why they insist the USA is a christian nation despite all the contrary evidence. They live in a fake reality.
whatshisface 9mo ago
It is not you who plants weeds in the garden but the wind, but the wind won't weed them back out again.
- soulofmischief 9mo ago
  A valid perspective, and I agree that a democracy only works as long as its citizens remain civically engaged. Unfortunately, I think it's too late for the US in its current form, and it might not be long before we see it split up into smaller regions, unless something suddenly kicks Congress into gear and people break ranks to impeach and disparage the Trump administration.
  - steve-atx-7600 9mo ago
    I can’t understand republicans in congress. They’d rather be a powerful dung eater than a respectable ex-congressman. Jan 6th should have been the last straw.
  - trinsic2 9mo ago
    Its never too late, eventually things will turn and when that happens, you will be in either the right position, or the wrong position, depending on your actions.
    - soulofmischief 9mo ago
      That optimism doesn't readily apply to collapsing empires. If Congress doesn't get its shit in gear, the US is over. Our president is a hair away from sending military to arrest multiple governors of US states. Trust in this current government and Constitution are at an all-time low. It's increasingly likely that the US splits up into a few regional autonomous zones, but it's unknown just how insane of a civil war that could kick off. We are very close to the moment two different armed law enforcement groups end up in a skirmish, and that will kick things off.
      - trinsic2 9mo ago
dpc050505 9mo ago
Don't forget murdering protesters.
Barrin92 9mo ago
>to make them think and act in specific ways. with the kind of images that are out in the open for everybody with their own eyes to see, if that does not move you in your heart of hearts, where no government or anyone else can touch you, there is something rotten in that person. Governments and authority figures can show you a lot of things but the amount of people who not just accept it, but gleefully celebrate the most vulnerable people in society beaten by government thugs, there is no excuse. People can show you false images, false numbers but they can't make you feel proud for the strong abusing the weak. It's particularly appalling if you see the amount of them who call themselves Christians.
- soulofmischief 9mo ago
  The problem is that by the time some people encounter these shocking images and videos of mass human torture, their priors have already been developed to reject their eyes and ears in favor of what the people with whom they've entrusted their safety tell them. These people think Charlie Kirk was on the frontlines of personal freedom, but look the other way when a man gets tackled and shot in broad daylight for trying to help a woman who's just been maced. It's horrible, and inexcusable, but still crucial to understand through a framework that accounts for the effects of multi-generational propaganda peddled by the ultra-rich who have been shaping our thoughts and behaviors through advertisement and capital for hundreds of years.
  - iugtmkbdfil834 9mo ago
    << shot in broad daylight for trying to help a woman who's just been maced. Yes.. do I get to get between DEA and their intended target? No? If not, why not. If yes, why yes? The framing is silly. The death may be tragic and very much avoidable, but it was avoidable on both ends of this interaction. There is no comparison to Kirk here at all. He came to talk to people. Pretti went there as part of a signal group coordinating to obstruct a federal enforcement agency.. Ngl.. how people choose their heroes is beyond me.
    - soulofmischief 9mo ago