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The exact same mechanism is used to keep poor white Americans voting Republican: even if they're poor, they see themselves as the white ruling class over black
by mcv 2mo ago
The exact same mechanism is used to keep poor white Americans voting Republican: even if they're poor, they see themselves as the white ruling class over black and Hispanic people, despite the fact that they themselves are kept poor by the real ruling class.
- kevin_thibedeau 2mo agoThe con is largely directed at the religious right, of which, poorer whites make up the largest cohort. That's how they convinced people directly targeted by the bigotry to still vote for them.
- AnthonyMouse 2mo agoYou're missing the symmetry. The two party system is a false dichotomy. The enemy is not the other party, it's the system that causes there to be only two alternatives that are both captured by mostly the same interests. Each party convinces half the population that the other is trying to destroy them so that their votes cancel out. And then Marx calls this a criticism of "capitalism" even though it's fundamentally a generic criticism of what happens when you centralize political power and then allow special interests to divide people into camps.
- mcv 2mo agoThe two party system is absolutely part of the problem, but there's also definitely the culture war being waged to distract people from the class war that's being waged against them. But the two-party system definitely enables that, making it easier to win by discrediting the other, because there only is one other.
- account42 2mo agoAnd which party started the culture war? By definition it's not the conservatives.
- mcv 2mo agoWhat do you mean "by definition"? They do nothing else. Against transgenders, against gay people, against foreigners, against hippies, against black people; it goes back a long time, and always to recruit the support of poor white people by giving them a sense of superiority over an even more oppressed group. Culture war is their primary weapon to distract from the class war they're also waging.
- account42 2mo agoContinually inventing new categories of "opressed" people and then demanding that others grant them special protections is exactly how you start a culture war.
- mcv 2mo agoThose people were always there. Just stop oppressing them. They don't need "special protections", just the same rights as everybody else. Why is it so important to have an oppressed class?
- account42 2mo agoYou can't just call everything oppression to force people to go along with your views. And no, progressives haven't wanted the same rights for everyone for decades. The spiel has been all about giving them more rights to compensate for perceived (often hereditary) oppression for too long that anyone can claim that with a straight face.
- mcv 2mo agoI don't call everything oppression, I only call oppression oppression. Slavery was oppression. Jim Crow was oppression. Discrimination against Irish, Italians, Hispanics and black people was and is oppression. Denying people the right to be who they are, restricting their rights based on who they are, denying them rights that other people enjoy, is oppression. The issue is that conservatives have always tried to force people to go along with their views, and reacted with oppression and violence towards anyone who didn't fit into their straightjacket. > progressives haven't wanted the same rights for everyone for decades It's been a developing journey. It started with rights for people who weren't noble born, then men who weren't rich, then women and ethnic minorities, then gay people, then transgender people. It's a gradual expansion of rights until everybody is able to enjoy the same rights.