Sorry if the premise is inflammatory, but I’ve been stymied by this for a while. How did we go from something like 1940s era collectivism or 1960s era leftism to the current bizarro political machine that seems to have hypnotized a large portion (if not majority) of the country? I get it - not everything is bad now, and not everything was good then. FDR’s internment camps, etc.
That said - our country seems to be at a low point in intellectualism and accountability. The DHHS head is an antivaxxer, the deputy chief of the DOJ is a far-right podcast nutball, etc. Their supporters seem to have no nuance to their opinion beyond “well, Trump said he’d fix the economy and I don’t like woke.”
Have people always been this unserious and unquestioning, or are we watching the public’s sanity unravel in real time? Or am I just imagining some idealistic version of the past that never existed, where politicians acted in good faith and people cared about the social order?
First and foremost, beyond all other things, the problem is that people in the United States see no other country but the United States. You have libertarians arguing that taxation is theft as if the United States is the only country in the world with an income tax. You have people talking about 15 minute cities as if it’s some theoretical, untested idea instead of the absolute norm in every other country. America is continually pretending that it can’t see its problems solved everywhere else. That it can’t imagine a better world even though one already exists.
The American dream is an all time amazing piece of propaganda that has left every American imagining that one day, through hard work, they will become the oppressor, and that has created a population so submissive and pliable in the face of its own destruction that Russia, China, and even North Korea could never even dream about having.
And even moderately wealthy Americans don’t usually travel outside their country. If they do it’s usually from the airport to their hotel.
I think you mean “all-inclusive” resort (that isn’t all inclusive and actually charges a gazillion dollars in random fees) that makes them feel like they’re experiencing local culture while actually just experiencing the effects of the resort chain exploiting the local population for cheap labor while cheaply imitating the culture.
Don’t worry, we Americans are definitely capable of escaping our cultural bubble! /s
This is very true. A lot of it comes down to chauvinism and, “we’re #1.” If an American sees a problem with the US government, then they’ll conclude that it is a problem inherent to all existing, or even all possible governments. When it does something bad, the worst thing people will say is, “This is like something you’d see in [rival country].” In this way, even while criticizing it, they still reaffirm their belief in their own superiority. And if you deviate from that and point out various ways in which the country is uniquely bad, it means you just knee-jerk hate everything about the country and want it to be bad. We are thoroughly cooked.
Wow, yeah. Well put. This is why they only care about “winning”.