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?

  • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world
    0·
    12 days ago

    Stalin wiped out the officers in the Red Army because he perceived anyone with any authority to be a potential threat. Anyone who had been around for too long was a threat. This set the stage for the Germans to steamroll them in the opening of Operation Barbarossa because you had a Red Army that was completely dysfunctional due to the slaughter of its leadership. He probably would’ve turned on Beria (NKVD) too if he had the chance.

    The Great Leader (having already in mind, no doubt, how many he would soon have to do away with) declared that the withering away of the state (which had been awaited virtually from 1920 on) would arrive via, believe it or not, the maximum intensification of state power

    Yah, you don’t need a state if you have a nation of graves.