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?

  • treadful@lemmy.zipEnglish
    11·
    1 day ago

    There is no one thing. Democrats have floundered for… decades. They did a thing during Obama but largely as a party they’ve done nothing for most of America except maintain.

    Then there’s MAGA which is kind of a new thing. It goes beyond ideology. I’d argue there is no ideology, beyond maybe a few wedge issues that are just used to build ranks. To me it kind of looks like useful idiots being wrangled by those that control information. But the idiots are at the top and the bottom of the chain include the politicians and the electorate so it’s confusing.

    People also got soft, complacent, and poorer. Lots of people just completely checked out of their civic duties. Either because they can’t be bothered, or because they’ve got more important things to worry about.

    There’s probably also lots of other topics leading into the current political climate that I haven’t even touched on. Trying to explain it away as one thing doesn’t really work.