cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20368770
It’s easy to understand if you realize that America is essentially a corporation rather than a country, and that country is only representing its shareholders.
In case you’re confused - if you’re not rich and powerful, you’re not a shareholder. You’re an employee or a commodity or an expense, and you exist to enrich the shareholder class.
America had a moment in the 60s and 70s where real change might have been possible. Then Reagan took over in the 80s and selfishness and greed somehow became virtues.
They instilled a sense that helping others makes you dumb and gullible. Strong, smart people get theirs and fuck everyone else.
People who need help are just taking your money to buy drugs and can easily get a job and become middle class instantaneously.
Then a few decades later, the middle class disappeared, and everyone became poor and struggling. Corporate profits keep breaking records, though. Economic inequality in America has surpassed pre-Revolution France. Every billionaire is Louis XIV-level rich and indulgent.
That sense must surely have been already there, because you couldn't instil it easily if most people genuinely believed otherwise.
It has taken the better part of 50 years to get from there to here. I wouldn't say it was easy.
The evangelical bloc was the hardest to convince. They had to get some capitalist representation in the churches to counteract all of that business about "helping the poor" and "blessed be the meek" that Jesus was always going on about.
Once they got Joel Osteen to convince millions of viewers that Jesus wanted them to be rich, that really clinched it for them.