Because Americans are some of the stupidest people in the world.
politics
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What, the country with all the resources but still ranks 36th in literacy and 54% of their adults can’t even read above a 6th grade level?
And we thought the internet would solve or at least help this. Little did we know...
I feel like it’s simply widened the divide that was already present. There have always been people that care and people that don’t but now the people that care have the resources to do something about it and the people that don’t have easy access to that which reinforces their lack of caring.
By design. About a century ago, Rockefeller turned the public school system into a mindless factory worker production machine. Republicans have been reducing funding for decades since.
They only want high school graduates to be smart enough to run the machines. College tuition paywalls real education. As AI improves, the bar lowers further. Public schools will be continually defunded or converted to a voucher system in order to exclude even more citizens.
Republicans decided back in the late 70s and early 80s that the public was too educated (and too hard to control) so they decided to do something about it. 45y of slashed education funding and standards later here we are.
Fun fact, the average American public school education doesn't include critical thinking skills in the language curriculum. You either get your introduction to this in AP English (if you're a high scoring highschooler) or during your first year of college/university.
It's mind blowing how many people can't pick apart a given piece of media and think about what message it conveys and why it conveys it.
So yeah, Americans are ripe for manipulation.
The issue with politics is that you don't just have to address a problem, you also need to publicize what you did.
Maybe the dems did effectively address some problems, but they did a poor PR jobs out of it.
Outrageous lies are what make the news.
Yeah, somehow trump doesn’t have a credibility problem despite being a pathological liar and I don’t think it was possible for the democrats to effectively counter that when he’s not being held accountable. We need live fact checking in debates and he needs to be publicly called out every time he lies, but then he just won’t agree to the debate and will go hold a town hall on Fox News.
Basically every American I personally know lives paycheque-to-paycheque as megacorps move in to bleed them dry on every front.
So its a good thing that Biden used the SEC to break up monopolies and used the FTC to implement things like click-to-cancel, and invested 5 trillion dollars in the middle class and green energy manufacturing. Oh and he also tried to pass student debt relief but kept being stonewalled by repugnants.
Biden was the first president to turn away from neoliberalism this century and everyone is upset he didn't magically fix everything all at once.
Bidens problem has been one of messaging. He didn't know how to connect with the voters to get them to understand all the things he was doing.
I hoped that 2016 was a fluke, that Americans weren't that dumb and hateful but rather we got caught unprepared by a personality we didn't expect to run for president.
I hoped that 2020 was the true thoughts of Americans, that the insurrection represented the dying grasp of an extreme minority.
I don't think Trump stole the 2024 election. I think it proved that yes, this is America. Whether you think America has changed into this or was always this, it doesn't take away the fact that a majority of Americans will believe anything so long as it makes them hate. Good news doesn't drive votes. Fear and anger drives votes.
I've tried so much to try and be a middle of the road voice of reason and moderation with my friends and family. I didn't want to be a knee jerk conspiracy theorist, I was always patient with people, listened to them, told them the places they were right, and asked them questions hoping they would ask themselves. I'd say "be like Mr. Rogers. And if someone isn't acting like Mr. Rogers, be like Mr. Rogers."
It started to hit when a friend of mine who is very left wing told me that people with college degrees are brainwashed by the deep state. I had just told her I had a degree in political science.
I ordered another drink and changed the subject but it hurt. Now I know she is representative of a majority of Americans. I'm worried civil war is all but inevitable when facts just don't matter as much as anger.
Edit: Lord grant me the strength to be like Mr. Rogers in this comment section.
And people with exactly that mindset voted for Trump, despite his vowing to make everything worse with every single policy stance.
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Raise your taxes while cutting for the Rich (AGAIN)
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Tariffing many sectors and countries, making goods more expensive and destroying US manufacturing
I am so God damn sick of reading articles from pundits who think they can just numbers-and-statistics away people's financial experience. Listen to this shit:
America has recovered more quickly and more completely than almost any comparable country. As The Economist put it, “The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust.” Real wages have risen fastest for those at the bottom of the income scale. Today, inflation is at 2.4%, compared with the 9.1% peak in June 2022. The fight against rising prices has essentially been won.
But few in the electorate seem aware...
Wow, the electorate sounds like a bunch of dipshits. But just for the hell of it, let's check their source for the wages of the bottom income scale. According to the Economic Policy Institute, real wages grew 13.2% between 2019 and 2023. Now, inflation was 19.2% during that period, but "real wage," means, "wage adjusted for inflation," so I guess the author is right. The lowest income earners got a raise during the Biden years. Guess the poor are a bunch of dipshits.
But which of Biden's policies led to these increases in wages? Well, the Economic Policy Institute says:
Between 2019 and 2023, state-level minimum wage increases along with a tight labor market have translated into faster real wage growth for low-wage workers, particularly faster growth in states (and D.C.) that increased their minimum wage during this period.
So, it sounds like the wages went up because of a competitive labor market (which the Fed intentionally killed to combat inflation) and minimum wage increases at the state level, and that states that increased their minimum wages saw more of that growth than others. So, you could make an argument that Biden deserves little credit for this increase, but let's not even worry about that. Let's see look at the minimum wage by state.
The EPI has a handy Minimum Wage Tracker that color-codes states by their state minimum wage against the federal minimum wage. A quick glance shows you the states with the highest minimum wage are mostly states that went to Harris. But what's really interesting is that, of the 7 key battleground states that Harris lost, 4 of them (Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) have the same minimum wage as the federal minimum of $7.25, a starvation wage that hasn't been raised since 2009. So it's not unreasonable to assume that in more than half the key states Harris needed win saw the smallest share of that 13.2%, but did see prices increase by 19.2%.
Now, I'm not an economist, and I don't have hours to research this shit, so it's entirely possible that I'm missing a lot of nuance regarding cost of living and non-minimum wage increases in these states. But that's not the point. The point is that I've already spent more time and energy examining why people might not feel good about the economy than the sneering chud that wrote this article. And I'll end this tirade with one last quote from the EPI report he cited:
Wage rates remain insufficient for individuals and families working to make ends meet. Nowhere can a worker at the 10th percentile of the wage distribution earn enough to meet a basic family budget.
Young people have no hope of buying a house in my area.
In my neighborhood all the drug store shelves are bare (Rite Aid) and there's soon to be only one grocery store to choose from (Kroger).
When I'm getting groceries the checkers are talking about how the store is going to close if the merger happens and they'll all lose their jobs.
No 'media' lied to me and convinced me that the economy is wack. I see it every day.
What I'm not hearing in the media is recognition of working folks' struggles. Failure to address this kept Dems home.
I'm really sorry to hear that. Would it help if I showed you a graph that shows the stock market is actually doing great?
Honestly Democrat are absolutely horrible at talking to people.
I'll be the first to admit, Biden did actually do a lot for workers but just like the leader of the painters union said, y'all fucking suck at telling people that.
I mean look at the rail workers strike, Biden stopped the rail workers strike and didn't address one of the biggest things they were looking for, just to be treated like humans and have sick leave.
There was lots of talk about "doing this for the best of the nation", which okay I could get behind, sure they got a wage increase but I did as shit could understand why rank and file would feel betrayed when they were asking additional to be treated as humans that get sick.
What I didn't hear him or anyone say to them directly, that he was still going to work with the unions afterwards to get sick leave in. Why would you not say that at the same time as you announce your blocking the strike? Cost you nothing to say you have their back.
So then months later, with Biden administration support finally got the workers PTO but no one really knew about it because the moment was gone and honestly union leadership also did a shit job of getting that word out too.
It's not the only thing but it certainly is a big factor in things.
Biden and the Dems saved the teamsters' pensions against the GOP's best efforts and it didn't even earn them an endorsement from the teamsters' union.
This was highly publicized, especially if you yourself were in the union
Internal polling of Teamsters members showed:
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In an electronic poll conducted after the Republican National Convention, 59.6% of rank-and-file Teamsters favored endorsing Trump, while 34% supported Harris.
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A more recent poll indicated a similar trend, with Teamsters backing Trump 58% to 31%
Having the backs of labor and the working class amounted for jack shit in actual results for dems.
You know why? Because these teamsters spend two hours a day sitting in a car listening to right-wing radio jockeys telling them how Democrats are only interested in policing their language and getting them in trouble for flirting with women.
You know why? Because these teamsters spend two hours a day sitting in a car listening to right-wing radio jockeys telling them how Democrats are only interested in policing their language and getting them in trouble for flirting with women.
Bingo.
Or scrolling their feeds. Or swiping. Depending on the age. Every single Democrat leader needs to see that statistic, so they can stop whining about how policy was their problem.
Democrats are messaging like it's 1950. And hot take, but the only thing that elected Biden was COVID-19, only because it wedged itself into people's lives like absolutely nothing else can.
Voters are pretty stupid. Seriously, the misinformation and willful ignorance on display is breathtaking.
…no.
The DNC brain trust thought they could get away with ignoring an absolutely fucking HUGE part of their base. And they were fucking WRECKED for it.
Trump got just about the same number of votes as he did in the last election. Harris got 11M less votes than Biden got. ELEVEN. MILLION. PEOPLE. STAYED THE FUCK HOME. BECAUSE THEY SAW THE ESTABLISHMENT CIRCLEJERK. AND HARRIS FUCKING LEANED INTO IT. AND IGNORED THE VERY FUCKING REAL LIVED EXPERIENCE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS GETTING HOLLOWED OUT, AND THE LOWER CLASS CONTINUING TO GET CRUSHED TO DEATH.
And now we get to listen to pundits and DNC leadership and Biden admin people and Harris campaign people circlejerk themselves about how it wasn’t their fault, it was those goddamn progressives and the stupid Arab Americans who cared about Gaza too much.
Genuinely: fuck all the way off with that narrative. the Democratic Party snatched this defeat from the jaws of victory. There was a path to victory. They simply didn’t fucking take it.
The DNC is working for their rich donors and doing a pretty decent job for them. They shouldn't act so surprised that people who aren't benefiting from the economy don't come out to support them.
Exactly, who thought it was a good idea to campaign with the fucking Cheneys???????
Consider this.
A few weeks before the election Donald Trump and Elon Musk had a little circle jerk podcast interview with each other. They spent time talking about how anti-union they are and how much they hate worker’s rights. Then working class Americans went out in droves and voted for those two rich assholes who openly talked about wishing workers had less rights.
We made a guy who was the first president in U.S. history to stand on a picket line with striking workers step down because he was old. Then we hired another equally old rich guy who openly talks about wishing workers had less rights.
Americans. Are. Stupid.
Our situation isn’t going to get better any time soon. For those of us who aren't boomers, we're basically locked into a lifetime of economic hardship.
Americans are misinformed because the media has been destroyed by financial incentives and the capital class.
Average american seems to be easily manipulated, especially if its about politics. No fact checking, just going with "gut" feeling.
Democrats need to be louder in blaming the people at fault. Harris should have been screaming about the economy Obama left Trump vs the economy Trump left Biden. She should have been screaming that from day 1!
Let voters get what they deserve.
Republican voters are the biggest simps for big business that I’ve ever seen. It’s like if slaves in America cheered on the confederacy during the Civil War.
It's not even a propaganda problem, per se, because most people aren't obsessively following the news and economic reports.
It's how they feel about money.
That was the biggest single issue.
People looked at grocery store prices and said, this is nuts, I was paying half this just four years ago.
It doesn't matter to them that global inflation skyrocketed along with inflation in the US, or that we're doing better than the rest of the world right now. They want to see prices go down, even though that would be deflation, which is incredibly bad for an economy.
We need more political literacy in this country.
Yeah, because Americans are dumb and willfully ignorant.
Opinion: I Lost Because I Didn't Do Anything Wrong and Have no Lessons to Learn
Same shit as always, the (relative) left actually does make an attempt to keep its promises but no on hears about it because the right wing own 90% of the media.