Constant defunding of public education, anti-intellectualism, and conservative idealism has made this nation as dumb as a bag of hammers. Being highly educated in America kind of feels like you have a superiority complex but it's also incredibly frustrating at times.
this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2024
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Can I ask how you cope with the frustration? Touching grass isn’t enough lately.
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Because things were good for a long time and nobody thought we’d lose our rights if we stopped paying attention. Same story throughout history.
As for the people being fed misinformation, they’re just rubes. Our education system failed them and now grifters who don’t care about America are taking advantage of them.
It looked like a F##k fest so I decided imma go live in my tiny bubble of happiness.
Not like I need more drama and negativity because some old people who know nothing but to never answer your questions with a straightforward answer, tell me what I need to think or do.
I rather go download some ISOs and mess around on different linux distros.
Our media apparatus and schooling don't promote critical thinking.
Are they? Who's doing that sociology stunt?
Trying to survive
Exactly as planned by the reigning political parties.
Foreign and corporate disinformation campaigns aided by consolidation of TV and print media as well as social media monopolies. Combine that with a lack of time or energy from working long hours, long commutes, and a lack of ability to take time off, much less devote energy to sorting out disinformation that is so common.
Civics was a single class in highschool.
We need a STEM type push for more civics in highschool and middle school.
It's so much easier to take someone at their word instead of looking into the many interwoven facts and details yourself. In fact, it can take so long fact-checking things these days to combat mis/disinformation that people simply.... don't.
It's way more laborious to disprove a lie than it is to simply recount a lie.
Russia may not have a decent military, or a decent government, but they are masters at controlling other countries public opinions.
I had a comment removed a few days ago because Lemmy has an automod which accused me of being ablist. In reality I was responding to a comment that was trying to push the narrative that Ukraine started the war, and is responsible for the war. It went on to say many MANY more completely untrue things, but definately tried painting russia as the good guy. I basically accused him of being brain dead, with a word that the automod didn't like.
But I'm pretty convinced they were a russian disinformation agent.
Russia may not have
Russia is NOT the only problem, they aren't even the main problem. There's quite a number of issues where the mainstream media discourse depends almost entirely on whose in office. As an example take a look at crime statistics since 1991 and then align the media coverage about crime with whose in charge at the time. Immigration is another one. 2,000 people or more crossing the border every day may or may not be a crisis depending on which political party is in charge.
Those and other issues aren't being manipulated, at least not primarily, by Russia Propaganda. That work is being done by mainstream media sources and the only way to know you're being manipulated into an opinion is by putting in the work to learn the context and history of an issue.
It's a massive time suck that can require hours, days, or even weeks to get a deep enough understanding to know you're being lied to and / or manipulated.
I wanna know what word you used...
Medical term, used to describe a partially or fully non-functioning brain. In the 80s and 90s it became slang for "idiot", and somehow became a politically incorrect term. Now people are offended by term. Starts with R.
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american cultural social norms looks down upon talking about politics in public; which creates an entire country of people who lack practice in engaging in meaningful political discourse.
you combine that with american oligarchs using their influence to steer national discourse away from topics that threaten their interests while simultaneously manufacturing consent and you're left with recipe for red and blue magas.
Politics and religion are the two things we should be talking about
imo, awareness is already a problem so i think political awareness is already a big leap.
most news channels are incentivized by money so it serves their sponsors and not the people.
Great point.
Most people everywhere are very politically unaware. Here's a decent site that demonstrates this. Basically, the knowledge we (by which I mean humans, not just Americans, of which I am not one) have leads us to make inaccurate assumptions about the other stuff.
Neat site.
One argument I don't think anyone else has made here - we have fewer restrictions on what can be advertised, where and when ads can be played, and how close to true those advertisements have to be than a lot of other countries do. I think this has the effect of wearing down people's ability and willingness to engage in logical analysis of the information they receive because we're constantly bombarded with information and most of it is bullshit to sell us crap we don't need, so we have to skim through and tune out a lot, and in that process I think a lot of information that's actually true but that people don't want to believe gets thrown out too.
Cos that's the way the elite want it, an ignorant population it's easier to manipulate.
"There’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever, EVER be fixed.
It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got.
Because the owners, the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.
Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.
They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don’t want:
They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests.
Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that!
You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place! It's a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club.
By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you…. they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you.
They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Thats what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth.
It's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it."
I call it the propagandosphere
Mostly willful ignorance. They don't want to be aware and so are not aware.
At the same time they'll complain it's too hard to follow and on the other hand go into great detail about their NCAA Men's Basketball March Madness bracket.
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Corporate media with bias to keep the discourse between two seemingly distant yet very close poles.
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Lack of corporate and rich taxation
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Structural defunding and discrediting the public education system
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Atomized working class
50 mini countries with poor educational infrastructure exacerbated by the prevalence of not just Fox News, et al, but also AM radio, beholden to a group that fights to keep them uneducated so they don't rise up and repeat the violence of the 1900s against robber barons.
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Talking heads and a failing education system.
It takes a lot of effort to stay on top of things, plus the research it takes to sort out fact from fiction. After all that investment, the amount of difference one can make is miniscule.
Because they don’t give a fuck.
For one, the United States lacks a good press corps of independent journalists with broad reach.
Everything is either politicized or commercialized. Shock value sells. Balanced rational discourse does not. Polarization makes too much money for too many people.
On top of that, a systematic destruction of education and a stranglehold of religion practically makes ignorance inevitable.
Maybe we could repair it, but it would take Republicans being blocked from making any decisions for several decades at this point.
I'm still amazed judges are so clearly divided into groups. I consider being a judge to require a degree of impartiality and authority that anyone clearly identifying as democratic or republican should be disqualified for. Democratic perhaps not since their more centric than left leaning or far left :/. Point being the one occupation that mandates impartiality is highly politicised. Of course everything is f*cked. The rule of law is not dictated by the majority or enforced by the trustworthy.
Yeah it's hard trying to save democracy when a large portion of the country has been brainwashed to destroy it all while thinking they're the most patriotic.
It’s a catch-22. We can’t fix it, until we fix it.
No no......we had it fixed for centuries, until it was intentionally dismantled over the past 50-70 years (depending on where you wish to place the official start date.) For me, I place it during the 1964 presidential campaign, as that's the markings of the first ever attack ad.
If you want the public to care about your politics, then politics needs to be about the policies of those politics. Reflection from within. Rather than "but what about the other guy? He's bad."
If candidate number one tells you "I will raise taxes, and use the money to pay for schools and roads". And a second candidate says "I will lower taxes by dismantling social security". You as a voter then have a choice to make. Pay slightly more in taxes, with better roads, and a better future for the next generation. OR pay less taxes, and probably have your retirement vanish.
Instead, that same scenario today would be "The other guy wants to take your retirement! He's bad!" and the second candidate says "The other guy is raising taxes. He's bad!"
So now the general public thinks both candidates are bad, and nobody looks into what the outcome of their other choices have historically been. This then leads them to vote based on sound bytes, rather than historical accuracies.
The end result is nobody cares about politics, because it's all bullshit anyways.
Username still doesn’t check out.
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A mixture of poor education in some states combined with a steady, deliberate demoralizing of the voters by the political class.