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That about sums it up.
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.
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.
No no…we had it fixed for centuries
I really don’t understand you there.
No, in fact the very founding of the USA was arguably done primarily so that the ruling class could disregard the respectful boundaries that the English imposed to avoid strife with Native Americans and other colonial powers, which incidentally tended to curb our exploiting the land willy-nilly as we’ve shamelessly done since. It also locked out women and slave voters, preserving a classist system.
Since then there’s been various periods of little / negligible useful social policies, as well as periods in which the ultra-wealthy and common capitalists were UNCHECKED in their ability to thoroughly exploit people and form monopolies, etc etc. Seriously, if the Roosevelts hadn’t come along, those things might have progressed scarily unchecked.
So, no-- I certainly don’t see evidence that our form of democracy was ‘fixed for centuries.’ No, the fact is it’s been a shaky, wild, perilous ride from the day one.
…the 1964 presidential campaign, as that’s the markings of the first ever attack ad.
Maybe in terms of TV, but TV is just a natural extension of media, and media in the States has been used since… at least the early 1800’s? to completely slag-off or outright attack enemy candidates. Indeed, it’s been a perfect blood-bath of disinformation at times, which doesn’t even address all the nasty, vile tricks used to disenfranchise, or outright turn away undesirable voters at the polls. Which yes-- includes outright violence against undesirable voters across centuries in the States.
So, yeah… that all happened.
Altho I DO agree with you that somewhere between 50-70yrs back, the USA has been outright under attack by right-wingers, paving the way for fascism. Basically attacking most of the progress made under FDR and even Republican presidents like Ike.
Username still doesn’t check out.
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.
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.
Many reasons. Regular politics is boring, and pop culture Facebook TikTok YouTube is all so much more captivating.
Also, so many Americans are struggling to survive, so there isn’t enough time to engage with the political process in a meaningful way. I wonder if it’s an intentional effort by the uber wealthy.
Inconvenient coincidence or grand plan, either way, its a crystal clear indicator that the whole constitution needs a rewrite.
I feel like that may be the closest unifying political opinion, which we need… We can hash out the details Constitutional Convention style after we get rid of the muck…
How could we make politics fun for a wider audience?
Put a clown in the race that says outrageous things and the media can’t get enough of.
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.
Our media apparatus and schooling don’t promote critical thinking.
Ok so I study political science (second semester so not an expert at all) and last semester I had to research a lot about turnout rates for people in less fortunate situations. The answer is really simple actually. If people live in shit situations they don’t trust the government and they start to not care. Education is worse when you don’t have enough money. There is also a constant struggle to make politics feel closer to the people because that directly impacts if you will educate yourself and go participate. Unfortunately politics feels like it is either actively against you or at least doesn’t do anything for you if you are at the bottom .One thing that might be important in the US is that slums decrease political awareness / willingness to vote because these people who are probably not going to care are surrounded by more people that don’t care. So if noone around you says something good about the government you are going to hate it even more.
All of this leads to an underrepresentation of these groups which leads to their problems being overlooked or underestimated which leads to worse conditions which leads to less political activity which leads to less representation…its a cycle that makes millions of peoples lives worse every day. And at some point they just don’t care about politics because politics seems to not care about them. None of my sources are in English so get bozoed I could be lying about all of this.
That makes perfect sense. Good luck with the poly sci degree. What I took from this is material conditions effect voter turnout, which in turn effects material conditions.
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.
If it’s what I think it is that’s pretty mild…
It is. It’s probably exactly what hou think. But bots don’t care, and AI is too primitive to be useful. Yet thats what moderation is sometimes. Especially on reddit.
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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.
Corrupt plutocracy of a government removed the law that prevented mass ownership of news and media outlets. It consolidated everything into just a handful of media outlets that talk to the nation.
That, along with complete over saturation. A person trying to sort through a huge country comprised of their city government, plus their county, plus state, plus national level politics across a nation that’s 8,000,000 square kilometers (not including Alaska and Hawaii) is just too much for most people to decipher and sort through.
It’s even harder to mass protest here. It’s not like everyone can drive inside of less than two hours away and show up in London or something. Getting to our capital to protest could be quite literally a 40 hour drive away.
That last part is particularly noteworthy. If I’m in the UK, I can make it to London in 8 hours pretty much regardless of where I am. That’s less than a full work day of driving. Many Americans have done that to visit family.
If I’m in France, I’m never more than 9 hours away from Paris. Again, many Americans have done a drive like that just to go on holiday.
If I’m in Newport Oregon, it’ll take 43 hours of driving (and crossing two full mountain ranges) to reach Washington DC. That’s a full work week of driving, just to reach the capitol.
So most Americans protest locally if they’re able. But that’s far less effective, because it splits the protests apart and makes them easier to ignore or break. Americans can’t go full “light Paris on fire for a full month because the retirement age is getting raised” because there aren’t enough protestors near the capitol to do that. The small protests that do start almost unanimously get broken up by cops as quickly as they started.
Any excuse huh? You have roughly the equivalent of the entire population of France living within a four hour drive of Washington DC, but
There aren’t enough protestors near the capitol to do that
There aren’t enough people who would actually stand up for themselves, and in particular , others, is what you actually mean
There aren’t enough people who would actually stand up for themselves, and in particular , others, is what you actually mean
So, protestors?
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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
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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.
Trying to survive
Exactly as planned by the reigning political parties.
Because we don’t teach people ANYTHING about the political or legal system here (and legal matters a lot, since it’s intrinsically tied to how we make and enforce laws here).
For instance, just figuring out where to vote, when to vote, and what you need to bring (and legally can’t bring), varies WILDLY state to state. Real examples:
I lived in state A, where the primaries were just done with a ballot, you physically had to show up at a specific day and time to fill put in person
Moved to state B, where the primaries were at a different time and were done as a caucus. Meaning I had to physically go and stand there as my body was my vote. They were unprepared for voter turnout and it took 6 hours to vote. There were almost no chairs. Handicapped people, elderly people, and people who had to work, left. Like they just couldn’t vote. It was horrible to witness. That’s our rights being denied.
And also at state B, you had to be registered in advance and they needed to have record of it. If there was some weird error where you weren’t on the list, tough.
Moved to state C, where everything is super easy and done by mail. Just mail in your ballot. No big.
We need to take kids on field trips to vote and teach them actually how to do it all. Including looking up smaller election dates. It’s not actually that easy or that streamlined.
We need to take kids to town halls to show them how to observe public meetings. We need to show them how to run for office. The public deserves a clear and thorough education on this, as much as English or Math.
Here, we have mock elections in school, held with the same booths that the real elections are done. The kids make up political parties, then they go through the whole process, from getting their voter card (informing them about the vote and where the vote takes place or how to request vote-by-mail) to voting to counting and having results.
You don’t do this in the US?
They did it in Arizona, but Republicans put a stop to it as too many kids were bringing their parents to vote.
I tried to research this, but Google sucks. I believe it happened and wanted to read about it. It sounds hilarious.
There is something called student government but it doesn’t actually mimic what happens in each kid’s district. They do not make up parties. They mainly just vote for class president, secretary, and treasurer with a show of hands. Sometimes a ballot. That’s it.
They do not do any of the rest here. I’m being VERY sincere when I emphatically say most states do NOT teach the public ANYTHING that will give them legal or political power including how to vote. And some states make it very hard to vote.
This here is not about electing a student or class speaker (which is done way simpler). This is about learning politics.
Yes, unfortunately that’s not a priority in the US. You know what is though? Making sure we are automatically enrolled in the draft, and that we take our ASVAB (military test) in high school. And of course, every high schooler knows how to enlist in the military and all the amazing benefits they could get.
Really? I didn’t know anyone during high school that would’ve known how to enlist / benefits. It really depended on whatever anyone was interested in, what people knew about. I grew up in New York City.
We had recruiters come to my school at least once a year to give talks if not more often, so ymmv
“I don’t live in a swing state so my vote does not matter anyways”.
I am not a US citizen, that is just something I picked up from a random interview of a non-voter a while ago. I don’t know if that is a common opinion, but it made sense to me in explaining political disinterest.
It has to do with the electoral college and how it limits voting power. So it contributes to political disinterest.
I think the real problem is that they think they’re aware, but are ignorant or unwilling to learn about the actual issues.
For example, with climate change it’s a lot easier to think and want it to be not real. They know what it is, but it’s a lot easier to believe it’s not real. It’s a lot more effort and leaving your comfort zone to learn about it and realize how fucked it is.
Most people build themselves into bubbles, where changing their views would force them to readjust their world views and for most, they dont want to
This is what I see from my folks. That believe anything that supports their existing views, but anything that would require them to understand something they aren’t aware of, they suddenly don’t trust the sources. They say things like “science can be used to say all sorts of things, we can’t know that they’re right this time!”
These are the same parents who taught me critical thinking when reading newspaper articles when I was a kid. Suddenly they can’t be bothered to employ the same critical thinking to articles they read today.
I still blame Facebook and the other similar social media platforms. They have catered to and encouraged the short attention spans we have today
My mom is the exact same way!
It may be true, but this is programmed in by corporate media and our lack of education on these subjects. Maintaining our echo chambers is by design, and not our design.
