To be clear, I am only talking about people like the average working class Trump voter. The ones who just got caught by misinformation, and just haven’t been able to find a way out. Trump and all his mates are terrible people, and should be held accountable.
The average voter is another thing. My attitude is that I got lucky, and found out that Trump and his mates are terrible, instead of getting sucked down a rabbit hole of supporting them. Knowing how fascism works, I don’t know if I’d be able to reliably land on the right side if fascism happened in my home country. And if I don’t believe I could reliably spot fascism, I’m not comfortable acting like those who support Trump could have.
This isn’t a discussion of “just be a good person”. I know plenty of amazing, caring people who believe they’re doing the right thing.
This whole idea of “I can’t say is reliably avoid fascism” is based on this, the school that became fascist for a week. As bad of an experiment that was from that teacher, it was an effective way of teaching how people fall for what should be obviously a bad thing.
Which is totally fair. I’m just saying there are a fuck ton of people that either don’t care, aren’t invested in politics, or aren’t online as much as we are. Or if they are online they sure as shit ain’t here or on Reddit. They’re on websites like Facebook where they get fed ragebait like it’s candy because it gets facebook more clicks and more money. It’s easy to see these people as just “stupid” but in reality this is the internet to them and that’s all they see. They’re not stupid necessarily, but when it comes to the important shit they’re definitely ignorant.
As the saying goes, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you.
Democracy doesn’t work if everyone is stupid and misinformed.
Americans currently have an average literacy ability of 5th - 6th graders. Less than 10% of Americans are capable of independently, critically evaluating contrasting information.
A person who chooses to be surrounded by stupidity, and then absorbs that stupidity, is stupid.
Yes, there is a difference between stupidity (low mental aptitude, ability, potential) and ignorance (low actual knowledge set), but ignorance makes you stupid, and stupidity makes you ignorant, or even worse, full of ‘knowledge’ of false facts.
Frankly, I’ll go so far as to say that if you willing choose to consistently retard your own understanding of the world, by getting all your info from idiots on Facebook or TikTok, then you are definitionally retarded.
I’m very, very tired of acting like misinformed idiots, who continuous choose to become more idiotic and misinformed, who are extremely belligerent, do not accurately fit into this definition.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/retard
Merriam Webster:
People should always care about politics, understanding it is understanding how your life is governed.