An old comic that feels oh so relevant in this tumultuous election year.
Source: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/an-important-distinction
this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
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Why this house should be the best? Why make it a competition? Who cares about the house?
We care about the people living in the house. And about the people living in other houses too.
The house in this case is a metaphor for the politicians, laws, community, etc.
You want people to take pride and improve all that. You want friendly competition there. And part of it would be, "We are the best house because we help other houses improve"
It's a stepping stone to, "We are a commune" ie "We all share this world and should take pride and improve it for everybody" - It's easier to take pride in and improve your own home first so you get to the point of, "Others should get to share in this and we have so much, let's help others make their homes as great as ours"
I may be dumb, but for me the metaphor is for the nation. Or the mention of patriotism against nationalism makes no sense.
And I don't care about nations. They're a tool used to divide people.
Yes it's easier to improve my country than others'. But I don't need pride for that.
Good luck building up a coalition of people who will cooperate with you.
And worse: good luck politically defeating those who are smart enough to use basic psychology to coordinate the masses. Its not evil to do so, its just practicality. We know how people act and how they think. Its not so hard to then use psychology and sociology to build up our own coalitions.
As Terry Pratchett wrote in The Hogfather : We tell little likes like Santa Clause because we're training children to believe in the big lies like Truth and Justice. And only when we all believe in that stuff can it possibly work. "We're the best country in the world" is part of that, its a little lie that helps smooth over problems and helps us work together. And in my experience, its effective at it.
You know, I'm not particularly intelligent. If I (and you apparently) understood that nations are a manipulation of the masses, everyone can. Thus we could create a coalition against nationalism and patriotism quite easily, but schools and medias are spreading their propaganda.
Except I'm not against manipulation of the masses. I'm tacitly for it, because if I don't manipulate them, someone else will.
Leaving the masses to be manipulated by Trump (or other bad actors) is obviously a bad idea. If you haven't noticed by the last 10 years of US Politics.
The reality is that 30%+ of the country (the current Trump voter base) accepts manipulation and embraces it. Its a huge cohort and a resource that can be turned to my side. Maybe not all of them, but its more than you or most people ever realized. And furthermore, anyone else who is intelligent and on my side about it will also join me and see that we have a winning strategy.
What's your strategy exactly? You want to try to beat back human psychology one-person at a time and deprogram on a mass scale? Good luck with that. I'm not sure I've seen a successful argument that breaks through the psychological games being played out here.