No Stupid Questions

Because the rich control an overwhelming amount of the media we consume. They are capable of shaping the narrative to their benefit.

Because powerful people turned politics from a policy / representation in to politics as an identity. People will almost anything for their two minutes of hate.

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

--Lyndon B. Johnson

Let’s say I’m an American male. I like football. I like the NY Jets, because I also like to suffer.

I don’t have to read the news, or go to news websites, or listen to news radio, to hear about my Jets. I don’t have to risk accidentally learning about what’s going on in the world watching the 6 o’clock news every evening when all I really want to know is the latest saddening Jets news.

I can listen to podcasts that tell me about jets players health, fantasy picks, gossip, the latest games, and betting strategy. In the offseason my podcasts don’t go off air. I can go to websites where algorithms that have already identified me as a Jets fan bury any news about politics or social issues under a mountain of roster updates and advertisements for beer (because Jets fans need it).

Then it comes time to vote. These democrats all seem to talk about stuff I don’t care about or understand. This Trump guy says he will do stuff. I hate the way things are, but I don’t know why they are that way. Corporate monopolies? Antitrust? Voter suppression? All that shit got buried under Aaron Roger’s passing stats. And Trump wasn’t all that bad when he was president. Certainly better than I feel now, and while I’ll pore over individual player stats to take matchups into account when I set my fantasy football roster I’m not gonna go pore over statistics on the economy or anything. That shit is complicated and boring, and football stats are definitely not. So I never have to risk remembering that Trump was pretty fucking bad.

On Election Day I vote for the guy who says he’ll do stuff, and it’s easy to do it, and it’ll be fast, and I’ll like the outcome. I won’t vote for the party that gave up 30 years ago and whose message is basically “come on guys we’re trying really hard but this governing thing is impossible!”

That’s how, basically. That and bigots.

The sooner you realize the vast majority of humans are simply not very intelligent, the more everything starts making sense. And the more depressed you will be.

Because the rich do a LOT to make it turn out that way.

• News is largely controlled by capitalists.

• Education has been gutted in a lot of places to make way for private schools.

• Corporations can contribute tons of money to candidates. Setting aside the possibility that these are effectively bribes, even if that weren't the case, the candidates who get that money get to put out more ads and have more campaign infrastructure such as travel funds, staffers, etc.

• Various kinds of voter suppression.

• From the very founding of the country, the election system and government has been set up to hamper political participation. Obviously there was the fairly narrow franchise at the start. But even with that expanded, we have the electoral college, unequal apportionment, gerrymandering, first past the post, closed primaries, a court that's specifically there to slow down popular will, etc.

• Just being a representative "democracy" puts a barrier between people and the policies they want. You rarely if ever get to vote on policies. You have to vote for a candidate. And the candidate is a whole bundle of policies, but also a record, a personality, etc. So there can be all sorts of political messaging about candidates which has nothing to do with what their policies are. Because of the duopoly party system that is all but ensured by the aforementioned voting system, you aren't even going to have a candidate you can vote for that will represent your interests. And after all that, even if you manage to vote for someone who says they'll do the things you want... then they get into office and you're back on the sidelines. They go and do whatever it was they actually wanted to do, and you have fairly limited recourse for holding them accountable. The most you can do is decide to vote against them next election, but now you're back to square one.

• Broader, more participatory forms of political organizing have been violently repressed. Just look at the history of union busting or the police violence during the civil rights movement or even now, etc. In the workplace, where you're most likely to find others who share your class interests, your boss has a lot of control over you and it's in their interest to make sure employees don't talk politics and view each other as competition rather than potential allies.

• Along similar lines, racism has been used as a tool to divide people who would otherwise share class interests so they wouldn't focus their attention on capitalists.

Moral of the story: There is a long history of people struggling against capitalists for a better life and an equally long history of capitalists using every trick in the book to keep them from that goal. The political landscape you see today is the result of that history. Learn from it.

Because the rich pretend like it's in peoples interest, people believe them because oh they are rich they must know what they are talking about, and because people are stupid.

"I might be rich one day"

Generally people tend to focus on one thing and don't pay any attention to the side effects. Morons want lower taxes for themselves and don't pay attention to the fact that the wealthy get the most benefit out of conservative cuts or that they just defunded the benefits of having a government like enforced food safety regulations. Or they care about abortion because they buy lies about post birth abortions and ignore everything else. Or they just teally hate immigrants and want to be mad and don't care that the party of hate works against their other self interests.

Many people are stupid. Like really, really stupid.

Because they've successfully been conned into thinking that what's in the best interests of the rich is in their own best interests too.

Because our brains are not wired for the modern complex world. Most decisions we make, we make thanks to heuristics that are heavily exploited by other people.

One reason I have not read yet: scapegoating. In my country, back in the early 2000s it was the "terrorists" who made it possible to enforce a few unpopular and unconstitutional policies. Nowadays, it is the "immigrants" who take our jobs (we have a job shortage), housing (which was sold off to investors) and health care (which was sold off to investors). Point to a group that cannot defend itself and people will vote in your favor.

• Because propaganda works. If propaganda didn't work, companies would not advertise products and politicians wouldn't run campaigns. Rich sponsors fund politicians who promise to look after their interests. Well-funded politicians run better campaigns and win.

• Because politicians are, nearly without exception, above middle class, if not outright rich. They won't act too radically against their own class interests.

The only solution I know comes from ancient Athens. Sortition -> you hold a lottery to draw representatives. A few extremely stupid people will be drawn into parliament, but idiots are far better than sociopaths, and the current system gives undue representation to sociopaths (willing to climb over bodies if that gets them to power). If one then dislikes the idea of a considerable percentage of bumbling fools (as opposed to cunning predators) in parliament, one must feed everyone well, treat all childhood diseases and educate everyone as well as possible. As if their rational decisions were needed tomorrow.

Two camps

1. They don't know any better.

Basically leftists-in-training that haven't read enough wikipedia articles on Reagan yet.

2. People voting and believing political opinions with their gut instinct

Don't bother, and if you see one with a nazi flag, punch them in the face.

Put simply: They’re being lied to. Consistently and perniciously.

The lie is that their vote is going to benefit them somehow. Or that it’s going to hurt someone else exclusively. And, sometimes, it’s both—that it’ll hurt someone else, while bringing a benefit.

In all three cases, the real truth—that they themselves will still suffer—is neatly hidden away.

Informed consent: People are not against exploitation. They just want to switch sides. Why would you vote for something that cripples you once you got rich?

Uninformed consent: They honestly believe they are voting for their own interests.

Indifferent consent: Usually single issue or ideology-driven voter.

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In the US at least, the systematic demolishing of the education system has led to a vast reduction in overall education and critical thinking skills. This was done on purpose. That, combined with the unexpected boon of the Internet, has led to massive wealth shifting from the many to the few.

You see the results of this change everywhere, especially on the Internet. Lack of basic spelling and grammar skills are just one symptom. All of that is to say that humans are primates and easily trained.

The root of it is that we don't teach skepticism or critical thinking in public schools. Seriously.

Question authority. Question everything. But especially question authority. They rarely have your best interests in mind.

This is a complex question, but up front first and foremost in any Capitalist country, voting will always benefit the rich, even FDR style Social Democracy came about as concessions to prevent revolution in the context of a decimated working class and a rising USSR.

People, generally, vote along their class interests, but these are handled in a different manner depending on which country you are in. Using the US as an example, the DNC caters to social progressivism, while the GOP caters to social conservativism. On foreign policy, the GOP and DNC are near identical, and when it comes to domestic economic policy, the DNC caters slightly more to urban voters while the GOP caters to rural voters.

This is all, however, in the context of parties that function as businesses that sell policy to Capitalists. Both parties serve Capital, because Capital is what holds real power. It holds power over the media, the state, everything.

The answer to how to fix this is getting workers to organize. When workers organize, they raise their social and class awareness and can accomplish far more than atomized individuals can.

A lot of people have aspirations of themselves being rich and if they can vote like rich people they participate in the rich aesthetic.

Ignorance and gullibility. I fall for misinformation all the time, especially when it confirms my own biases and it takes real effort to maintain a mindset of "yes this sounds true, but is it actually?" It is also terribly inefficient. If someone tells me, when I was a kid, that daddylonglegs spiders are the most poisonous, I am likely going to just go "neat" and now I think that and say it. If you stop and verify EVERYTHING EVER you have no time to do anything in life. This makes the filter of critical thinking.....critical.

Also, it isn't about being stupid (though that helps). Some of the smartest people I know are conspiracy theory nutjobs. They can easily draw parallels between disparate facts, but can't filter their findings or understand correlation doesn't equal causation.

Here are a few examples of what I've seen them do in the time I've been alive.

• Lowering the amount of educated people by various means such as cutting (on not properly increasing) funding, restricting access to it,...
• Limiting access to (somewhat) correct information by buying up news media outlets, severely influencing social media, telling people that their "alternative media" is the only way to get correct information, and so much more
• Actively pitting groups of people against each other, black vs white, immigrants vs citizens, women vs men,...

Propaganda. Lack of education. There's a reason they want to defund public schools. They're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. :)

The rich have billions to spend on focus groups so they know exactly which buttons to push so that people vote the way they want.

People get more upset about a bad friend than a real enemy.

This question is actually pretty old. Already ancient Greek / Roman philosophers discussed this.

Google the word 'anacyclosis' if you want to learn more. Alternatively here is a video link. I marked the position where the cycle explanation starts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqsBx58GxYY&t=371

Often when I see someone accusing people of voting against their own interests, it's pretty clear that the person making the accusation has not taken the time to understand the values others are basing their choice on.
If I could rob a person and be confident that I would never be caught and punished for doing so, am I acting against my own self interest if I chose not to rob them because it goes against my moral code? No, of course not. But based on the way some people talk about voting against ones self interest, you might think I just cheated myself out of free money. Is it possible that a person might "vote against their own interests" because of a misinformed view? of course, but you'll never understand a person's motivations by chosing to paint them with broad strokes based on your prejudices instead of getting to know them individually and trying to understand what it is they truly value.

Because they want to see other people suffer

Because they've been fooled into thinking it will either benefit them, or benefit people they feel "deserve it."

Do we actually vote to benefit the rich?

Many vote for leaders that openly cater to the rich, but I don’t know that we actually consciously vote to deliberately help the rich.

Those elected people are the ones telling everyone that the rich are the job creators. They used to feed us the farce that trickle-down was viable, they don’t even bother with the lie anymore. The rich are just squatters on wealth. They get that wealth by consolidating businesses, hoarding assets like real estate, creating artificial scarcity, enshittifying everything, and squeezing labor for more productivity while expending massive effort to minimize overall compensation.

And they own the media. All of it. Even the “liberal” media is mealy at best about taxing wealth or anything critical of the uber-wealthy, anything right of center is openly against tax, particularly of anyone with wealth, making the wealthy the “victims” of the left’s ideas while the wealthy are just parasites victimizing us all.

All that aside, the real crux of the issue is identity politics. Being a sycophant of the rich is no longer any different than being a evangelical supply-side Jesus CINO, pro-gun, anti-government, anti-tax, anti-environmental regs, blah blah and all the rest of the mulish conservative BS.

They don’t actually care if we cater to the rich. They care that their team says we should bend over and give the rich everything. Just like their team says school shootings are an acceptable price for having your own personal arsenal, or spreading a potentially deadly disease is better than being inconvenienced by closed restaurants.

Obstinate tribalism has gleefully supplanted critical thought.