• namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
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    1 month ago

    I actually agree (more or less) with everything you’re saying. But the problem is, I don’t think it really matters to anyone. I think there’s still one point that people still don’t seem to be understanding:

    Inflation and economic issues trump (pun not intended) all of the things you listed. We have to eat every day. And when you’re living on the edge, every meal, every time you eat, you’re constantly reminded of how precarious your life is. All the things you mentioned are great, but frankly they don’t matter when you’re just worried about whether you’re still going to be able to afford food at the end of the week.

    Revolutions are not started by people who don’t have healthcare or education, or any of those other abstract things that may affect them in the future. They come from people who are hungry. And stressed. Stress and hunger really start eating your brain after a while, and people experiencing that start doing very nasty, desperate things like resorting to the kinds of demagoguery that the far-right is pushing. And this is what I mean when I say nothing is getting better under liberals - more and more people are falling into the cracks day by day, and if you don’t address this, then none of the other things don’t matter. Yes, in theory, all the economic policies that liberals propose should help with that, but if the effect is not immediate, then it’s not happening fast enough and people will continue to revolt.

    I really think people who keep bringing up how this will ultimately hurt their voters need to understand this better. They’re not wrong, but I do think they’re missing the point. The standard of living in the west has been declining for a long time as I alluded above, and that’s why people are starting to do desperate things - because they’ve run out of patience and have seen the status quo for long enough, they’ll take any alternative and have no choice left but to overlook all of the criminal things these despots say and do. Maybe they do care about all those criminal things, or maybe they don’t, but what really matters is that they want drastic action to take place. They don’t want policies - they want results and they want it fast.

    And I don’t think liberals understand or care to understand this. That’s what I mean when I say that liberals are making things worse. Until you stop the tide of more and more people falling behind economically, none of the things you pointed out are ever going to matter to people. You’re not going to win elections that way - even against the likes of Donald Trump.

    • foggenbooty@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I think liberals understand this, at some level, but they know they are powerless to do anything about it within the system they’ve built for themselves. They can’t outright say this, or they would never be re-elected.

      They have completely embraced neoliberal economic policies, and thus depend on corporate money and support. The only thing they can do is toss people a bone here and there, and implement slow policies that might help over time, but won’t rock the boat now. Business do not like sudden changes, they want predictable stability as that’s what their investments and forcasting is built on.

      Conservatives are also in the pocket of corporations, but they simply have no problem lying to their voters. They will point the finger, blame the other, make outlandish claims, and purposefully mislead the public while having no intention of helping them. They just want to solidify their power and line their pockets. People fall for these lies because they’re tired of the status quoe and any kind of major change sounds like a benifit. They’re shooting themselves in the foot, but they don’t know it yet.