A couple of assholes get their hands on a significant modicum of power and begin exercising asshole-ishness to the Nth degree
Damn, this is definitely a problem with all humans equally.
I am very smart.
For humanity’s entire existence a very small percentage of actually intelligent people have carried the rest.
Humanity, as a whole, is a dumpster fire. If the universe trended toward good we’d have an asteroid with our name on it very soon.
a very small percentage of actually intelligent people have carried the rest
That’s both historically and empirically obviously untrue. The sheer volume of professional labor necessary for our society to function smoothly requires legions of intelligent people showing up every day to solve problems particular to their rarefied areas of expertise. Your cell phone doesn’t work, your car doesn’t start, your pipes don’t carry water, your lights don’t turn on - hell, in more than a few cases your heart doesn’t even beat - without these armies of professionals working, often entirely invisibly, to keep things moving.
The world does not turn without the strong arm of proletariat labor moving the wheel.
But individual intelligence isn’t enough on its own merits. Humanity needs a guiding light to function morally and productively. The professionals down at the power plant keeping the lights on don’t know if they’re powering your dishwasher or your electric chair. Their genius is wasted if the surplus they produce is squandered or applied with malicious intent. Attributing their actions to stupidity is naive, as you’re ignoring their professional role in order to indict them for actions they have little meaningful control over. Appealing for their collective punishment only plays into the wickedness that you claim to oppose.
What we have in our modern moment is a very small percentage of nefarious people controlling our means of communication and observation. Monopolies of print and broadcast media limit what we are allowed to observe. Reams of propaganda, distributed physically and electronically, pollute our ability to understand the material world. Rational impulses are distorted by fearmongering. Prudent decision making is complicated by deceit and fraud. Our homes are enclosed, our labor is commodified, and our ability to organize against it is criminalized thanks to the actions of the few in an effort to predate on the many.
Believing that we lack a critical mass of “smart” people is a huge mistake, because it demands too much from singular human intelligence and too little from the social structures that perpetuate history, culture, and identity. What we lack in this moment isn’t brilliance. We are thick with geniuses all competing against one another in a zero-sum game. What we lack is a cohesive and durable community. One that sees the virtue of charity and compassion. One that treats the most vulnerable as generously as the most valuable.
You don’t need a genius to see the merits of a neighborhood full of people you can trust. You don’t need to be a genius in order to survive a world where you love your neighbors more than you fear them.
Humanity as individuals - largely good
Humanity in tribes - horrendous monsters
If it makes anyone feel any better, I’m pretty sure the election was very effectively rigged. So I think it’s by far and away most likely that a large majority of voters did not, in fact, vote for this.
Abstinence demonstrates a lack of critical thought. They chose this path. They are complicit.
We should probably spend years whining and crying about stolen elections like cuntservatives did. Worked for them.
The violent insurrection with no punishment afterward seems like a fun time.
Not enough questions were asked about Elon’s involvement in this.
Elon doesn’t even have to be involved, is everyone forgetting the news of mail-in ballot boxes being trashed and vandalized days before the count? How many of those people actually got to recast their ballots?
That’s because many of them chose to stay home. That’s also a choice.
not always, since for some stupid reason election day is on a Tuesday in America, some people simply are unable to vote
Plus all of the other, more active forms of voter suppression, like banning felons from voting, surprise deregistrations, sending absentee ballots out late, and requiring people to wait multiple hours while forbidding people from giving them food or water.
Especially the deregistrations are wild to me. Where I live you don’t even have to register for elections. If they know you exist, you automatically get an invitation by mail and even if you didn’t get it/lost it, you can go to your town hall and ask for one (of course only in the town where you officially live).
systemic solutions for systemic problems
Every state allows time off work to vote. Most of them, it’s paid time off. Plenty of early voting and vote by mail opportunites around, too.
Yeah that’s what the law says. But there’s a big difference between the law and reality that those of us who have worked poverty jobs know well.
Definitely don’t exercise your rights, especially when someone is infringing on them.
Sometimes food and shelter are more important than your rights. I wish I were nobler but that has been the fact before for me.
Never missed an election though.
You’re not wrong. I also suspect that most of the eligible voters who decided to stay home were not in a food or shelter crisis.
Sowing distrust on the election system is exactly what Trump wants.
you have become the very thing you swore to destroy
I’m not saying it’s definitely true but this is pretty convincing. The author lists their credentials at the end of the article.
Here’s a preview- a shit ton of mail-in ballots were disqualified. If you are black your mail-in ballot was nine times more likely to be trashed than a white person’s.
yeah I’m pretty sure that if america was actually democratic, meaning every citizen is able to vote, the republican party wouldn’t even exist anymore, since only privileged fuckheads vote for them
All we would have to do is eliminate the electoral college and they’d never win another presidency. Yeah Trump won popular vote this time by 1.5% but the electoral college keeps people from voting.
And really a lot of poor white people vote for Republicans too, against their best interest, for very sad reasons.
But yes you are correct if this were a real democracy they wouldn’t stand a chance.
Imagine how Jimmy Carter felt. He wanted to live long enough to vote…
“Well, this is going to be bad… for everyone else! JIMMY OUT!!” flatlines
If I was his family, I’d tell him Harris won by a single vote. Guy was already on his deathbed and would never know. Let him go out on a high note
Nah, I’m down for a vengeful Carter ghost.
Humanity doesn’t innately have capitalism, at least not the majority.
Capitalism is a direct result of human nature. There’s a reason why we had to regulate the hell out of it, and that’s because humans, by and large, are greedy selfish animals.
That is bullshit essentialism. Humans are not born greedy or evil.
In the past many people could also say that slavery, murder or rape were also in human nature. They are not.
They are, though. There’s a reason why we have laws trying to govern the behavior, and why people still do it regardless of the legality of it.
It’s nice to think that we’re an altruistic species, but the evidence is seriously lacking.
Nah, the evidence suggests that most children develop empathy before they’re 5 years old. Altruism is an innate trait of many intelligent, social species and we aren’t an exception. The problem is that we live within systems that reward anti-social behavior. The laws are to control the minority. (In theory. They don’t work when the broken people get too much power.)
I think the vast majority of people just want to go to work, accomplish something that makes the world a little better, get a pat on the back and then go home. There are some people who are selfish greedy animals and capitalism was built entirely by and for those people. They get a thrill out of getting ahead and making more money and feeling superior to others the rest of us get to suffer.
that is just an oft-repeated myth that capitalism uses to perpetuate itself.
But it isn’t. Capitalism didn’t just magically appear. It’s the result of human greed after the industrial revolution.
If capitalism had been possible before the IR, it would have happened. Most of human history is the people in power abusing the masses for personal gain.
I agree it is the result of human greed. But as always the systems we live in were created by the wealthy. The average human of the time didn’t want that they got.
It’s still human behavior, and human behavior also includes following those people.
But is it really following when there’s no other choice but revolution?
Yes, it is.
Because when revolution does happen, things can become pretty harmonious. For a while. Then the greed and corruption seep back in and we’re right back where we were.
History repeats itself because of human behavior.
