• jonathan7luke@lemmy.zip
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    21 hours ago

    I really wish that were the case. Unfortunately though, most of the people involved in US politics are not idiots, and believing that they are is playing into their strategy.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 hours ago

      I read it as the idiots being the majority of American, both the voters who voted for them and the ones who over the years kept voting for people who were plowing, fertilizing and sowing the field where something like Trumpist would grow (you know, undermining Rule Of Law, helping the few pillage the things of the many, completely destroying social mobility in America and so on).

      Trump’s a clown but he’s not stupid (not especially smart, either, but still smart enough to say whatever it takes and play that dumb-person’s-idead-of-a-smart-person character to manipulate simpletons) and his handlers are most definitely not stupid.

    • Commiunism@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 hours ago

      Yup, the things happening nowadays in US and the World as a whole are just a culmination of previous decades, like policies introduced during that time and shift in material conditions such as how much profit do companies make and in turn the purchasing power of workers, it’s not a silly little accident. Though of course, it’s politically beneficial to pretend otherwise, in a sense of “these guys are stupid and look where they’ve taken things, vote for the previous guys instead to return to the previous sane status quo!!”.

      Like just look at Trump and discourse surrounding him - the guy is a bastard don’t get me wrong, but a lot of the most-public most-hated policies of his such as ICE raids and the “alligator camps” were first introduced by Obama and Biden respectively, and even used much more in terms of how many people they affected. Of course, the media didn’t really report on it that much as they do today.

    • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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      20 hours ago

      Actually, a lot of them are idiots.

      Unfortunately, it doesn’t take intelligence to fuck everything up. Case in point:

      Hitler Was Incompetent and Lazy—and His Nazi Government Was an Absolute Clown Show

      I think the bigger problem is many of us have been conditioned to think idiots are mostly benign and nothing to really worry about, when the opposite is true. Idiocy in power is very dangerous.

      The worst atrocities in history have been committed mostly when idiots were in charge.

      e: if you read that article mentally substituting ‘Hitler’ with ‘Trump’, it’s uncanny how it’s nearly 100% accurate.

      • Boing@lemmy.ca
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        17 hours ago

        It sure doesn’t take intelligence to fuck everything up. Look at Canada over the last 10 years

        • LillyPip@lemmy.ca
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          16 hours ago

          You’re not wrong. But at least Canada has largely staved off the worst of the idiots (for now), mostly because the insanity to the south has been a wake up call.

          Loads of people really want to follow in the US’s footsteps, tho.

    • BremboTheFourth@piefed.ca
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      16 hours ago

      Building on what LillyPip said, they’re not bumbling idiots who have no idea what’s going on and are just stumbling through life. They ARE, however, idiots who think they can only get ahead by putting other people down and believe themselves smart enough to reshape society; that they’re guaranteed to come out on top after making it collapse.