Wednesday, August 9, 2023

Explaining American Politics in One Graph

Data comes from the American election survey, via Scott Siskind. In 2020, 84% of respondents said the government is run for the benefit of "a Few Big Interests." Siskind traced this farther back and found that 2002 was a high point, probably a post-9/11 effect, and the number in the 90s was as high as 79%.

The sense that the government cares about somebody other than you is at the root of political anger in America.
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2 comments:

G. Verloren said...

It's a fairly true perception - the government primary serves the interests of the wealthy elite, and everyone else gets bread and circuses. Where the perception gets skewed is that the anger gets redirected away from the oligarchs and toward the common people, particular toward "the other side" of the political divide.

We live in a country in which blue-collar rural individuals living in poverty flocked to vote for Donald Trump - the millionaire from New York City who inherited his father's real estate empire and who craps in a literal golden toilet - because "he's one of us".

We live in a country in which those same blue-collar rural individuals living in poverty have an overwhelming hatred for blue-collar rural Mexican immigrants also living in poverty, with whom they share an incredible amount culturally - they value the same traditional views of family, religion, self-reliance, etc.

Why this unnatural divide? Because it's intentionally manufactured by the rich and powerful - get the poor to hate each other, to keep them from hating the rich. Lay off a bunch of workers so you can save money "outsourcing" their jobs overseas and then tell them "The Mexicans are stealing your jobs!", and voilà - they believe you, they blame the Mexicans, and they don't bat an eye at you laying off even more of them while giving record breaking bonuses to your executives and CEO.

Of course, the hatred that it inspires is valuable in duping the Mexicans too - on the Left, they get told "See? Conservatives hate you!" (which... is true!) "Vote for us instead!". So they do, because... why wouldn't they, when the conservatives are putting people in cages for the "crime" of legally applying to enter the country?

But there are also many Mexican-Americans on the Right as well, and they get told a different sort of tale - "We don't hate ~all~ Mexicans! Just the lazy, selfish, morally bankrupt ones! You know the type. After all, you're one of 'The Good Ones' ". For conservative Mexican-Americans, the play is to hype up all the classic conservative values - family, tradition, religion, self-reliance, etc - and assume them that their fellow conservatives don't Mexicans per se, but just... 'Bad' Mexicans, which - wouldn't you know it - just so happen to be chiefly those who are on the liberal end of the political spectrum.

And on the other side of things, liberals get told "We're here for you, we support you, we won't stand for the conservatives abusing you!"... and then they don't lift a finger, because why would they? They don't want to FIX the divide, because the divide is what profits them, politically and literally. If they actually took steps to combat the political machine's efforts to turn poor people against each other, they would eventually realize that the political Left are complicit with the political Right in maintaining the status quo for their own benefit.

Follow the money. Our corporate media doesn't do things randomly - they deliver very specific messages to very specific audience, to shape their thinking in very specific ways, in order to maintain a conflict which hurts everyone involved, except for the rich and powerful.

It's like rival mafia camps working together to blame crime on rival street gangs, in order to perpetuate a constant state of conflict which deflects blame from them and lets them line their pockets. And it's been this way for a very, very, very long time.

Occasionally, some major external threat is so great that the powers that be decide they need to promote unity and bring the two sides together or they'll both lose - World War II, certain aspects of the Cold War, etc - but once those threats subside, it's back to business as usual.

August 10, 2023 at 6:26 AM
David said...

@Verloren

Funny, my reaction was exactly the opposite: that the people are using the government as a sort of scapegoat for their genuine, spontaneous dislike of each other. And anything the government does to help one group will gore the ox of others.

In the Wikipedia article on the 2019 Lincoln Memorial confrontation, there's a line from a CNN reporter that has stayed with me ever since I read it. She's describing a moment when some of the kids tried to sing and dance along with the Indian elder's drumming, but, she says, they were not "enjoying each other's company."

Coincidentally, I'm reading a fascinating anthropology book that argues that a major function of kings in stateless societies is to serve as scapegoats for the people's anger and frustration over things like drought or their own internal divisions.

August 10, 2023 at 9:18 AM

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