Trying to survive
Exactly as planned by the reigning political parties.
For one, the United States lacks a good press corps of independent journalists with broad reach.
Everything is either politicized or commercialized. Shock value sells. Balanced rational discourse does not. Polarization makes too much money for too many people.
On top of that, a systematic destruction of education and a stranglehold of religion practically makes ignorance inevitable.
Maybe we could repair it, but it would take Republicans being blocked from making any decisions for several decades at this point.
I’m still amazed judges are so clearly divided into groups. I consider being a judge to require a degree of impartiality and authority that anyone clearly identifying as democratic or republican should be disqualified for. Democratic perhaps not since their more centric than left leaning or far left :/. Point being the one occupation that mandates impartiality is highly politicised. Of course everything is f*cked. The rule of law is not dictated by the majority or enforced by the trustworthy.
It takes a lot of effort to stay on top of things, plus the research it takes to sort out fact from fiction. After all that investment, the amount of difference one can make is miniscule.
“I don’t live in a swing state so my vote does not matter anyways”.
I am not a US citizen, that is just something I picked up from a random interview of a non-voter a while ago. I don’t know if that is a common opinion, but it made sense to me in explaining political disinterest.
Ok so I study political science (second semester so not an expert at all) and last semester I had to research a lot about turnout rates for people in less fortunate situations. The answer is really simple actually. If people live in shit situations they don’t trust the government and they start to not care. Education is worse when you don’t have enough money. There is also a constant struggle to make politics feel closer to the people because that directly impacts if you will educate yourself and go participate. Unfortunately politics feels like it is either actively against you or at least doesn’t do anything for you if you are at the bottom .One thing that might be important in the US is that slums decrease political awareness / willingness to vote because these people who are probably not going to care are surrounded by more people that don’t care. So if noone around you says something good about the government you are going to hate it even more.
All of this leads to an underrepresentation of these groups which leads to their problems being overlooked or underestimated which leads to worse conditions which leads to less political activity which leads to less representation…its a cycle that makes millions of peoples lives worse every day. And at some point they just don’t care about politics because politics seems to not care about them. None of my sources are in English so get bozoed I could be lying about all of this.
Many reasons. Regular politics is boring, and pop culture Facebook TikTok YouTube is all so much more captivating.
Also, so many Americans are struggling to survive, so there isn’t enough time to engage with the political process in a meaningful way. I wonder if it’s an intentional effort by the uber wealthy.
Inconvenient coincidence or grand plan, either way, its a crystal clear indicator that the whole constitution needs a rewrite.
I feel like that may be the closest unifying political opinion, which we need… We can hash out the details Constitutional Convention style after we get rid of the muck…
It’s so much easier to take someone at their word instead of looking into the many interwoven facts and details yourself. In fact, it can take so long fact-checking things these days to combat mis/disinformation that people simply… don’t.
It’s way more laborious to disprove a lie than it is to simply recount a lie.
Russia may not have a decent military, or a decent government, but they are masters at controlling other countries public opinions.
I had a comment removed a few days ago because Lemmy has an automod which accused me of being ablist. In reality I was responding to a comment that was trying to push the narrative that Ukraine started the war, and is responsible for the war. It went on to say many MANY more completely untrue things, but definately tried painting russia as the good guy. I basically accused him of being brain dead, with a word that the automod didn’t like.
But I’m pretty convinced they were a russian disinformation agent.
I wanna know what word you used…
Medical term, used to describe a partially or fully non-functioning brain. In the 80s and 90s it became slang for “idiot”, and somehow became a politically incorrect term. Now people are offended by term. Starts with R.
If it’s what I think it is that’s pretty mild…
It is. It’s probably exactly what hou think. But bots don’t care, and AI is too primitive to be useful. Yet thats what moderation is sometimes. Especially on reddit.
Lots of great answers here.
I think one under mentioned cause is the effect of social media algorithms.
All major social media platforms use machine learning algorithms decide what to show in your feed. The algorithms are programmed to show you the things that have historically kept you on the site longer.
It’s human nature to upvote/read/support/engage with the things that agree with our world views, and downvote/dismiss/disengage/discredit the things that disagree with our worldview.
These two facts combined result in you seeing more of the content that aligns with your worldview, and more of the content from people who share your worldview. We’re all funnelled into communities of like minded individuals that repeat what we already believe, reinforcing whatever that is regardless of how factually correct it might be.
Dissenting information that might cause you to reconsider your position or become more politically aware is automatically filtered out.
And it’s not just social media either, even the algorithms behind search engines display this behaviour.
Long before social media existed, Google was tailoring search results to match the things you tend to click on. If you searched for news and typically clicked on the headlines biased towards one side or the other Google would start ranking site with that bias higher.
This wasn’t intentional (at least not originally) it was just a side effect of the algorithm, trying to figure out what you were most likely looking for.
For someone who, for example, believes the Earth is flat. If they were to type “is the Earth flat?” Into a search engine. They are much more likely to get results that “prove” the Earth is flat, then a person who believes the Earth is round, because the algorithm knows that they tend to click on articles that “confirm” the earth is flat.
Algorithms used by social media and search engines today, make it genuinely difficult to maintain a balanced worldview and find unbiased answers to any question. They are all designed to keep you engaged, And it is human nature to engage more with the things we agree with, regardless of truth.
The average American has been convinced that when they are done being a worker for the day, they become something “better” and more important… the consumer. The consumer has no needs other than consumption. The consumer has no wants other than consumption. Their fellows economically simply become their servants as that is the illusion created by the culture of consumption.
Look at most folks making less than $100k/year and who are voting Republican. Ask them why they are voting and they will give you a myriad of reasons, but (in my experience) it mostly boils down to “they’re hurting the other team and I want to be part of the winning team.” Some liberals will give you the same type of response, but it’s less common (or less enthusiastically so maybe). It’s less that our electorate has been dulled to political activity and more that politics has been turned into a participation sport with teams, branding, and merchandise.
In my experience, the greatest example of this are the folks who’ve been completely demoralized saying “both sides are the same.” It is true that both the Republicans and Democrats are the same… if the only way politics affects you is economically (or if you can convince yourself that that is the case). It’s not the politicians or even the parties that are hurting the average American, it’s the Consumer Capitalism all sides of our politics back that’s hurting us. Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you a fairytale like “USSR was good actually” or “PRC is good actually.” Just as America and it’s systems have problems, those countries and their systems had/have their own problems.
Being the core of the post-WWII Western hegemony, American politics has problems that are uniquely it’s own; the old adage of “there are no poor Americans, only temporarily embarrassed millionaires” sadly holds true. It affects every level of our politics, culture, and society to the point where no one needs to propagandize to that effect… it’s merely self-reinforces at this point. You work doubles at the Walmart to feed your family and to afford your cell phone plan because you’re just one magic algorithm lift away from TikTok stardom… it’ll happen -any day now- why worry about politics?
Our media apparatus and schooling don’t promote critical thinking.
A lot of people just don’t want to think about it. It oftentimes feels like your vote doesn’t matter, which is generally true in Presidential elections unless you’re in a swing state. And it often feels like you’re just voting for the shiniest of two turds anyway.
Getting involved in politics at a local level, where your decisions actually have the most effect on your day-to-day life, is just too boring I guess.
I’ve looked into getting involved locally. Unfortunately, the game is stacked against anyone with an unconventional work schedule, who works long shifts, who is non-white, queer, or disabled, who is a non-English speaker…
It’s set up so the majority of people who wield the power and influence are fairly affluent, privileged groups. This is by design.
If you ask any revolutionary movement what led to their success, they’ll tell you “if the deck is stacked against you, give up.”
That perfect equal society gonna fall from the sky any day now
(I’m sorta just talking shit, tbh. I’m not doing anything about the problem either. But I do think the central point is fair that of course the deck is stacked; that’s why work to change it is important. Every single movement to correct the wrong people being in power has by definition had to start with the deck stacked against it.)
A mixture of poor education in some states combined with a steady, deliberate demoralizing of the voters by the political class.
I call it the propagandosphere
I think the real problem is that they think they’re aware, but are ignorant or unwilling to learn about the actual issues.
For example, with climate change it’s a lot easier to think and want it to be not real. They know what it is, but it’s a lot easier to believe it’s not real. It’s a lot more effort and leaving your comfort zone to learn about it and realize how fucked it is.
Most people build themselves into bubbles, where changing their views would force them to readjust their world views and for most, they dont want to
This is what I see from my folks. That believe anything that supports their existing views, but anything that would require them to understand something they aren’t aware of, they suddenly don’t trust the sources. They say things like “science can be used to say all sorts of things, we can’t know that they’re right this time!”
These are the same parents who taught me critical thinking when reading newspaper articles when I was a kid. Suddenly they can’t be bothered to employ the same critical thinking to articles they read today.
I still blame Facebook and the other similar social media platforms. They have catered to and encouraged the short attention spans we have today
My mom is the exact same way!
It may be true, but this is programmed in by corporate media and our lack of education on these subjects. Maintaining our echo chambers is by design, and not our design.
Do you have stats do back that up, though? Like actual data that says people in other countries are less politically ignorant than americans?
Brexit?
Your link just gives information about political awareness in America, there is nowhere anywhere that compares them to any other country like I asked for.
P.s. Trump lost the popular vote.
The question doesn’t compare Americans to other countries. I found some more interesting stats. That seems like a good question to post to /asklemmy.
I definitely specified in my question for a comparison to other countries. You replied with an irrelevant link.
Do you have stats do back that up, though? Like actual data that says people in other countries are less politically ignorant than americans?
