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54% of American adults have the reading comprehnsion skills of a 5th grader, or worse.
How?
Republicans have spent many decades defunding public education, with no effective pushback.
Republicans have also spent many decades developing psychological operations aimed at controlling the news and churches.
Yes, this as well.
All while the Democrat strategy was to... not do any effective counter propoganda at the same scale or in the same manner whatsoever, keep relying on the traditional media outlets that they also simultaneously know are dying and becoming more biased against them.
But then they also do a surprise pikachu face when the mediums they know are dying and irrelevant... don't reach people.
They simply don't have the funding to do the same operations at scale. Which is the whole point. Recently it was found out that Russians were funding Tim Fool and other right wing influencers to the tune of nearly $100,000 a week to put out a barely edited propaganda video once a week. Every two weeks he made as much money as recognizable notably left leaning media members like Sam Cedar earn in a year.
People keep posting about how Democrats keep breaking fundraising records. They only break them once every 4 years generally. And those are only the records we're aware of.
Between all the dark money behind groups like Fox News, OANN, daily wire, The Blaze, and millions of other smaller propaganda Outlets. None of whom turn a profit on their own or make money. They are funded through wealthy Investments because they know the propaganda pays dividends.
Democrats haven't had funding like that since before Reagan broke the unions. Which is specifically why Reagan broke the unions. And a lot of our problems can be traced back to the loss of Union power and Union fundraising.
You want to know why Democrats don't pay a lot of attention to the unions anymore. This is why. The unions and people in general cannot even begin to compete with the amount of money sloshing around out there for conservatives. And that's why Democrats have been out there so busy chasing it. Until we get rid of money in politics. Or actually find a way for regular people to begin to push back in similar ways there won't be a change.
Well we can't get money out of politics because all the money will vote against getting money out of politics.
So any plan to do this will have to involve radical action outside of the norms of polite society which may or may not be against the rules of this community to describe in greater detail and specificity.
There's plenty social action we've only begun to use. Exclusion, ostracization, and especially ridicule to it's fullest extent. People in the last 8 years have started cutting out conservative family members. We need to go further. Are you on twitter? Then you should be ridiculed and harassed about it till you leave. Facebook? Same thing. Do you watch cable news, or any outlet that has these people. Especially if they don't have the journalistic integrity to push back. Who the hell is dumb enough to watch that shit. Not anyone we would willingly associate with. Though that's only part of the equation.
We also need to promote and work hard to support actual non profit driven journalism. Building up viable alternatives. Nationwide and in our communities. There are people out there who need a bigger audience. If you're familiar with YouTube coffeezilla for instance.
Our complacency has been our downfall. This time a French Revolution style action will not work. They won't all be located conveniently nearby to go after. They will be all over the world many of them hard to reach. In the end even France has still rotted from the inside regardless. And I shouldn't even have to mention the Follies of Vladimir Lenin. Whose ideology has failed everywhere it's been attempted.
And the biggest hardest thing of them all. We need to be able to reach out to many of the disaffected people brainwashed by wealthy right Wingers. They would be recruits to turn against the people who currently own them. But that's the hardest thing. Reaching so many of these people seems impossible.
She raised a Billion dollars faster than any candidate in history. Do an audit and you will see the funds were squandered. She had the money.
Nowhere did I deny that she did. I simply stated that amount of money is a drop in the bucket when it comes to politics. Especially gathered once every 4 years. $1 billion every 4 years even if it's spent perfectly would still be ineffective compared to the multiple billions of dollars spent per year collectively pushing conservative propaganda.
And yes I know but but but Obama. Things have changed drastically since 2008. The propaganda has concealed and consolidated throughout our entire mass media to an extent unimaginable to someone in 2008.
And while it is bad for Democrats to mismanage funds. Bad democrat. Bad democrat. It's kind of missing the forest for the trees in this instance. And helping the opposition more. Keeping ourselves divided. But there are a lot of people on money more focused on destroying things than building things so that's not unusual.
This seems like a good place to link Robert Evans BTB episode: "How Conservatism Won" in which "Robert sits down with David Bell to discuss how a consortium of rich failsons got together to fund a network of right wing think tanks and shift American culture in a fun new direction. (note: it was not actually fun at all)."
Our current situation really is the culmination of almost 70 years of rightwing efforts. They've mobilized their base and that base turn outs to city councils to set up Nativity scenes and school board meetings to ban books. There are dozens of "grassroots movements" with varying interests, (some funded by shady thinktanks but some funded by low level true believers). At the end of the day they all show up to vote for their guy(s) to push their party the direction they want, it's worked and that party has mainstreamed extremism. Their judges and policy wonks are all Foundation Vetted and Approved ideologues.
The left lost, now is the time. Get a couple guns (a long one and a short one) and learn how to use them. Learn some basic first aid, you really just need to know how to stabilize someone. Start networking with like-minded people in your communities. The police will not protect us, they’ve proven they’ll happily club senior citizens to the ground and shoot any protesters in the face with rubber bullets while escorting a rightwing murderer to safety.
Iran was a secular, liberal state until almost 1980 when they (mostly legitimately) elected an Islamist theocracy; it could happen here.
tl;dl the rich hated FDRs New Deal and immediately set to work to undo everything he did and have been pretty successful, it'll likely take decades of work to undo the damage that's been done IF "the left" can wake up.
Somehow behind the bastards is never fun but always enjoyable. Well at least if you enjoy learning. It can still be depressing but enjoyable. And Robert addresses everything with the right type of black/ sardonic humor to make it more palatable. I have not seen / watched that episode? I think they're doing full video now as well. At least I remember seeing him do some with Cody Johnston and a few others Katie too. But behind the bastards is always good.
we're going to fix this. i don't know how yet. and it won't be easy. and it won't be short term. but we're going to fix this, so read to a kid. make them remember reading time as the best part of their day. make them love the things AI can't twist: physical artifacts
I appreciate your optimism, but my realism says no, no we probably won't.
We've got a maximum of 20 years, probably closer to 10, before millions, and then tens and then hundreds of millions of people around the world will be starving to death and attempting to mass migrate due to climate change, which we will not stop or mitigate.
Governments around the world will continue becoming more authoritarian.
Maybe we can make small, individual differences in our personal lives, but no, barring a worldwide overthrow of capitalism in some way that also does not result in a collapse of mass agriculture...
No, we are looking at famine, destruction and chaos, and decent, critical thought oriented education will be an even more minor funding priority for all but the ruling class and their neo-nobility children.
we have two options to follow. we can do everything we can to make things better, or we can do nothing and everyone dies. personally i do not consider the latter viable. the former requires instilling hope that better things are possible. and here's the thing: if we all band together against authoritarianism we will reach some people who are currently not awake to the possibilities. to reiterate, it will not be easy and it will not be short term, but if you ask me of the two possible outcomes, the one where everyone dies or the one where everyone gets to be free, i prefer the one where everyone gets to be free. so i'm gonna do everything in my power to bring that one to pass, even if it's hard, unpleasant, or at times like right now seemingly impossible, but keep in mind every group faced with destruction passed down the messages they felt were most important, and always the message of the value of hope makes it through. hope is ultimately a weapon of resistance, one i refuse to give up
My dude thanks for the message of positivity. Personally I think we’re fucked regardless but I do appreciate the thread of hope. I try to do what I’m can individually as well and sometimes it feels futile but it’s good to know that there are some of us (dozens even!) still trying to do the right thing.
Oh I didn't say we should do nothing.
What I am saying is, is that we are past the threshold of a good future, for all but the hyper wealthy.
Yes, we can do things to make it a less bad future for the masses, but there is no realistic plan where everyone, all 340ish million Americans, all 8 billionish humans, get to be free.
Telling everyone authoritarianism is bad is not an effective strategy.
Evidence: It's what leftists and liberals have been doing for 8 years and it resulted in the greatest Republican sweep since Reagan.
You have to actually do things, things which have a realistic chance of working.
If your plan is to hope really hard, the lesson our hypothetical ancestors will learn is: Hopium cheerleading is an exhausting, virtue signalling waste of time that accomplishes nothing when it is not paired with actual, actionable plans.
Have you got any of those?
For one thing, this is what fiction is for!
If you're like me, you probably know some people that fit in that neo-liberal democrat space: nice people, but definitely the kind MLK talked about as being an obstacle to progress. A lot of the time, they're also the people that "aren't into politics," because they have straight white privilege, and these issues usually don't affect them directly.
One of the reasons the right has been so successful since Roe v Wade is because they get organized. They meet, they talk, they plan, they take small local action. And, of course, these are the kinds of things that leftists talk about. We need to organize, we need to work together, we need to stop in-fighting, etc. But we don't have the natural advantage the right does.
Third places. They're built for the privileged and wealthy, and they fight to keep them that way. See campaigns against libraries. It's way harder for a Jew, an Arab, and a gay man to walk into a bar and sit down for a discussion than it is for a bunch of old white ladies to talk about their Saturday plans at a church potluck. Spaces for left-leaning political discussion don't really exist. Except in the realm of fiction.
Star Trek is, of course, a very well known example of progressive fiction. I, personally, am a big Trekkie. Here on Lemmy, there have been memes about the Bell Riots (a two part episode from DS9, involving the crew time traveling to September 2024). We were making those jokes because those episodes, especially today, are very topical. AND THAT WORKS!
I've had great conversations about those episodes with my centrist parents, as well as several acquaintances: conversations that deal with real topics, like homelessness, civic duty, and citizen action.
The right builds their fortress on a foundation of anti-intellectualism because shutting down other conversations is their most powerful weapon, and they've employed it to devastating effect. The atmosphere in our country has been curated to be hostile to political speech and philosophy. Just think of how much ridicule one would receive for recommending something like a salon to a group of friends, rather than something like a boardgame night (this is also affected by lack of free time, so support your unions!). It's for the same reason they sow division between minorities.
But fiction doesn't have this weakness! Have your friends over to watch some Star Trek, or lend out your copy of Men at Arms, and get Sir Terry Pratchett's Sam Vimes "Boots" Theory of Socioeconomic Unfairness into the hands of an impressionable youth. AND THEN DISCUSS WHAT IT MEANS! Do some literary analysis. Talk about the realities that informed the art. Empathize with Jadzia as the cultural norms of her society demand she end her relationship with her former lover, simply because she's also a woman now. Then, suddenly you have your own group for leftist political discourse.
That's where it gets truly tough, but as was stated above, this is going to have to be a long term effort. This is a first step. It's up to us all to take one, and then the next, and then the next, just like those monsters that set out to repeal Roe v Wade 40 years ago, and only succeeded now.
So your plan is to write subversive fiction, and have third places where people will talk about theories.
Uh ok neat, we are doing that here, virtually, and people have been doing this on the internet for two or three decades.
(Insert Einstein's definition of insanity here)
So again, what's the actionable, definable, realistic plan?
...
I'm currently getting my ass downvoted into oblivion in another thread for saying that software developers unwilling to sacrifice their livelihoods or lower their quality of life, and who instead continue to write software that directly promotes corporate profit seeking and spreads fascist propoganda are part of the problem, that they bare some degree of moral responsibility for societal degredation.
"Someone else will just do the job."
To me it looks like a great many people have a vast, in depth understanding of all of the things that are broken with society, but we are already past the threshold where all of these people who understand the problems...
... well, they're unwilling or materially unable to...
... you know, do anything about it.
tl:dr;
we are already neofeudal serfs.
discussing theory is great, but if it doesn't lead to any actual, implementable plans for change, nothing will change.
Which, I think, should be enough proof that this method doesn't work. Physical community ties are important. Look at red state medical gofundmes. That's basically socialized medicine (though the worst possible version of it lol), but they support it because they know the people they're supporting. Leftist policies consistently poll well across the board, but conservatives get elected anyway, because when these people go to church, their pastor tells them to vote for Trump. Or their family. Or their buddies from work. The people they interact with regularly, because those are the people that can use social normalcy to enforce their morals. You can't do that online.
We talk about making life uncomfortable for fascists because that kind of constant discomfort is what eventually gets people to self-reflect. You can't have a community hostile to Nazis, without first building up connections between people to enforce that hostility. That's why I put so much focus on just talking to your friends about a TV show. It's basically a Trojan horse. A way to start expanding the leftist community to people that haven't learned to debate, and don't know how to engage with media critically. Teach them.
Also, vote for levies to fund local schools.
and also libraries and book mobiles. and help fund reading therapists however you can. give the children the things that helped you come up. that's all society has ever been. a 10k year long effort to give the kids a better future than the one we were given. it's just every 80 years we fuck it all up and give them a worse future. but if our ancestors voices can reach us, our voices can still be around as long as the truth needs to be told
Bold words from a country built on the failure of other empires.
when i say "we" i don't mean america. i mean the poor, the lower classes, i mean people who know the truth. people who understand hierarchies aren't necessary to society, that poverty is enforced, and that all people can be, and deserve to be free. sorry for any disclarity. this is not just about the united states. this is about a global system of terror that's about to get a lot scarier after a summer of intensifying authoritarianism
I'm saying that sometimes it's not fixable. We've been at this for about 200 000 years, almost nothing has been long term solved yet.
Besides, your perspective is iffy. From what you're saying in the reply, you've ignored the suffering of the rest of the world until it affected you personally, and now you claim to speak for everyone affected? Seems like quite a douchebag thing to do.
The world will be different, this will probably not be what ends us all. We will more probably survive as a species only to put ourselves in a bind with even higher stakes. Our base social instincts are wired this way as long as there's resource scarcity or inequality.
you're projecting mate. I've been saying we live in a global system of torture for 13 years and protesting genocide since 2008. across the globe there are stories of societies who figured this shit out before white supremecy arrived on their shores and wrecked everything. i'm sorry, but no. this resource scarcity and inequality are constructed by the holders of power. it's planned and on purpose to keep us from ever seeing that the rich keep us poor so we'll stay angry at each other and let them stay in power. i fundamentally disagree with you about what all of human history tells us, and what the natural order is. i honestly ask you this, if the natural order is struggle between groups of people, why does it require so much energy and effort on the part of the part of the people in power to keep it going?
Yeah, we seem to misunderstand each other at every turn, it may be that we have too little common ground for this to be a productive exchange.
Let's chalk it up to cultural differences and see if we can meet in a forum more conducive to nuance and building understanding.
So true. And getting rid of good teachers through low pay and other disincentives.
My daughter had a completely unqualified "substitute" teacher for her entire sixth grade here in Indiana. Her qualifications? She ran a children's theater troupe in Orange County, CA. Really. Never taught a class in her life, which is why she did at least two blatantly illegal things (only one of which I knew about in time):
I wish I had known about the second one during the school year because I read her the riot act on the first one.
And now she's in online school in the 8th grade. It's a public school, but done online. The teachers are accredited, and they are (overall) decent. It is run by Pearson, the evil company that makes the textbooks most public school kids use, so she's learning from the same source as most kids in the U.S.. Since I'm a "learning coach," meaning I make sure she stays on track, I'm reading what they're teaching her and it's ridiculous.
Right now she's doing English grammar. Shit that does not matter outside of academic fields like linguistics, things that are not necessary to know for good writing and reading. You don't have to be able to define a participle to know how to read or to write well. And frankly, it's really fucking confusing to the point that I can't follow it sometimes. Even her teacher keeps screwing it up based on what I overhear while she's doing her lessons. What they do teach about composition is insane and stupid. She's supposed to start a formal essay essay with a "hook," which usually ends in a question mark. So an essay on, say, compound interest is supposed to begin with something like, "do you know people can earn interest on the interest they already earn?" rather than a fucking topic sentence. That's supposed to be the second sentence. She actually got marked down for not having a hook and just starting the essay in an adult manner.
Social studies isn't any better. In fact, it's far worse. They're covering the 19th century right now. First, Washington's entire presidency was one single lesson. Then there was another lesson with 11 very long pages about Marbury vs. Madison (again, mostly an academic topic that Americans only need basic knowledge of). More recently they had four very short pages on the accomplishments of women in the 19th century. Harriet Tubman got two paragraphs.
On top of it, absolutely nothing in either class has any sort of context she can apply to her own life. Does she want to know how the checks and balances system of the U.S. federal government can affect things she cares about? Too bad, they're just going to tell you what they are and move on with maybe a brief explanation of the background rather than the ultimate results. Does she want to know how to keep paragraphs concise and not use ten words when one will do? Too bad, it's time to learn about gerunds. You know how important it is to know what a gerund is, right? College-level English term papers require you to write detailed explanations of such things what with how essential they are.
And I won't even get into the bullshit they teach her about drugs in her health class.
Dude, that's the stuff you learn in school. What you're describing is pretty much what I remember learning around 8th grade in the '90s.
I don't get why you're so upset, it all sounds perfectly normal to me.
If your teachers were doing blatantly illegal things in the 1990s, that doesn't make it okay now.
Also, I was in high school in the 90s and that's a load of shit. No one ever taught me anything about a "hook" for an essay question.