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   Nowhere Girl (gwynnion@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 30-Jan-2025 05:40:01 JST Nowhere Girl

   Politicians' concerns tend to be completely divorced from ordinary citizens by virtue of being older, whiter, and wealthier than the constituents they supposedly represent, and over time, politics accrues a sedimentary layer of national obsessions that are quite foreign to the average person, chief among them the idea that the US is the greatest country on earth despite numerous metrics showing the exact opposite.

   • GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) and Mr. Bill repeated this.
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     Nowhere Girl (gwynnion@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 30-Jan-2025 05:40:01 JST Nowhere Girl

     in reply to

     To the average person, all that really matters is whether they can afford to eat, start a family, have a home, and occasionally enjoy themselves a little, which may includes superficial displays of national pride (as long as there is food and fireworks involved).

     Yeah, the bigots want to feel superior and that "the right people" are in charge, but as a political force they're only really dangerous because they're stupid and ideologues can easily whip them into a frenzy for their own ends.

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     Nowhere Girl (gwynnion@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 30-Jan-2025 05:59:29 JST Nowhere Girl

     in reply to

     The problem is center-left political elites see the movements engineered by their right-wing colleagues as legitimate because they're all part of the same club, they themselves are rather nasty people, and they assume "the unwashed masses" are even worse than they are.

     They're also fixated on goals that have nothing to do with improving the average person's life so even when they want to oppose the right, they fail because they can't conceive of or articulate a position that would help.

     Chris Wiegman repeated this.
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     Nowhere Girl (gwynnion@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 30-Jan-2025 05:59:29 JST Nowhere Girl

     in reply to

     In the US, the right is obsessed with theocratic monarchism and the center with neoliberalism, both of which depend on wealth concentration at the top, hawkish foreign policy, and the preservation of US hegemony at all costs. None of which is particularly helpful or even important to the average person, but the left is essentially shut out of power and is practically irrelevant, and what passes for "populism" is just violent white supremacy.