Sorry if the premise is inflammatory, but I’ve been stymied by this for a while. How did we go from something like 1940s era collectivism or 1960s era leftism to the current bizarro political machine that seems to have hypnotized a large portion (if not majority) of the country? I get it - not everything is bad now, and not everything was good then. FDR’s internment camps, etc.
That said - our country seems to be at a low point in intellectualism and accountability. The DHHS head is an antivaxxer, the deputy chief of the DOJ is a far-right podcast nutball, etc. Their supporters seem to have no nuance to their opinion beyond “well, Trump said he’d fix the economy and I don’t like woke.”
Have people always been this unserious and unquestioning, or are we watching the public’s sanity unravel in real time? Or am I just imagining some idealistic version of the past that never existed, where politicians acted in good faith and people cared about the social order?
For me, it has been a process of accepting that we can’t handwave actual opposing worldviews by talking about intelligence.
I know people who aren’t “smart” by most definitions, but who still have a lot of empathy and kindness. On the other hand, I have peers who I consider geniuses in their interests and fields, but with whom I struggled to find common ground politically.
It’s more useful to look at values. I can agree with most people in my life on the broad strokes. It’s when we get bogged down with micropolitics that fights happen.
I still think the public reaction to Luigi Mangione was a prime example of how people actually agree about a lot in this country, but frame it differently.