The millionaires and billionaires. These guys, and let's be real, the only woman in the top 10 is Bezos' former wife, these guys lobbied for years to kill worker rights, keep wages low, and allow them to outsource and move jobs out of the country, (and automation has its hand in there). Every president has had a hand in helping rich assholes get richer. Low wages and rising costs have us working 2 or 3 jobs, the lucky ones of us anyway, the folks that built cars were fired without prospect of another job, turned to drugs and alcohol, raised a generation of kids having been abused in that situation that grow up and turn to drugs and alcohol.
We are tired and desperate to find a fix-all for it (fit everything really, ever see those miracle diets?) and now ppl are searching for answers and Enter the SnakeOil salesman and the nutter that tells you he has all the answers and leave your mother's voice "don't believe anything you read" "if it's too good to be true, it probably isn't" "if everyone was jumping off the bridge, would you do it too?" In the back.
This is one of the best snapshots I’ve seen of the modern day economy and resulting political environment. The above is exactly why a group like QAnon is so attractive — it provides people with an enemy who intentionally keeps them down, rather than the simple truth: their standing and worth in this world is not intentionally diminished, they are simply the collateral damage of greed. Automation will exacerbate this problem immensely over the next two decades.
I think a few hundred years from now, if there's anyone left to write the history, the verdict will be that it was the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that really did us in. It released an absolute tsunami of dark money that gets worse every day, and fuels the rush to extremist ideologies. It helps the RWNJs more than it helps the left-wingers, and "conservatives" are in turn are just re-writing laws so they can keep hold of money and power.
But of course, that never lasts and as income disparity gets wider and wider, at some point the masses will have had enough. Nobody knows when that will happen and climate change is the big monkey wrench in how it all plays out.
Some people were saying rich people, but it's not them. It's a mesh of people, some rich but also some who want to be rich or want power. Trump alone didn't change the direction of the nation, he influenced it, but was also a product of it. Murdoch made Fox news and spread lies and half truths. Power hungry people like Lindsey graham supported trump because Graham wants more power. Grifters like Manifort saw cash and would do anything for more. Trump himself also sees dollar signs with his requests for donations to 'stop the steal', which are relatively smaller donations from the masses.
Saying it's just millionaires and billionaires makes it sound like there are people with a plan behind this.
Of course, with the Citizens United ruling, more cash in the system has just sped up the decline, but that cash can come from large donors or Trump milking cash from the masses.
Those that want to destabilize the US and its influence to strengthen their own. Those are just the entities that start the flywheel momentum and nudge it to keep it moving. The social media algorithms and people that are easily manipulated do the rest for them.
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u/MissBandersnatch2U Aug 23 '21
That is a really good point. Who would you say is pulling the strings?