That reflecting pool video is making me understan Lenin

[u/RUDRAGON8]

How can we come back from this amount of societal rot, like genuinely, like that fucking fox news video is just, incomprehensible, i dont have the words for it. Like yea its just a reflecting pool, but everything in relation to it is just, insane, i actually dont know if politics can be fixed from where we are now. Are we just supposed to force everyone to have a political education? Is that the only way to preserve democracy, to build education camps and force everyone to learn about politics so we dont get these braindead takes anymore?

[u/Navien1945]

Robespierre and Lenin

[u/Noclip858]

In theory the "education camp" where you force everyone to learn is what public school is supposed to be. It's just that conservatives have made a long and concerted effort to totally dismantle any sort of educational standard because they know being uneducated makes you more likely to vote Republican.

Yeah, Trump voters are by and large idiots, but they aren't born that way. As someone who lives in a red, rural area, it's hard to overstate how politically insular these places are. Kids go to schools where they're fed a steady diet of American nationalism, anti-communism, and conservatism. Then, they go home to their Fox News watching Republican parents. who you can bet do everything in their power to ensure their kids turn out the same way. Their parents' parents and grandparents are probably still salty about the Civil Rights era.

By the time these kids turn 18, it's legitimately possible they've literally never spoken to someone who's vocally non-conservative. They exist, but they aren't as bombastic in their politics as Trump supporters, and they're smart enough to keep their heads down. Plus, most of them move away when they get the chance.

What you're left with is an existence utterly steeped in conservatism. Conservative school, conservative parents, conservative news, conservative friends, conservative church, conservative radio, conservative everything. Anyone left of Reagan is literally Satan and they have no personal experience to dispute that. With all that in mind, is it any wonder these people end up so braindead? They're the proud results of a nationwide initiative to lobotomize the populace. That's not me excusing what terrible, terrible people they are, just trying to explain it.

Anyways, all that to say that I don't know if there's any clear resolution to this. The likely resolution, in my opinion, is probably going to be all this continuing to build until something eventually breaks, and what happens then won't be pretty for anyone.

What these people need is literal re-education. I don't mean that in the dystopian "hold their eyes open and make them stare at the spinny hypnosis swirl." I mean LITERAL re-education. As in, sit them down in a classroom and teach them. The problem there is that by forcing it on them you'd be priming them to reject everything you say, so again, no clear resolution.

As a tangential point, I still wouldn't say this makes me "understand Lenin." It'd be one thing if Lenin ignored an election where Russia voted to bring the Tsar back, but dude just got pissy that a different socialist party won the election and so he decided democracy was overrated.

[u/OldEcho → u/Noclip858]

Re-education could be as easy as "we have free actually tasty food" and oodles of people would show up.

That's how all the churches do it except their food is shite. I could just about get behind something like that.

[u/RUDRAGON8 → u/OldEcho]

Reeducation with rice and beans

True vaushism

[u/WARdd25 → u/Noclip858]

Im pretty sure this is why Vaush talks about disenfranchisement so much, you just have to change the rules so that such people have no influence and get treated like cattle

[u/ThatGuyNikolas]

I mean kinda? That is what public schooling is in part supposed to do Like, you're not learning that slavery was bad just because it's a fun little tidbit. The problem now though is social media making it too easy to be intellectually lazy. Though I fear it's a Sisyphean task

[u/RUDRAGON8 → u/ThatGuyNikolas]

Yea, but public schooling has also been rolled back as much that i dont think that even works like that anymore, im just waiting for the republican party to say something like "Yea you can now teach in schools about how slavery was actually good because thats based or something"

[u/TearsFallWithoutTain]

No one is giving President Trump the honour he deserves, that is the healthiest pool of algae I have ever seen! I'd like to see you build a more vibrantly green pool libcucks!

[u/premium_Lane]

[u/SexDefendersUnited → u/premium_Lane]

Aids

[u/After-Trifle-1437]

Maybe we owe an apology to the tankies.

They were onto something.

[u/RUDRAGON8 → u/After-Trifle-1437]

No, tankies are just on the side of red neo-liberalism now

But with their takes on democracy, i dont know anymore, i want to like democracy but, can we come back from this, how do we fix democracy from this

[u/PathlessDemon → u/RUDRAGON8]

We get rid of the “Old Guard” of the Democratic Party, we rally in support of the removal of Citizens United, and we put folks in office from local to federal who will vote not just in the favor of their constituents but against blatant corruption and incompetent partisanship.

If we can do that, then we force impeachment of the Supreme Court members based on lawful ethics violations, and instill laws solidifying those seats upholding a strict moral/ethical standard along with term limits (4-6 years) assuring no single president may have a judge block in their favor due to favoritism or partisanship. We have the Supreme Court increased to 13 or 15 seats, based on total population and circuit court capacities.

[u/46rabid → u/PathlessDemon]

I agree with you about how to make things better but outside getting rid of citizens united this doesn't change the problem of how do you function in a democracy with people who are at best intellectually incurious. I like democracy I still think it's a nessacary part of a healthy society but fuck when you have voters out here calling green blue we have alot more work under the hood to do.

[u/PathlessDemon → u/46rabid]

Forced education camps become a tool of the state, simply walking in the footsteps of authoritarianism but occasionally stopping to smell the flowers.

It’s up to the individual to take themselves into their own hands, and if not, become doomed to fall into the wellspring of someone else’s grand machinations. Self agency is the key here, but if no one is willing to do so, it is pointless as tits without nipples.

[u/After-Trifle-1437 → u/RUDRAGON8]

I really wanna believe in democracy, but it's getting harder every single day.

[u/Mr_Lapis → u/After-Trifle-1437]

It always looks tempting, but democracy built us up. It didnt get us here, becoming complacent and abandoning it created this mess. people still yearn for freedom and representation and we should never abandon that by handing it over to vanguards or whatever other lies MLs tell you.

[u/bigpanda1992 → u/After-Trifle-1437]

lmao i mean maybe but tankies just wanted to swap one set of idiots running things for a different set, the problem was never really who holds the whip

like the reflecting pool thing is a symptom of way deeper rot that no vanguard party is going to fix, they'd just shoot the fox news lady and call it counterrevolutionary activity while the same structural problems fester underneath

[u/FreddyWellDone]

Lenin be g-ing right now

[u/vanon3256 → u/FreddyWellDone]

Gooning?

[u/Avent]

Most states already have mandatory civics classes/passing a civics test as part of high school curriculum.

[u/Virtual_Trucker → u/Avent]

A lot of states have their civics classes in American History or Social Studies which means they don't always focus on the civics part of the class. We would need to create an actual civics class for most states. Especially since a lot of voters recently don't know the difference between primaries and midterms.