Because civic education is lowly valued. It's not, strictly speaking, intelligence. It's that they were never taught what politics actually means, and after a while, they figure that since they've gone so long without it and things have been 'fine' in their life, it must not matter all that much.
The rich are clever and very well coordinated
I think that it depends on the person. I've heard of enough people who voted for Donald because they like that he "says it like it is", or "he's a businessman", or because they just want lower taxes. Some people are so exposed to rage-bait social media/news content and are always being told what to be afraid of and they vote emotionally based on that fear. My grandfather votes the way he does because he's TERRIFIED of immigrants, even legal ones - because all he does is sit and watch fox news. I think most often, people are busy with their lives, paying their bills, taking care of their kids, etc. and don't have a lot of energy left over for politics. People treat voting like it's team sports. A ton of people voted for Donald because they thought tariffs were paid by the other country, not American businesses. I don't exactly blame people, it's a lot of information and life is probably a lot more relaxed for people that don't follow it.
Propaganda. Lack of education. There's a reason they want to defund public schools. They're not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. :)
Because it's no longer about benefits or interests.
It's about the "my side won, your side lost, get over it" mentality. It's about the tribalism and making sure you keep your ire focused on your fellow man rather than looking up and seeing the source of your problems
And it's not just the US. It's fucking everywhere.
They're idiots
https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about
its not about red vs blue states. It's About The Country Vs. The City
A successful propaganda campaign by the owning class.
And a quote from an anonymous mutual:
many people will unfortunately need to learn this the hard way it seems at the expense of those who take the time to see the writing on the wall those ignorant to their exploitation will seldom listen to those who try to tell them how horribly theyre being fucked "if it were really so bad id notice" theyll say "this isnt so bad" theyll say, standing on the peak of the mountain that is dunning-kruger unknowing all we can do is wait, and watch to find out what what it is that throws them into the valley of unfathomable uncertainty in the meantime we must work for each other, for those who do see how good things could be. maybe then, our greener grass will coax them into giving us a fair listen
The rich have billions to spend on focus groups so they know exactly which buttons to push so that people vote the way they want.
I can use my brother as an example for that:
My younger brother is entirely sold on billionaire philanthropy. He watched interviews where people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos on talk shows and podcasts, places where people like this go to advertise themselves, and has been completely convinced that they're innovative, smart people.
Smart people who, through just being so damn smart, managed to become billionaires.
Usually this happens when you dont have a democracy. Establish a system with rank choice voting and a few dozen candidates, and you'll see votes closer signed with voter interests
Because they want to see other people suffer
Because everyone thinks of themselves as a potential rich person. Or in other words: people think that being rich is the ideal state, so let’s align everything around that.
If we truly put a yoke on the rich and contained them, we would also be reining in the smallfolks dreams.
By contrast, rich people don’t sit around dreaming about being smallfolk and planning aspirationally for the day that will happen.
One's "own best interest" can take a lot of different forms. Especially when the number and variety of plausible candidates are finite. Your preferred candidate for a given office will rarely line up perfectly with your own values. There's a compromise there.
If I vote for my own finances, it may come at the cost of my morals. It I vote for my own moral interest, it may cost me more. If I vote for my own power, it may cost someone else their freedoms. How heavily do I weight my own interests against those of a wider society? Political identities and philosophies are complicated, and can't necessarily be reduced to a single binary choice that is "best" in every scenario.
There's a substantial assumption that the wealthy know best how to manage wealth and the economy but it's all predicated on the notion that those wealthy people are willing to act in the interest of everyone, when in fact they tend to act on their own personal interest (I mean, if someone has a net worth of over a billion dollars and they're trying to accumulate even more money, that should give you a good idea how their policy will affect people who are making 40k/yr). They tend not to want to create jobs or increase wages more than they want to improve quality of earnings, because they stand to lose a lot and they somehow want more
Fundamental flaw of the democracy: It assumes that people know what's the best for them
Most are wanting an end to this current system so they’ll ‘play’ it out knowing albeit the struggle, Democracy has left the building and late stage capitalism is showing the disparity of the predators and preys of society
They believe it will benefit them one day.
Propaganda including media bias is very effective especially if you start with childhood indoctrination, see politics, religions, and marketing. I don't think we have a way out of this without moderation of social media to counter the spread of lies and education so people are prepared to critically evaluate evidence or understand when to appeal to the consensus of experts.
A demagogue or politician can list a couple true facts or stats then say their political opponents are eating people's pets and there's no drop in their support or following. There's no standards to maintain, anything is permissible as we've seen with the recent cabinet nominations as long as you're obedient to the cult leader. Cutting off the head of the snake, then using regulation and education to keep it from growing back seems to be the only approach that worked in the past.
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