For one, the United States lacks a good press corps of independent journalists with broad reach.
Everything is either politicized or commercialized. Shock value sells. Balanced rational discourse does not. Polarization makes too much money for too many people.
On top of that, a systematic destruction of education and a stranglehold of religion practically makes ignorance inevitable.
Maybe we could repair it, but it would take Republicans being blocked from making any decisions for several decades at this point.
It’s a catch-22. We can’t fix it, until we fix it.
No no......we had it fixed for centuries, until it was intentionally dismantled over the past 50-70 years (depending on where you wish to place the official start date.) For me, I place it during the 1964 presidential campaign, as that's the markings of the first ever attack ad.
If you want the public to care about your politics, then politics needs to be about the policies of those politics. Reflection from within. Rather than "but what about the other guy? He's bad."
If candidate number one tells you "I will raise taxes, and use the money to pay for schools and roads". And a second candidate says "I will lower taxes by dismantling social security". You as a voter then have a choice to make. Pay slightly more in taxes, with better roads, and a better future for the next generation. OR pay less taxes, and probably have your retirement vanish.
Instead, that same scenario today would be "The other guy wants to take your retirement! He's bad!" and the second candidate says "The other guy is raising taxes. He's bad!"
So now the general public thinks both candidates are bad, and nobody looks into what the outcome of their other choices have historically been. This then leads them to vote based on sound bytes, rather than historical accuracies.
The end result is nobody cares about politics, because it's all bullshit anyways.
Yeah it's hard trying to save democracy when a large portion of the country has been brainwashed to destroy it all while thinking they're the most patriotic.
I'm still amazed judges are so clearly divided into groups. I consider being a judge to require a degree of impartiality and authority that anyone clearly identifying as democratic or republican should be disqualified for. Democratic perhaps not since their more centric than left leaning or far left :/. Point being the one occupation that mandates impartiality is highly politicised. Of course everything is f*cked. The rule of law is not dictated by the majority or enforced by the trustworthy.
Many reasons. Regular politics is boring, and pop culture Facebook TikTok YouTube is all so much more captivating.
Also, so many Americans are struggling to survive, so there isn't enough time to engage with the political process in a meaningful way. I wonder if it's an intentional effort by the uber wealthy.
Inconvenient coincidence or grand plan, either way, its a crystal clear indicator that the whole constitution needs a rewrite.
I feel like that may be the closest unifying political opinion, which we need... We can hash out the details Constitutional Convention style after we get rid of the muck....
How could we make politics fun for a wider audience?
Put a clown in the race that says outrageous things and the media can't get enough of.
Foreign and corporate disinformation campaigns aided by consolidation of TV and print media as well as social media monopolies. Combine that with a lack of time or energy from working long hours, long commutes, and a lack of ability to take time off, much less devote energy to sorting out disinformation that is so common.
Our media apparatus and schooling don't promote critical thinking.
Ok so I study political science (second semester so not an expert at all) and last semester I had to research a lot about turnout rates for people in less fortunate situations. The answer is really simple actually. If people live in shit situations they don't trust the government and they start to not care. Education is worse when you don't have enough money. There is also a constant struggle to make politics feel closer to the people because that directly impacts if you will educate yourself and go participate. Unfortunately politics feels like it is either actively against you or at least doesn't do anything for you if you are at the bottom .One thing that might be important in the US is that slums decrease political awareness / willingness to vote because these people who are probably not going to care are surrounded by more people that don't care. So if noone around you says something good about the government you are going to hate it even more.
All of this leads to an underrepresentation of these groups which leads to their problems being overlooked or underestimated which leads to worse conditions which leads to less political activity which leads to less representation....its a cycle that makes millions of peoples lives worse every day. And at some point they just don't care about politics because politics seems to not care about them. None of my sources are in English so get bozoed I could be lying about all of this.
That makes perfect sense. Good luck with the poly sci degree. What I took from this is material conditions effect voter turnout, which in turn effects material conditions.
Most people everywhere are very politically unaware. Here's a decent site that demonstrates this. Basically, the knowledge we (by which I mean humans, not just Americans, of which I am not one) have leads us to make inaccurate assumptions about the other stuff.
Neat site.
It's so much easier to take someone at their word instead of looking into the many interwoven facts and details yourself. In fact, it can take so long fact-checking things these days to combat mis/disinformation that people simply.... don't.
It's way more laborious to disprove a lie than it is to simply recount a lie.
Russia may not have a decent military, or a decent government, but they are masters at controlling other countries public opinions.
I had a comment removed a few days ago because Lemmy has an automod which accused me of being ablist. In reality I was responding to a comment that was trying to push the narrative that Ukraine started the war, and is responsible for the war. It went on to say many MANY more completely untrue things, but definately tried painting russia as the good guy. I basically accused him of being brain dead, with a word that the automod didn't like.
But I'm pretty convinced they were a russian disinformation agent.
Russia may not have
Russia is NOT the only problem, they aren't even the main problem. There's quite a number of issues where the mainstream media discourse depends almost entirely on whose in office. As an example take a look at crime statistics since 1991 and then align the media coverage about crime with whose in charge at the time. Immigration is another one. 2,000 people or more crossing the border every day may or may not be a crisis depending on which political party is in charge.
Those and other issues aren't being manipulated, at least not primarily, by Russia Propaganda. That work is being done by mainstream media sources and the only way to know you're being manipulated into an opinion is by putting in the work to learn the context and history of an issue.
It's a massive time suck that can require hours, days, or even weeks to get a deep enough understanding to know you're being lied to and / or manipulated.
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Corporate media with bias to keep the discourse between two seemingly distant yet very close poles.
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Lack of corporate and rich taxation
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Structural defunding and discrediting the public education system
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Atomized working class
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Corrupt plutocracy of a government removed the law that prevented mass ownership of news and media outlets. It consolidated everything into just a handful of media outlets that talk to the nation.
That, along with complete over saturation. A person trying to sort through a huge country comprised of their city government, plus their county, plus state, plus national level politics across a nation that's 8,000,000 square kilometers (not including Alaska and Hawaii) is just too much for most people to decipher and sort through.
It's even harder to mass protest here. It's not like everyone can drive inside of less than two hours away and show up in London or something. Getting to our capital to protest could be quite literally a 40 hour drive away.
That last part is particularly noteworthy. If I’m in the UK, I can make it to London in 8 hours pretty much regardless of where I am. That’s less than a full work day of driving. Many Americans have done that to visit family.
If I’m in France, I’m never more than 9 hours away from Paris. Again, many Americans have done a drive like that just to go on holiday.
If I’m in Newport Oregon, it’ll take 43 hours of driving (and crossing two full mountain ranges) to reach Washington DC. That’s a full work week of driving, just to reach the capitol.
So most Americans protest locally if they’re able. But that’s far less effective, because it splits the protests apart and makes them easier to ignore or break. Americans can’t go full “light Paris on fire for a full month because the retirement age is getting raised” because there aren’t enough protestors near the capitol to do that. The small protests that do start almost unanimously get broken up by cops as quickly as they started.
Any excuse huh? You have roughly the equivalent of the entire population of France living within a four hour drive of Washington DC, but
There aren’t enough protestors near the capitol to do that
There aren't enough people who would actually stand up for themselves, and in particular , others, is what you actually mean
A mixture of poor education in some states combined with a steady, deliberate demoralizing of the voters by the political class.
Trying to survive
Exactly as planned by the reigning political parties.
It takes a lot of effort to stay on top of things, plus the research it takes to sort out fact from fiction. After all that investment, the amount of difference one can make is miniscule.
I think the real problem is that they think they're aware, but are ignorant or unwilling to learn about the actual issues.
For example, with climate change it's a lot easier to think and want it to be not real. They know what it is, but it's a lot easier to believe it's not real. It's a lot more effort and leaving your comfort zone to learn about it and realize how fucked it is.
Most people build themselves into bubbles, where changing their views would force them to readjust their world views and for most, they dont want to
This is what I see from my folks. That believe anything that supports their existing views, but anything that would require them to understand something they aren't aware of, they suddenly don't trust the sources. They say things like "science can be used to say all sorts of things, we can't know that they're right this time!"
These are the same parents who taught me critical thinking when reading newspaper articles when I was a kid. Suddenly they can't be bothered to employ the same critical thinking to articles they read today.
I still blame Facebook and the other similar social media platforms. They have catered to and encouraged the short attention spans we have today
My mom is the exact same way!
It may be true, but this is programmed in by corporate media and our lack of education on these subjects. Maintaining our echo chambers is by design, and not our design.
Because we don't teach people ANYTHING about the political or legal system here (and legal matters a lot, since it's intrinsically tied to how we make and enforce laws here).
For instance, just figuring out where to vote, when to vote, and what you need to bring (and legally can't bring), varies WILDLY state to state. Real examples:
I lived in state A, where the primaries were just done with a ballot, you physically had to show up at a specific day and time to fill put in person
Moved to state B, where the primaries were at a different time and were done as a caucus. Meaning I had to physically go and stand there as my body was my vote. They were unprepared for voter turnout and it took 6 hours to vote. There were almost no chairs. Handicapped people, elderly people, and people who had to work, left. Like they just couldn't vote. It was horrible to witness. That's our rights being denied.
And also at state B, you had to be registered in advance and they needed to have record of it. If there was some weird error where you weren't on the list, tough.
Moved to state C, where everything is super easy and done by mail. Just mail in your ballot. No big.
We need to take kids on field trips to vote and teach them actually how to do it all. Including looking up smaller election dates. It's not actually that easy or that streamlined.
We need to take kids to town halls to show them how to observe public meetings. We need to show them how to run for office. The public deserves a clear and thorough education on this, as much as English or Math.
Here, we have mock elections in school, held with the same booths that the real elections are done. The kids make up political parties, then they go through the whole process, from getting their voter card (informing them about the vote and where the vote takes place or how to request vote-by-mail) to voting to counting and having results.
You don't do this in the US?
There is something called student government but it doesn't actually mimic what happens in each kid's district. They do not make up parties. They mainly just vote for class president, secretary, and treasurer with a show of hands. Sometimes a ballot. That's it.
They do not do any of the rest here. I'm being VERY sincere when I emphatically say most states do NOT teach the public ANYTHING that will give them legal or political power including how to vote. And some states make it very hard to vote.
"I don't live in a swing state so my vote does not matter anyways".
I am not a US citizen, that is just something I picked up from a random interview of a non-voter a while ago. I don't know if that is a common opinion, but it made sense to me in explaining political disinterest.
It has to do with the electoral college and how it limits voting power. So it contributes to political disinterest.
Constant defunding of public education, anti-intellectualism, and conservative idealism has made this nation as dumb as a bag of hammers. Being highly educated in America kind of feels like you have a superiority complex but it's also incredibly frustrating at times.
Can I ask how you cope with the frustration? Touching grass isn’t enough lately.
🍄
A lot of people just don't want to think about it. It oftentimes feels like your vote doesn't matter, which is generally true in Presidential elections unless you're in a swing state. And it often feels like you're just voting for the shiniest of two turds anyway.
Getting involved in politics at a local level, where your decisions actually have the most effect on your day-to-day life, is just too boring I guess.
I've looked into getting involved locally. Unfortunately, the game is stacked against anyone with an unconventional work schedule, who works long shifts, who is non-white, queer, or disabled, who is a non-English speaker...
It's set up so the majority of people who wield the power and influence are fairly affluent, privileged groups. This is by design.
If you ask any revolutionary movement what led to their success, they’ll tell you “if the deck is stacked against you, give up.”
That perfect equal society gonna fall from the sky any day now
(I’m sorta just talking shit, tbh. I’m not doing anything about the problem either. But I do think the central point is fair that of course the deck is stacked; that’s why work to change it is important. Every single movement to correct the wrong people being in power has by definition had to start with the deck stacked against it.)
Talking heads and a failing education system.
Civics was a single class in highschool.
We need a STEM type push for more civics in highschool and middle school.
Lots of great answers here.
I think one under mentioned cause is the effect of social media algorithms.
All major social media platforms use machine learning algorithms decide what to show in your feed. The algorithms are programmed to show you the things that have historically kept you on the site longer.
It’s human nature to upvote/read/support/engage with the things that agree with our world views, and downvote/dismiss/disengage/discredit the things that disagree with our worldview.
These two facts combined result in you seeing more of the content that aligns with your worldview, and more of the content from people who share your worldview. We’re all funnelled into communities of like minded individuals that repeat what we already believe, reinforcing whatever that is regardless of how factually correct it might be.
Dissenting information that might cause you to reconsider your position or become more politically aware is automatically filtered out.
And it’s not just social media either, even the algorithms behind search engines display this behaviour.
Long before social media existed, Google was tailoring search results to match the things you tend to click on. If you searched for news and typically clicked on the headlines biased towards one side or the other Google would start ranking site with that bias higher.
This wasn’t intentional (at least not originally) it was just a side effect of the algorithm, trying to figure out what you were most likely looking for.
For someone who, for example, believes the Earth is flat. If they were to type “is the Earth flat?” Into a search engine. They are much more likely to get results that “prove” the Earth is flat, then a person who believes the Earth is round, because the algorithm knows that they tend to click on articles that “confirm” the earth is flat.
Algorithms used by social media and search engines today, make it genuinely difficult to maintain a balanced worldview and find unbiased answers to any question. They are all designed to keep you engaged, And it is human nature to engage more with the things we agree with, regardless of truth.
The average American has been convinced that when they are done being a worker for the day, they become something "better" and more important... the consumer. The consumer has no needs other than consumption. The consumer has no wants other than consumption. Their fellows economically simply become their servants as that is the illusion created by the culture of consumption.
Look at most folks making less than $100k/year and who are voting Republican. Ask them why they are voting and they will give you a myriad of reasons, but (in my experience) it mostly boils down to "they're hurting the other team and I want to be part of the winning team." Some liberals will give you the same type of response, but it's less common (or less enthusiastically so maybe). It's less that our electorate has been dulled to political activity and more that politics has been turned into a participation sport with teams, branding, and merchandise.
In my experience, the greatest example of this are the folks who've been completely demoralized saying "both sides are the same." It is true that both the Republicans and Democrats are the same... if the only way politics affects you is economically (or if you can convince yourself that that is the case). It's not the politicians or even the parties that are hurting the average American, it's the Consumer Capitalism all sides of our politics back that's hurting us. Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you a fairytale like "USSR was good actually" or "PRC is good actually." Just as America and it's systems have problems, those countries and their systems had/have their own problems.
Being the core of the post-WWII Western hegemony, American politics has problems that are uniquely it's own; the old adage of "there are no poor Americans, only temporarily embarrassed millionaires" sadly holds true. It affects every level of our politics, culture, and society to the point where no one needs to propagandize to that effect... it's merely self-reinforces at this point. You work doubles at the Walmart to feed your family and to afford your cell phone plan because you're just one magic algorithm lift away from TikTok stardom... it'll happen -any day now- why worry about politics?
Cos that's the way the elite want it, an ignorant population it's easier to manipulate.
"There’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education SUCKS, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever, EVER be fixed.
It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got.
Because the owners, the owners of this country don't want that. I'm talking about the real owners now, the BIG owners! The Wealthy… the REAL owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.
Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice! You have OWNERS! They OWN YOU. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls.
They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying, lobbying, to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I'll tell you what they don’t want:
They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests.
Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that!
You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it, and now they’re coming for your Social Security money. They want your retirement money. They want it back so they can give it to their criminal friends on Wall Street, and you know something? They’ll get it. They’ll get it all from you sooner or later cause they own this fucking place! It's a big club, and you ain’t in it! You, and I, are not in the big club.
By the way, it's the same big club they use to beat you over the head with all day long when they tell you what to believe. All day long beating you over the head with their media telling you what to believe, what to think and what to buy. The table has tilted folks. The game is rigged and nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care! Good honest hard-working people; white collar, blue collar it doesn’t matter what color shirt you have on. Good honest hard-working people continue, these are people of modest means, continue to elect these rich cock suckers who don’t give a fuck about you…. they don’t give a fuck about you… they don’t give a FUCK about you.
They don’t care about you at all… at all… AT ALL. And nobody seems to notice. Nobody seems to care. Thats what the owners count on. The fact that Americans will probably remain willfully ignorant of the big red, white and blue dick that's being jammed up their assholes everyday, because the owners of this country know the truth.
It's called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it."
Are they? Who's doing that sociology stunt?
The media and social media are geared towards reinforcing tribalism. You have to pick a team and anyone on the other team is your enemy. It works well as a means of driving engagement and making money at the expense of having an electorate that is informed.
It reminds me of the town hall Bernie Sanders did on Fox News a few years ago. If you strip away the partisan blinkers and have a debate based on facts, specific policy points, and focusing on trying to improve people's lives instead of scoring cheap points then more people agree than disagree, regardless of political affiliation.
I guess the question is, "who benefits from a divided electorate?"
One argument I don't think anyone else has made here - we have fewer restrictions on what can be advertised, where and when ads can be played, and how close to true those advertisements have to be than a lot of other countries do. I think this has the effect of wearing down people's ability and willingness to engage in logical analysis of the information they receive because we're constantly bombarded with information and most of it is bullshit to sell us crap we don't need, so we have to skim through and tune out a lot, and in that process I think a lot of information that's actually true but that people don't want to believe gets thrown out too.
Mostly willful ignorance. They don't want to be aware and so are not aware.
At the same time they'll complain it's too hard to follow and on the other hand go into great detail about their NCAA Men's Basketball March Madness bracket.
imo, awareness is already a problem so i think political awareness is already a big leap.
most news channels are incentivized by money so it serves their sponsors and not the people.
Great point.
Because things were good for a long time and nobody thought we’d lose our rights if we stopped paying attention. Same story throughout history.
As for the people being fed misinformation, they’re just rubes. Our education system failed them and now grifters who don’t care about America are taking advantage of them.
Complacency
And single issue voters, voters unwilling to push their own party (don’t vote or vote for a third party instead of getting involved in the party primaries), siloed media echo chambers, lack of critical thinking, dark money in politics, the proliferation of algorithm driven content feeds, 24 hour news cycle. Complacency is definitely a factor, but not the only one.
Because they don’t give a fuck.
american cultural social norms looks down upon talking about politics in public; which creates an entire country of people who lack practice in engaging in meaningful political discourse.
you combine that with american oligarchs using their influence to steer national discourse away from topics that threaten their interests while simultaneously manufacturing consent and you're left with recipe for red and blue magas.
Politics and religion are the two things we should be talking about
It looked like a F##k fest so I decided imma go live in my tiny bubble of happiness.
Not like I need more drama and negativity because some old people who know nothing but to never answer your questions with a straightforward answer, tell me what I need to think or do.
I rather go download some ISOs and mess around on different linux distros.
Can you explain what you mean by "politically unaware"?
Interesting article. I would agree that most Americans are politically unaware per that article, because most Americans aren't economists or historians. It was definitely an interesting read, but what I really noticed is that the article failed to compare American political unawareness to a global baseline, or at least provide some comparable country's numbers, like England, France, Russia, China, Australia, Mexico and Canada?
Makes me wonder if I could pass the US citizenship test...
Edit: 95% on a practice test...
The clear evidence of human ignorance and irrationality in the political arena poses a serious challenge to the popular wisdom. Lacking awareness of basic facts of their political systems, to say nothing of the more sophisticated knowledge that would be needed to reliably resolve controversial political issues, most citizens can do no more than guess when they enter the voting booth. . . . [T]he attempt to influence public policy through such arbitrary guesses is unjust and socially irresponsible.
Dayum.
Most Americans are incredibly politically aware, but would not call their understanding political and don’t believe the government can resolve their problems.
They’re wrong about the former and right about the latter.
America is the size of Europe, if you are English would you know what the current political discourse is in the Netherlands? Same kinda thing with something like North Carolina and Oregon very very far apart
Do you have stats do back that up, though? Like actual data that says people in other countries are less politically ignorant than americans?
I call it the propagandosphere
