Straight Lines@econometricks
Thanks to Trump, FOX, right wing dominance in radio & podcasting plus social media ownership, “normies” in America don’t believe in:
Science.
Reading.
Morality.
Objective reality or truth.
The USA runs entirely on vibes & narrative.
Rarely do I post sources or stats on X anymore. At least 80% of users will tune you out immediately if you do unless it’s cherry picked to meet their narrative.
X is rampant with malicious accounts that purport to be news, post actual facts and stats, but presented without proper context merely to force a narrative and invite rage.
They believe that this is what the media has been doing to them for decades, and now they respond in kind.
The difference, as in most things human, comes down to the intentions; the moral and ethical impetus behind the effort. If media really was, or if it felt, left wing coded to you all those years through the 80s, 90s, aughts & 10s, it was because you were falling for the long running psyop that the uber wealthy have been running since the 1950s. The time when “America Was Great” because we had encoded a good system that favored the middle class over the very wealthy and powerful.
Being disciplined & determined, the uber wealthy hunkered down, created a plan, and dug in to the Republican Party where they recognized culture war leverage would be on their side.
The gilded age of The Great Gatsby was finally behind us, with some lessons learned on both sides.
If you’ve come to believe 💯 that:
Corps > than people.
Hoarding money = good.
Worker’s rights = bad.
Helping workers recover from economic calamity = bad! socialism!
Social programs and wealth transfers are evil theft.
Goverment & taxes = inefficiency & thievery.
Rich = Productive.
I could go on and on with these right wing libertarian “truths” that are mostly lies. If you fell for any of this, the Ayn Rand psyop worked on you.
If you fell for Trump, not only did this psyop work on you, but so did the one many Americans thought we were well past and on the correct side of, having defeated it in a world war—a victory after which the world openly agreed to our hegemony because we were viewed as powerful, and, possibly, as good.
The second psyop, so heavily reinforced by endless culture wars the elite made sure were pumped continuously to the Republican base, says:
See that…
[euphemistic—doesn’t matter who it is really, so pick whatever is in your head and I’ll dog whistle a few ideas to you to help you along]
… “OTHER” over there?
He’s trying to take YOUR cookie!
(Do the meme in your head, where Trump sits at the head of a table with a giant pile of cookies in front of him, you sit on one side with a single cookie, and an angry looking “other” of your choice sits across from you. Maybe use my avatar here, frame me as a dirty, Palestine & trans in sports/libraries supporting liberal screaming at the universe for social justice.)
I’m not woke at all, I’m conservative on some things like fiscal policy, I’m a socialist on others like medicine, I’m communist on a very few things like the military, but I’m mostly a free market capitalist when it comes to goods and services. I believe strongly that free market capitalism works, but its excesses have to be carefully monitored.
We have to have rule of law, including laws that protect the people from predators, from anti-competitive practices, price manipulation (the main tool of modern day capitalists.) From bribing the refs. Corporations should be utterly banned from donating in politics. They can advertise, speak out and advocate, but they cannot directly spend a dime on a candidate, and they must loudly disclose that it is their voice that is speaking.
Greed is good, but it isn’t great. When it goes looking for innovation, ideas, creative endeavors, it’s fabulous and generates enormous prosperity.
When it goes looking for leverage, it becomes an insidious evil.
Sorry, no “sources”.
It’s all narrative & vibes.
“DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH”. 🧐
