No Stupid Questions

Because the rich do a LOT to make it turn out that way.

• News is largely controlled by capitalists.

• Education has been gutted in a lot of places to make way for private schools.

• Corporations can contribute tons of money to candidates. Setting aside the possibility that these are effectively bribes, even if that weren't the case, the candidates who get that money get to put out more ads and have more campaign infrastructure such as travel funds, staffers, etc.

• Various kinds of voter suppression.

• From the very founding of the country, the election system and government has been set up to hamper political participation. Obviously there was the fairly narrow franchise at the start. But even with that expanded, we have the electoral college, unequal apportionment, gerrymandering, first past the post, closed primaries, a court that's specifically there to slow down popular will, etc.

• Just being a representative "democracy" puts a barrier between people and the policies they want. You rarely if ever get to vote on policies. You have to vote for a candidate. And the candidate is a whole bundle of policies, but also a record, a personality, etc. So there can be all sorts of political messaging about candidates which has nothing to do with what their policies are. Because of the duopoly party system that is all but ensured by the aforementioned voting system, you aren't even going to have a candidate you can vote for that will represent your interests. And after all that, even if you manage to vote for someone who says they'll do the things you want... then they get into office and you're back on the sidelines. They go and do whatever it was they actually wanted to do, and you have fairly limited recourse for holding them accountable. The most you can do is decide to vote against them next election, but now you're back to square one.

• Broader, more participatory forms of political organizing have been violently repressed. Just look at the history of union busting or the police violence during the civil rights movement or even now, etc. In the workplace, where you're most likely to find others who share your class interests, your boss has a lot of control over you and it's in their interest to make sure employees don't talk politics and view each other as competition rather than potential allies.

• Along similar lines, racism has been used as a tool to divide people who would otherwise share class interests so they wouldn't focus their attention on capitalists.

Moral of the story: There is a long history of people struggling against capitalists for a better life and an equally long history of capitalists using every trick in the book to keep them from that goal. The political landscape you see today is the result of that history. Learn from it.

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

--Lyndon B. Johnson

The root of it is that we don't teach skepticism or critical thinking in public schools. Seriously.

Question authority. Question everything. But especially question authority. They rarely have your best interests in mind.

Let’s say I’m an American male. I like football. I like the NY Jets, because I also like to suffer.

I don’t have to read the news, or go to news websites, or listen to news radio, to hear about my Jets. I don’t have to risk accidentally learning about what’s going on in the world watching the 6 o’clock news every evening when all I really want to know is the latest saddening Jets news.

I can listen to podcasts that tell me about jets players health, fantasy picks, gossip, the latest games, and betting strategy. In the offseason my podcasts don’t go off air. I can go to websites where algorithms that have already identified me as a Jets fan bury any news about politics or social issues under a mountain of roster updates and advertisements for beer (because Jets fans need it).

Then it comes time to vote. These democrats all seem to talk about stuff I don’t care about or understand. This Trump guy says he will do stuff. I hate the way things are, but I don’t know why they are that way. Corporate monopolies? Antitrust? Voter suppression? All that shit got buried under Aaron Roger’s passing stats. And Trump wasn’t all that bad when he was president. Certainly better than I feel now, and while I’ll pore over individual player stats to take matchups into account when I set my fantasy football roster I’m not gonna go pore over statistics on the economy or anything. That shit is complicated and boring, and football stats are definitely not. So I never have to risk remembering that Trump was pretty fucking bad.

On Election Day I vote for the guy who says he’ll do stuff, and it’s easy to do it, and it’ll be fast, and I’ll like the outcome. I won’t vote for the party that gave up 30 years ago and whose message is basically “come on guys we’re trying really hard but this governing thing is impossible!”

That’s how, basically. That and bigots.

Because the rich control an overwhelming amount of the media we consume. They are capable of shaping the narrative to their benefit.

Because powerful people turned politics from a policy / representation in to politics as an identity. People will almost anything for their two minutes of hate.

Generally people tend to focus on one thing and don't pay any attention to the side effects. Morons want lower taxes for themselves and don't pay attention to the fact that the wealthy get the most benefit out of conservative cuts or that they just defunded the benefits of having a government like enforced food safety regulations. Or they care about abortion because they buy lies about post birth abortions and ignore everything else. Or they just teally hate immigrants and want to be mad and don't care that the party of hate works against their other self interests.

Many people are stupid. Like really, really stupid.

Put simply: They’re being lied to. Consistently and perniciously.

The lie is that their vote is going to benefit them somehow. Or that it’s going to hurt someone else exclusively. And, sometimes, it’s both—that it’ll hurt someone else, while bringing a benefit.

In all three cases, the real truth—that they themselves will still suffer—is neatly hidden away.

Something to consider is not everyone's interests are aligned. I'm not American so I can't comment on that specific area of the world, but that sort of question comes up a lot in my country and one of the biggest reasons is one party wants to make my hobbies/job harder and the other doesn't. So I don't think I'll vote for them. Now you, someone who doesn't have said job or hobbies, probably doesn't give a fuck about that. So you support said positions.

"I might be rich one day"

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. :)

Informed consent: People are not against exploitation. They just want to switch sides. Why would you vote for something that cripples you once you got rich?

Uninformed consent: They honestly believe they are voting for their own interests.

Indifferent consent: Usually single issue or ideology-driven voter.

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In the US at least, the systematic demolishing of the education system has led to a vast reduction in overall education and critical thinking skills. This was done on purpose. That, combined with the unexpected boon of the Internet, has led to massive wealth shifting from the many to the few.

You see the results of this change everywhere, especially on the Internet. Lack of basic spelling and grammar skills are just one symptom. All of that is to say that humans are primates and easily trained.

Manufactured consent

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

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.

Fundamental flaw of the democracy: It assumes that people know what's the best for them

Kind of an indirect answer, but I've heard people state that they vote against their own personal beliefs because they think that there needs to be a balance between "good and bad". Obviously, this is complete bullshit. Even if there should be a "balance", we already have enough problems as is, we don't need the government making it worse.

Because they want to see other people suffer

Probably unpopular answer, but it's not some clear cut "this political party has better policies for everyone". Republican policies usually are better for people living in rural areas, and Democratic policies are usually better for people in cities. I'm sure people will debate this, but this is the reason why people typically vote depending on where they live. At the very least, they believe that their party has better policies for them and their way of life.

My personal (anecdotal evidence) is that I work for a small business in a rural area, and our main customers are other small business owners (usually self employed or under 5 employees). Over the last 3 presidents, the Obama years were rough for our company, we had explosive growth during the Trump years, and then we've had stagnant growth over the past 4 years. Our largest competitor went out of business this past year, which sent us a lot of new customers, but we've also had a lot of our customers go out of business as well, so we've been pretty stagnant. Being stagnant isn't terrible, we don't have shareholders or anything, but the cost of living has increased and company profit/wages haven't which is a problem. That said I know we're doing pretty well compared to a lot of people here.

Another (once again anecdotal) example is that I have a friend who paints murals full time, for the past 30ish years. He told me that he does well with either Republicans or Democrats in office, but that his customers change. During republican presidents, his customer base is usually local businesses wanting to decorate their stores. During democratic presidents, his customer base is usually towns, state buildings, schools, etc.

But anyways, I'd be very interested to hear from some people living in cities if there's a visible uptick in income/etc when we have a democratic president, or in general what your personal observations are on how which president affects your local businesses/income/prices/etc.

False consciousness.