Memes

I think if you lack critical thinking skills but have all your material needs met, have a non alienating job that is satisfying, and aren't constantly seeking answers for why your life sucks (that the media loves to provide in the form of lies), you're probably going to be pretty happy.

I guess my point is that it's not necessarily the lack of critical thinking alone. It's the combination of that with people's material circumstances.

Basically I'm just describing that I see it through a lense of dialectical materialism.

It's why I want racist or homophobic idiots to also have free universal healthcare, education, and a fulfilling job. Because I don't think you can solely "educate" away the conditions that lead people to look for answers to their poor conditions. Answers that Twitter Nazis and media outlets are happy to fill with xenophobia and bigotry.

White working class people definitely still have privileges and advantages. But you can't educate away their feelings of "well, my parents owned a house at 19 and lived off a single salary. I'm driving for Uber and have 3 roommates". And the bigotries are there to offer them reasons for why it's not their own failure and (most importantly) why it's not the failures of capitalism.

all this is true, and i want to add they're also told that there are people that can fix things for them if they just believe in them and give them whatever they need to return to the "good old days"; in the united states; this is always a republican leader.

i think that this gives them hope for a brighter future and this hope makes them seem happier than others. they're fooled into having faith that things will eventually get better, so long as they keep showing up to vote for their "protector" (and they VERY MUCH reliably do) or else someone else with take charge who will then let those evil lgbt, poor, immigrants, etc. destroy the country. in the united states this someone else is always a democratic leader.

liberals have to find their own source of hope and; in the united states; most place it upon a democratic leader, but liberals see their leader less as a protector and more like a stop-gap or as someone who is a lesser evil. it doesn't matter than the democratic leader is virtually the same as the republican leader, it only matters that they're more socially progressive than the republican leader; even if only by a hair.

this means that the regressive policies that both the democratic and republican leaders share invariably bites a person in the ass where it either reinforces a conservative's faith in a protector or it disillusions a liberal. the liberal then, either rebuilds their broken sense of hope and invests it again into a new democratic leader or checks out of the system to become either a doomer and/or a non-voter.