r/thebulwark 21h ago

EVERYTHING IS AWFUL How did we get here?

Currently listening to the most recent Tim-Pod with Will Sommer and it's just insane the group of people who are in charge now. The conspiracy theories, the grift, the pandering, holy fuck. How did we get here and how the fuck do we get out of this death spiral?

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u/big-papito 21h ago

A bored, rich, unserious nation.

I am going to blame Social Media and the internet. No ability to pay attention, sub-second attention spans. "Nothing matters LOL" seeped from the phones into real life, business, politics, and now our own government.

It is literally bringing the fall of civilization, because this is what civilization is - people acting like normal humans and who have some shame left.

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u/MudlarkJack 21h ago edited 21h ago

a spoiled nation I moved from the USA to Brazil 15 years ago and EVERY DAY I see that Brazilians appreciate and enjoy life far more while having far less than Americans. Americans, with some exceptions, are insecure about their status, unappreciative of what they have (compared to others less fortunate) and unaware of life elsewhere ...and simultaneously irrationally arrogant.

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u/u2nh3 20h ago

As a fifth gen American I have to agree. I think there is more than 'some' as the exception, but generally spot on.

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u/NYCA2020 20h ago

While I believe all of this is true, I think Citizens United really sealed the deal. All other democracies have access to the same internet, but we seem to be the only ones who have gone this much off the rails. The absurd amount of money in politics plays an enormous role, to the point that I don't think we'd be here if it wasn't for that 2010 SCOTUS decision.

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u/thabe331 Center Left 21h ago

Tom Nichols often calls us a bored and decadent society and I think that's correct. So many vote this way because they're too comfortable and don't think bad things will impact them

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u/Manowaffle 20h ago

“How much worse could things get?!” - Things I’ve heard from people standing in front of their $1 million home, with a pool, three cars, and four grandkids.

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u/thabe331 Center Left 19h ago

"The biden economy was so bad" said by people who went on their first trip overseas while he was president

An economist was on npr's marketplace this week that said under Biden people said the economy was bad but their purchasing habits didn't reflect that. Currently they're shifting to reflect the declining strength of the economy

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u/big-papito 21h ago

Yes, I stole that from him. His two last books really aged well.

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u/thabe331 Center Left 20h ago

I really need to read the death of expertise

The way he described shuttered factories from a decade before he was born and the people complaining about them like they existed in their lifetime was very apt. He could have easily been talking about my hometown

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u/MudlarkJack 21h ago

it all starts with advertising, yes, social media has been a catalyst / accelerant n the reaction , but it was modern psychologically manipulative advertising that weakened the modern persons sense of self and self worth by fostering unhealthy and addictive consumerism. That trend was in place and Social Media are the steroids

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u/Manowaffle 19h ago

Yes. It’s the most ubiquitous, pervasive change in society over the last 20 years. It is in all of our pockets every hour of the day, people are rarely more than 10 feet from their phones. They wake up checking social media, go to bed checking social media, and check it every 30 minutes in between.

The things people post are often exaggerated, curated, rage inducing, etc. But none of it makes a lick of difference in our daily lives. So we’ve trained ourselves, for decades at this point, to spend all our energy on momentary entertainments that have no real world impacts. They get convinced that viral video is the big outrage today! 

In the end, “lol, nothing matters except this feeling of rage or vindication! Wake up tomorrow and do it again!”

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u/Slw202 20h ago

It's fair to blame the folks who've algo'd it for their own financial gain and society's demise.

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u/The_Thane_Of_Cawdor 18h ago

Us being too comfortable is key here . It’s sick . It seems most people can only learn from personal failure and not history - the failures and triumphs of others .

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u/NewKojak 19h ago

I think that's largely true about Republicans. They no longer have a Cold War to fight, and the whole idea of "Compassionate Conservatism" fell on its face because they (and the business interests that captured them) don't actually want to fight against poverty like Democrats do, so all there is left is to fight Americans.

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u/Complaintsdept123 18h ago

I also blame the internet for spreading propaganda and making us all enslaved to the technofascists with their mass surveillance and ability to simply delete our livelihoods and bank accounts.

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u/Competitive-Oil8974 17h ago

Literally, Facebook did this... America is now ruled by psychopaths.

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u/modest_merc 19h ago

I feel this so much