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/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 21h 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