• blady_blah@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    21
    ·
    6 hours ago

    For me it was politics, it was all about politics. I couldn’t believe the 60% of our country were blood thirsty pro-war fanatics who salivated at the chance to torture our enemies. Selfish old people. Vile religious fanatics. Hate fueled nuts. This is who we live with, this is the other half of society. It’s depressing when you go from thinking “we just have an honest difference in opinion on what the government should do” to “holy shit these people are evil!”.

    • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      6 hours ago

      The US was founded on genocide, and psychopathy has a genetic component, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the US has a higher proportion of people with dark personality traits, but I wouldn’t underestimated the power of propaganda.

      The US is the most propagandized place on earth. We are taught from birth the ideology of the Epstein class — from books, to movies, to advertising, to news media, to history textbooks, we are constantly taught that individualism and capitalist exploitation are not only virtuous, but indistinguishable from human nature.

      And of course, capitalism itself incentivizes evil behavior. In a system that requires unlimited growth in a world with finite resources, people must stoop to the lowest behaviors just to survive the competition.

      So I don’t think that most of these people are innately evil, I think they have just been conditioned to act and think in ways that have evil consequences, and that benefit people who actually are evil.

      • WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        5 hours ago

        I lived in the most ass-backwards culture imaginable, still not racist, homophobic, or sexist (to my knowledge).

        No excuse, they will be paying the full bill of what they have done.

        • FlyingCircus@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          5 hours ago

          Oh I’m not making excuses for them, but calling them evil is a thought terminator, and does nothing to fix the actual problem, which is capitalism.