Stupidity, cult mentality, “my sports team” mentality, religion, and single issue voters.

TL;DR: I blame FPTP.

Hm, I’d argue that this is a byproduct of the spoiler effect — I think it’s due to strategic voting. I think that it’s likely not due to people consciously voting against their own interests to benefit the rich (assuming that they indeed do this ­— ie that voting to benefit the rich is against their interests), but instead that the entities that support these sorts of beliefs, also tend to align with other beliefs that are more important to the voters, and “benefiting the rich”, while possibly perceived negatively, is a sacrifice that the voters are willing to make.

Anger, Self-Loathing, and misguided Hate

Anger is like a fire. They’re a useful yet dangerous tool that burns and breaks stuff. When handled correctly, fire can shine light in the dark, give warmth in the cold, cook meals for the hungry, or protect you from wolves. In other words, a well controlled Anger is good at getting work done.

Not everyone has learned how to manage their Anger properly. Some let their Anger go too dim, making it hard to do stuff. Some redirect their Anger at themselves, out of fear of hurting others or believing they deserve it. Some let their Anger spread without a care of who it hurts, as long as it gets the job done. Some learn to concentrate their Anger into a beam of Hate, but don’t know who or what to aim the beam at.

Going back to the question “why do people vote against their own interests?” It is Self-Loathing. It is people who are so used to having a piece of themselves set on fire by others that they start setting themselves on fire of their own volition. It is misguided Hate. It is people who know there’s a problem and want to fix it, but have been misled about the source of the problems by people who are interested in not getting targeted by Hate.

“Why do they vote to benefit the rich?” We don’t have a choice there when either vote would have benefited the rich and powerful anyway. Just choosing between different types of benefits. Money and Power have a tendency to rise upwards, so any aid we give to those struggling at the bottom will end up benefiting those at the top anyway. But I hear ya, giving benefits to the poor and letting it rise away still beats just giving it to the rich and hoping it’ll trickle down someday.

Because civic education is lowly valued. It’s not, strictly speaking, intelligence. It’s that they were never taught what politics actually means, and after a while, they figure that since they’ve gone so long without it and things have been ‘fine’ in their life, it must not matter all that much.

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.

“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

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.

The sooner you realize the vast majority of humans are simply not very intelligent, the more everything starts making sense. And the more depressed you will be.

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.

Because the rich pretend like it’s in peoples interest, people believe them because oh they are rich they must know what they are talking about, and because people are stupid.

“I might be rich one day”

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.

Because they’ve successfully been conned into thinking that what’s in the best interests of the rich is in their own best interests too.