No no you don't understand. It's always the people with the least amount of economic power who are responsible for everything!
Showerthoughts
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Posts must be original/unique
- Be good to others - no bigotry - including racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, or xenophobia
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct
Yea but there's so many of them! They must be getting controlled by some imaginary ruling class, or something
Exactly. They're simultaneously responsible and irresponsible.
The only dangerous minority is the rich.
And the claw people
I mean yeah, but how is this a shower thought?
It's not really it's just Lemmy being Lemmy
How exactly is this a shower thought? (I agree by the way, but how?)
Yeah, this dude is using his shower as his political soapboax
ArseAssassin would never. How dare you accuse ArseAssassin of such things.
I don’t think I’ve seen a legitimate shower thought on Lemmy ShowerThoughts.
Also one of the aspects of fascism
The enemy or 'other' is both simultaneously weak and unworthy and should be defeated ... and powerful and oppressive and is the cause of all problems.
Many of the weak and vulnerable are responsible for putting the rich and powerful into power though. Power is entirely a social construct. Bit of a paradox but that's the way it is.
I think the white is referring to minorities being scapegoated, though. While absolutely some people vote against their best interests, they often don't have the numbers to make change themselves (eg, trans and NB people are maybe 1% of the population but getting severely attacked right now) or the system is constantly trying to screw them over (eg, black people are a sizable chunk of the population, but there's countless efforts to restrict their ability to vote and keep them poor).
Well it's really not that simple. I assume you're referring to things like climate change and privacy concerns and general de-evolution of government.
Just to boil down a very complex subject into a lazy comment:
Let's take climate change for instance. Do corporations and government do almost nothing to curb climate change? Yes. Do they actively lie to people about climate change? Yes.
Does the public still know that climate change is a real thing? At least some of them.
Do a ridiculous proportion of people still buy gas-guzzling SUVs and plastic water bottles and use plastic bags at the grocery store unnecessarily? Yes.
Do some people have full access to the information to educate themselves very quickly on the science, and yet choose to ignore that and instead actually actively promote what they want to believe instead? Absolutely
The reality is that "blame" is seldom simple and we all carry some amount of responsibility.
Personally I view this as a sliding scale. And while I do take personal responsibility in driving an efficient vehicle and refusing plastic bags and bottles (even though people look at me like some kind of crazy hippie and mock me accordingly), I also refuse to live in a yurt in the forest. When more people move down the scale toward me, it will make it easier for me to move even further down the scale.
Do a ridiculous proportion of people still buy gas-guzzling SUVs and plastic water bottles and use plastic bags at the grocery store unnecessarily? Yes
It's not that this doesn't matter, it does. But almost every time it's mentioned is alongside industrial climate impacts as if they were at all in a similar scale.
They aren't even close. People doing the 'well actually' thing for individual climate impacts are inadvertently being patsies for corporations to continue to deflect scrutiny away from the absolutely ridiculous levels of climate impacts they have. And while consumers are trying to move to metal straws, corporations have basically not even started trying to address low hanging fruit ways to mitigate climate change, let alone anything slightly tricky.
I get your point and it's fair. Only those with the power to shift opinion can be held responsible in 2023. The consolidation of power and bullhorn should not be taken for granted. People are just people. Trillions are spent into making their decisions for them. You missed the forest for the trees in OPs sentiment imho.
Sorry to say, but many can barely afford rent and the bills, let alone even imagine trying to go out of their way to fix the climate.
Buy an electric car you say? Hell, can't even afford a new tire for the old car to get to work, you gotta be out of your mind to think poor people can afford to buy a new EV because fOSsiL FUeL bAd...
Yes, clearly fossil fuel is bad, but how you expect the vast number of people living week to week and can barely afford new shoes to buy an EV?
It's not a choice to live in poverty when the billionaires literally milk most of the population of every penny they can get away with while not even paying their employees a fair living wage.
It's a pretty incredible trick to convince people that those who, demonstrably, have the least power in society are responsible for all of its problems. What's that thing about how there has to be an enemy, and that enemy has to simultaneously be weak, wretched and inferior but also strong enough to pose a threat that justifies an authoritarian response? I forget who tends to do that...
Not always. Half of these putzes openly fight to protect the system because they benefit from exploiting their neighbors, too.
EDIT: Here they come right now lol
Well, yeah.
It's not the powerless that made things how they are, it's the powerful that shape the world.
It's also worth noting that when you're powerful but don't have the votes it takes to do a thing you want, the shortest path to getting those votes is unifying people around being mad at some sort of scapegoat.
This is why fascism looks the way it does
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it emerges from a democracy in some sort of crisis
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it's always that elites (a voting minority of powerful interests) need political support
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the way they always get it is by focusing anger on a scapegoat, with promises to punish them
Let us examine the couch movers analogy.
A) If two people, A and B, who can lift 25 lb move a 50 lb couch, and A does not try 100%, whose fault is is that couch does not get moved?
B) If A can lift 20 lb and B 30 lb, and A does not give 100%, whose fault is it then?
C) If A can lift 30 lb and B 20 lb, and A does not give 100%, whose fault is it then?
D) What if both can lift 20 lb?
E) What if A can lift 100 lb and B can lift 20 lb?
F) What if A can lift 20 lb and B can lift 100 lb?
G) What if A and B can both lift 100 lb?
I find it interesting that whose fault seemingly changes even if it is always assumed A is not giving 100% in all cases.
I think where this analogy falls short is that in reality it gets assumed everyone can lift the same if they just would give 100 %. And therefore one person always gets the blame since they are seemingly not giving enough.
Otherwise known as bootstraps.
The thing assholes always tell you they pulled themselves up by, conveniently ignoring their rich, connected family and friends that was the biggest factor in their success.
Not necessarily. I think that lying requires intent. Someone could tell me something verifiably false without lying because they truly believe it to be true.
But what about your carbon footprint? Isn’t this all your fault for asking your boss for a cost-of-living pay rise?
It's not a matter of responsibility.
The rich and powerful won't safe the world. If we don't want to live in a world with so many natural desasters that there is no farming and only synthetic food, then things have to change.
The opposite of the rich and powerful are not the weak and vulnerable but almost everybody. It's OK to let things happen but it's also possible to change everything, maybe even in a week or two.