As a part of the dying middle class I’ve had the opportunity to engage with a lot of people on both sides of the wealth line. Fortunately neither too much of the ultra wealthy or the ultra poor. This works well for me because I have no desire to hang around anyone that admires wealth for the sake of wealth. (8 people have more wealth than the bottom 4 billion people.). The manifestation of interaction in non internet life is mostly working class living paycheck to paycheck one medical bankruptcy away from poverty and better off people whose education is outdated compared to current social trends seeking to maximize what their savings does.
And that second class of better off, older (late boomer and early Gen X) people has proven to be surprisingly susceptible to RW propaganda. They just don’t “get” how things have changed and the deliberate breaking of things to keep them interested in Fox News style ideas that don’t work are a fantasy. They genuinely believe that if their investments don’t earn passive income of six figures a year, the poor people are stealing from them. And these are the mid level of the conspiracy theory pyramid. They’re the business owners, bank vice presidents, dentists, and doctors. Smart enough to know the Earth isn’t really flat. But if going along with rabbit hole entry conspiracy theories like flat Earth and gematria, it’s for the greater good if the evil intellectuals are brought down a notch. Susceptible to the new outrage porn like furries using litter boxes, immigrants eating pets, and tariffs on islands with no people are OK. All not real things. All not challenged for being ridiculous even though they should be.
No amount of picking yourself up by your bootstraps can generate everyone having passive income that grows beyond working years and then gets passed on to the next generation for EVERYONE. That’s classic Ponzi scheme thinking. That’s how those 8 people get more and more wealthy by not actually generating any real value to society. The ultra wealthy know how to break things real good and don’t mind, and even help purposefully generate, stock market crashes. Call it a correction and someone who had a million dollars saved up will get back to where they were after a couple of years. Never realizing or acknowledging that someone with an extra 1000 to save up can’t afford to have that wiped out because their car needs repaired. Morale at the workplace is epically low. Mental health in general is epically low.
These things are not new. And as great financial powerhouses come and go the format remains the same. But this time is different. It’s a lot closer to the end of the Bronze Age and how natural disasters added to societal pressures and upended everything. And that’s because of our old friend climate change.
The anti-science/anti-intellectual in the U.S. before the Cold War was over. We got over the Great Depression with leadership making policy that actually worked. Enter the rich assholes ruining everything. Privatize education. Return education to the wealthy. Promise the middle class a future that there’s no way is going to happen. At least not in the manner presented, free money for all and a life of luxury for all. Someone, somewhere, is being exploited. Education too expensive after privatization. Education ruined by insistence that religious indoctrination is more important than science literacy. Complacency about children getting shot at school. Education ruined, ✅.
Now we have a large swath of working class people that are willing to believe that rabbit hole entry conspiracy content is real and meaningful, which it absolutely is not. It’s not enough to just promote it, you are supposed to actively attack the people who are smarter than you. “Shoot that messenger” with the right answer. Be that scorpion that stings the frog giving you a ride across the stream.
There’s always been a movement away from science literacy. Fringe ideas that don’t do any harm by belief in them. If you think the Earth is flat and it’s not it’s not going to change the effects. Your plane will still land. Your phone’s map app will still work. Gravity will still work. No need to burn scientists as heretics for speaking about what actually is going on.
If your gematria decode leads you to believe your neighbor is the Antichrist, it might be bad for him and you if you get carried away. But it doesn’t actually make him the Antichrist. A counter decode can easily be made to prove you are the Antichrist, not him.
Getting into astrology isn’t going to change that evolution did stuff that made the world what it is today. Belief that energy from the Aether isn’t going to change the skin color of people in other countries. Buying healing crystals isn’t going to affect space junk building up in the atmosphere, asteroid impacts, or solar flares.
Not directly. But those same people who think money grows on trees, they have massively misunderstood that this is the new age. The new age of climate change economic distress. The new, The Party Is Over Age. Where dealing with a global virus epidemic is a walk in the park in comparison, economically.
I’ve noticed a distinct lack of American Flag flying where I live. Either like me embarrassed at how massive numbers of people have allowed rich assholes who obviously have nothing but there own wealth and power to get to this level in stark inequality, or fans of them (still) who subconsciously recognize the Stars and Stripes has replaced the Confederate flag as a symbol of hatred. This is not communism, conspiracy, welfare queens, immigrants or whatever scapegoats are dreamed up in the future. It’s reality that no amount of gematria style prediction after the events are over will change. Wealthy people get that way by deregulation, not paying their bills, and not cleaning up waste products. Just because you are wrong about the investment Ponzi scheme, your children, everyone’s children, has to put up with what comes.
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