The only thing baffling about any of this is that somehow, millions of ordinary, working/middle-class Americans believe that this system benefits them more than the alternative.
it’s not baffling at all. the American dream is literally everyone is a millionaire or will be one day. conservatives are the only ones buying into that dream still so they’re trying to live like a millionaire now so that when the money finally shows up they’ve done their part to help their new millionaire friends along the way.
The problem is they don’t understand that the likelihood of them becoming even moderately wealthy is pretty slim and they’re too blind to see that voting to hurt the poor is voting to hurt themselves in their current situation.
When I was growing up, at least the way I was taught (and I was only born in 1977), the American Dream was a steady paycheck, a house and a car. Did that change at some point or was I taught something other than what people actually believed?
I’ve never heard of that version of The American Dream before.
But voting another way will result in my children being accosted by drag queens who will turn them gay / trans and my freedoms will be co-opted by shitty beer companies who don’t believe in Christ. Then my enemies will take my guns and my elderly parents will be shipped off to a commie gulag and murdered to make room for more whatever whatever whatever… I ran out of tropes. Hopefully, you don’t need me to punctuate that this is sarcasm.
These are the things that they think about obsessively. They aren’t thinking about how to make the world a better place. They’re thinking about the things they hate and fear.
