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Maybe this is obvious and we can blame Fox Newsā¦ but
There are so many things going on itās hard to keep track of them all. Itās like playing bingo except every square on the board is worse than the last.
First off, how is it so hard to get a more progressive tax rate instituted in this country? We need to go back to the 30ās when the top tax rate for millionaires and billionaires was 70%. Half this country, who would stand to make major material games if we did, decries it as socialism and votes against their interests every election. In fact, Trump LOWERED the capital gains tax and the right hails him as some kind of hero and even called him a populist at one point to boot.
We also need to stop this policy of attaching healthcare to employment. All it does is give power to our capitalist overlords and hurt labor. Labor is a hollow shell of what it was 50-60 years ago without stronger unions and stronger protections for the right to organize. The only politician that could have gotten us Single Payer healthcare and done anything to stop the growing wealth inequality was Bernie, and everyone, right and left, crucified the guy. Weāre the only developed country that canāt figure this out.
Sure, the economy is doing well, but only if you control assets. A home. A business. Investments in U.S. companies. Everybody else is getting whittled away by rising food costs, unaffordable housing and energy prices.
All of this is bad enough, but then thereās the war on drugs which has successfully created a three tier society with minorities and people of color at the bottom. Weāve made it a policy to lock up fathers and income earners for generations, and then when you add the private prison system thereās no end in sight. Itās legal apartheid. This has pretty much gone unchecked since Reagan weaponized the executive. Progressives are the only ones talking about these things, who are only a small minority, and half of the country concerns itself with taking away peoplesā rights and bringing us back 200 years and turning this country into a theocracy.
How is it that the self professed āreligiousā in this country are so against helping the poor and those at the bottom end of society? āBuild the wallā instead of actually doing anything to help people fleeing violence in their home country. Donāt get me started with the kids in cages theatrics. They want to strip away food stamps and benefits like school lunches for children and programs like SNAP. They demonize people on welfare (welfare queens). They would rather kill social security than prop it up and slander things like Single Payer healthcare which would disproportionately affect members of society that are most vulnerable. The right fights it tooth and nail and tries to stymie anything that even resembles change or progress.
How? How is the right seemingly against any and every policy that would help the working class escape this vicious cycle thatās only getting worse? These people that claim to pray to an all holy fictitious sky monster that preaches love and acceptance and being a Good Samaritan?
Make this make sense because I canāt figure any of it out.
It makes sense if you ditch the idea of a just-world hypothesis.
What we have is the culmination of a variety of systems reaching a natural point of intersection.
If you have a society wherein the generation and maintenance of wealth is the top priority and you reward the people that do that the best without any regard as to how they do it, you're going to create a society that is laser focused on that to the exclusion of all else.
Part of what you're missing is just different value systems.
IE:
First off, how is it so hard to get a more progressive tax rate instituted in this country? We need to go back to the 30ās when the top tax rate for millionaires and billionaires was 70%. Half this country, who would stand to make major material games if we did, decries it as socialism and votes against their interests every election. In fact, Trump LOWERED the capital gains tax and the right hails him as some kind of hero and even called him a populist at one point to boot.
The thinking goes that if we allow people who have more money to keep more of their money, they will use it in ways that generates jobs and thus income for other people. Combine that with an inherent distrust of the state's use of tax money and you have people who oppose a tax system that they benefit from. That's overlaid with a belief in the idea of a self-made person who works their way up, seizing opportunities to pull themselves up out of poverty and building a good life for themselves and their family.
You can agree or not with that but that's part of a perspective that can inform something you discuss not understanding.
A big part of the issue is that a lot of people ignore the fact that objective truth (at least not for issues like this) is not some fixed point in space to which you are either closer to ("right") or further away from ("wrong.")
We tend to like to think that we are the special ones that have discerned the Objective Truth by our synthesis of the best information we have available to us and, broadly, that's true - humans tend to believe what we believe because it's what resonates the most with our experiences, our knowledge, and our understanding.
We also tend to forget that other people do the same thing and that their experiences, knowledge, and understanding are different and as such are likely to resonate with different ideas in a different way than we do.
Because we tend to assume that we have Objective Truth, we can't fathom why anyone would disagree with our conclusions because we're treating our beliefs and ideas as objective and people who reject them as "crazy."
Don't get me wrong, this isn't to say "Oh we just have to live and let live, everyone is valid!" because there are some very real and demonstrably negative impacts to a society that doesn't challenge things like "genocide is acceptable" and "race science has merit." You can understand someone's perspective while disagreeing with and opposing it.
The trap to avoid falling into is bewilderment at someone else believing something different than you. Once you start being able to see why someone might believe something, you take a huge step towards being able to talk to them.
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Again, it comes down to values. People believe that if there's lower taxes on wealthy people, they'll use that wealth to generate economic activity that will make them wealthy (or at least wealthier.)
The same dynamic is at play with the religious people you're indicating. They believe that people can and should help themselves and that policies like social assistance undercut people's ability to do that. There's room in their view for charity and, to be fair, there is a sizable amount of religious based charity in the US, but that's meant for truly "act of god" misfortune rather than what they view as the result of indolence or poor choices.