Every single one of the US’s amendments came not through voting, or within the political system itself. Every single one was accompanied by violent and disruptive protest and the threat from the masses below.
You also made me think of this relevant quote by Lenin:
People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be, until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.
That’s truly one of the worst things about brain drain / educated people moving to the imperial core countries for the high salaries. Global south countries really need educated young people helping to solve their own problems, and Canada and the US rip out their heart and soul.
At least in tech / programming, a good chunk of us are devoting most of our labor time to not just wasteful things, but actively harmful things, like trying to get people to click on ads, or increasing viral engagement.
I think the chat bots are, but the upvote bots sure know how to push the most rage-inducing and high-engagement posts to the top. Twitter, youtube, and reddit are very good at that now.
This is the correct answer. These “things are getting worse” terms are on the right track, but they don’t describe why things are getting worse.
Class-based systems like feudalism and capitalism have overarching rising and falling phases, and in the late phases, exploitation of our labor increases drastically as the ruling classes fight over a declining surplus. This has rippling effects to every other aspect of society, from how hard we’re forced to work, to the degradation of media, art, politics, etc.
I’m sure the speechwriters are capitalizing on the widely held US view that “politics is all bullshit has nothing to do with me”, hence the “this isn’t the time for politics” line.
The “Chinese steal everything and are expert copy-cats” is an orientalist trope with a few hundred years of history. White supremacists are still repeating it to this day, and in this thread.
Reviews after the 2010s or so get increasingly more untrustworthy, because studios realized that box office returns rely on these ratings now. So now paid reviews and bot ratings become much more important for a newly released movie.
Another prime example: the newer avatar has a higher rating than the first.