• PrincessLeiasCat@sh.itjust.works
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    8 days ago

    I have a question about this and I hope I’m able to ask it correctly the way it’s sitting in my head.

    I know throughout history there have been strongmen who come to power, promise the world, and don’t deliver.

    I also know about propaganda and its role in the above scenario.

    My question is - if these images are seen by enough people who truly believe what they say - and they’re poor, maybe older, not in a great place overall, etc, and they voted Trump because they believe this…shit….what happens when they don’t deliver?

    If they’re expecting homes and help and a magic, simple solution to all of their problems that never delivers, what happens not only to them psychologically, but also what bigger impact will their reactions have on the country as a whole?

    In the US, I’m not so optimistic we’ll have that moment given the past 8 or so years. There will never be a realization that the Emperor has no clothes but the help will still never arrive. How long can that be sustained, and what happens when it can’t?

    I hope that made sense and I apologize if it doesn’t.

    • SkyNTP@lemmy.ml
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      8 days ago

      We are in uncharted territory here. There is no crystal ball for what comes next.

      That being said, this is not sustainable. Society is a contract. The contract goes away when parties to that contract begin to disagree on what that contract says, and that is inevitable when people are fed garbage without results. Most empires have collapsed under their own weight. I suspect this will happen to the US as well, which has always been the purpose of all this disinformation: not to consolidate power into a dictator, but instead to sow division, and rip apart the social contract. The fact that Americans are so polarized is proof of that division. You ask if people will ever wake up. Clearly half the the US has.

      The only question is how that collapse will happen, and how peacefully it might be.