- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
The most successful political propaganda in our time was convincing millions of people that caring for others and the planet was somehow a threat to America.
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No way. It’s the obsession with Americans weird take on “freedom” and it seems to have been around since forever.
Its freedom as in everyone is free to not have health insurance if the choose not to. Everyone is free to die by gun homicide if they wish to.
Of course, no one is free to choose what to do with their own body, like not have a baby or take hormones - that would just be weird.
And yes, any changes to the status quo would be a threat to the people profiting from it.
I guess you misinterpreted “land of the free”. It’s free companies, not free slaves. You guys are worker-bees with no real freedom other than buying a truck and a gun because…reasons.
No mockery of YOU. Just sarcasm towards a broken system.
you see America is so free that it’s free from freedom! checkmate, socialists (also we’re going to keep bombing boats sending humanitarian aid to Cuba because the world can’t see that socialism works <:)
HE SAID SOCIALISM!
STONE HIM!
What’s happening in Cuba is tragic.
Oh heavens no, I’m not American silly.
Phew…good for you 😁
Yeah….i would argue it’s just money and capitalism. ‘Freedom’, small government, deregulation ‘small’ business, tax changes, it’s all just for profits for rich fuckos. Environment? Well that cuts oil and gas profits! Environmental regulations? Not using that awful chemical hurts manufacturing profits! Taxes? We will cut them all! (Yours expire but the business ones are in perpetuity).
I would add too the concept of “American Exceptionalism”.
the lies began with “all men are created equal,” quickly followed by “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”
the common good has always been a threat to the ruling class, but they want you to blame your shitty life (that the ruling class caused) on those who are most vulnerable, bonus if you already fear/hate those people
Originally, it was John Locke’s “life, liberty, and property”, which I think still sticks.
And despite this “all men” stuff, we had slaves, only further codifying it under the 13th Amendmen as legal.
We are the property.
To be fair requiring people who have been convicted of a crime by a jury of their peers through a fair and just legal system to do labor isn’t itself a form of slavery. Also worth noting that in some cases prisoners work these jobs to generate income for themselves (usually so they can buy snacks and things from the prison commissary.)
For-profit jails are the exception since such an arrangement encourages false imprisonment but this is more a matter of making sure our legal system operates justly and fairly. Have some places used bogus charges to imprison people to use as labor? Sure, but again we need to make sure that we don’t conflate that with all prisoners doing labor when it’s only some of them. The citizens ensuring that their justice system is working properly and free of corruption is the solution to this.
And we have historical examples of it working to remove corruption. There was a for-profit juvenile detention center that got caught trumping up charges in order to lock up kids which generated more fee’s and money for the jail and they found out the judge who had sentenced the kids was corrupt and working for the company than ran the jail. The individuals who engaged in this were caught, tried and imprisoned and fined millions of dollars for their crimes.
Of course the kids shouldn’t have been scammed like that to begin with. However, I’d remind you that our justice system punishes people who have committed crimes when we can prove it to a jury of our peers. A justice system isn’t designed to prevent crimes, we can try to deter them but thats merely our hope, the actual purpose is to remedy an injustice. While we’d like to not have had kids overly punished for minor crimes (most of the kids had done stuff like getting caught smoking weed and other misdemeanors) whats more important here is that the people who abused our justice system for personal gain were eventually punished for their abuse.
But at the heart of it the majority of prison labor isn’t really slavery. Heck, lots of prisoners enjoy such jobs, not only because it gives them a few bucks but it also gets them out of the monotony of being in prison all day. When done properly it can actually help to rehabilitate some of these prisoners.
For one, the conviction rates for the exact same crime wildly differ based on your race. If you are black, latino, or indigenous you are more likely to be convicted of the same crime than a white or asian person. Not to mention that your chances of getting stopped or arrested to begin with are dramatically higher if you’re black or latino.
The more pertinent point, though, is prison conditions. Did you know that it’s very common for prisons to either provide very little or no menstruation products? Did you know that some prisons will sell them in the commissionary at crazy high upcharged prices while inmates make pennies on the dollar? Does that sound like a choice to you?
Here’s something that’s allegedly a choice: food. Prison food (with very few exceptions) is borderline inedible. There are a lot of states who have incentives to cut costs in prisons wherever possible, and they will buy the cheapest, lowest quality food possible. This food is often prepared in unsanitary conditions by workers who are not trained in food safety because they are also inmates. Oftentimes it is extremely difficult to stomach and people will get food poisoning. I personally know somebody who was in prison for a while and worked in the kitchen and there were multiple times that spoiled, rotten food was cooked and served, and there was even a time where a rat got into the food and the kitchen staff just cooked the rat along with everything else and served it anyway. This person would often just not eat as a result. The prison commissionaries sell junk food like chips and cookies for a crazy upcharged price. Anything is better than what you get served in prison.
One last thing: is the bail system “fair and just”? Is it fair that if you have money and pay you don’t have to go to jail, while somebody who does not have money has no other choice? What about other fees that they charge you? Court debt is a thing. What about the laws themselves? Being homeless is illegal in many parts of the US. You will get arrested for sleeping under a bridge or in your car.
Highly recommend reading the book the Warehouse by James Kilgore and Vic Liu if you want to learn more about how the American prison system works. It’s an incredibly disturbing read, but it’s the reality we live in.
TL;DR
What a worm.
No one cares what you “think”. It’s defined. You could have saved us both time if you just read the 13th. It’s says “slavery”. SLAVERY.
Big surprise, we have the highest incarcerated population in the world.
So many members have contacted me to warn that LocalAreaMan is in fact a Russian shill.
Are you mad that your internet got disrupted this week?
Wow, this sounds a lot like right wing or red fascist talking points. Nevermind that it’s punishment this is used for and not rehabilitation. We punish drug offenders while we let white collar crime to run rampant.
Nevermind that it’s punishment this is used for and not rehabilitation.
Lots of time work programs for prisoners are used for rehabilitation.
As long as they enjoy (forced labor) it, then it is not slavery is not a very good argument. Even outside of prison wage slavery is a real problem. Having someone work in prisons for decades and then released with barely anything to show for it is the very definition of exploitation. Likely leading to more recidivism since without the capital crime is the easiest way to support oneself after missing out on society for decades.
Well it is true, just America doesn’t mean the citizen of the USA but the American capital. Opposing the bombing of countries is a threat to profits. The successful propaganda is that the USA act in the interests of its citizens
They’re stuck in the Zero Sum Game mindset and their Circle of Empathy is smaller - that’s all it is.
They think that if someone on the other side of the planet (who they don’t care about) benefits, they (and their loved ones) stand to lose.
Once you wrap your head around that, 90% of their behavior makes sense.
All they had to do was convince idiots that the US and billionaires’ profits were inextricably enmeshed.
And it was 100 percent successful. Americans love the taste of billionaire peen.
It’s the tradition of punching down on others when they get their turn and the owners went so far they used slavery, but had to walk that back. Still try to pay workers as little as possible and hoard the rest for themselves to live richly and separate from the common masses. They want less for other workers rather than more, it’s sad. Want better for all people, not just self, that’s selfish.
I think the biggest propaganda buy in was that neo-liberal politics and policies along with the “free market” were the best for a sustainable world.
Yeah… it fucking sucks. I didn’t even realize how much propaganda I had internalized, since like, birth? Didn’t know “neo-liberal” was even a thing. Looking back, it’s just kinda like, “damn. Most of my beliefs aren’t even of me?”. The cognitive dissonance was loud
But, on the up & up, I now get to build beliefs that are of me, rather than for me… so that’s cool
Yeah, deprogramming takes a while too with the intense level of propaganda. Realizing that the “left” they say in the media and such refers to neo-liberalism and not actual leftist policies or politics. It’s all purposely obsfucated to keep us in that vacuum.
Convincing? 😂 , too many Unbelievable Stupid Assholes
It’s a threat to the version of America that benefits the oligarchy and empowers them to keep on fucking us.
Cutting funding for USIAD will probably kill millions of people.
Already has killed loads, as far as I understand it.
Ummm, have people already forgotten his role in COVID and the literal millions upon millions that died because of it?
He literally relit the Epstein files issue to distract from the millions of people who died because he knew that his voters cared less about him raping children than they did about his decimation of the economy and workforce.Me? No.
Caring for? Hell. We think they’re a threat if they won’t give us all their natural resources.
you can’t convince me that this is new. settlers pretty much started the genocide of the people who ‘care for others and the planet’ day one. there has been exploiting and extracting since before america was even an idea. that, in fact, was the entire point from the get-go.
to be fair it is a threat to america, it would be a completely different country if that happened, and that’s not a bad thing
Free energy handouts from the sun? Sounds like socialism.
