this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2025
723 points (98.5% liked)
Not The Onion
18428 readers
1888 users here now
Welcome
We're not The Onion! Not affiliated with them in any way! Not operated by them in any way! All the news here is real!
The Rules
Posts must be:
- Links to news stories from...
- ...credible sources, with...
- ...their original headlines, that...
- ...would make people who see the headline think, “That has got to be a story from The Onion, America’s Finest News Source.”
Please also avoid duplicates.
Comments and post content must abide by the server rules for Lemmy.world and generally abstain from trollish, bigoted, or otherwise disruptive behavior that makes this community less fun for everyone.
And that’s basically it!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's shocking to witness what's happening in the US of A as an outsider.
Well, unfortunately many other countries aren't looking at the USA as a warning, but as an example.
The right wing is gaining ground in a lot of places that should know better.
That is true! The rise of right wing billionaire funded regimes is not a mistake but a slow tip towards an actual nightmare for many.
The warnings were there when the George W. Bush administration was doing all the things. We should have learned then never again to vote Republican, but we did. Twice. For the same monster both times.
We need to be having a sober conversation as to why and how that happened, given democracy doesn't work when people vote based on vibes or propaganda feels.
That is the line of reasoning that leads to anti-democratic authoritarianism. Humans use heuristics and emotion to make decisions the vast majority of the time. We might call that a values-based judgment if we are being charitable.
The current leadership uses notions of loyalty and in-group/out-group membership, and their MAGA supporters are swayed by disgust emotions manipulated by propagandists. However, I'll admit that I'm driven by sense of fairness, or even moral outrage at naked corruption and abuse of power, waste, etc. We all do it. When people are hurting, you have to give them a solution that feels good -feels like it will make things better. Sending a strong message that crony capitalists are siphoning all the wealth off the middle-class to make you poorer, and they need to be taxed into the dirt feels like vindication and something that could work, for example. You have to hit both sides of the human coin.
Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of people are primarily vibes driven. Everyone is, in some cases or other. For example, a lot of otherwise reasonable people will flip their shit if you suggest eating less meat for environmental or animal welfare reasons. You just get excuses and variations of "but i like it" and "but i'm a good person".
imagine living here.
It’s upsetting but I am the least surprised I could ever be. They’ve had decades of warnings and done nothing about it as things just got worse and worse and even still they refuse to admit where they are.