this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 86 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Psychopathic, how can a politician like this have any popular support

[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago

It's DeSantis, so he basically doesn't.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

Same as any strongman leader. Talking tough reliably gets votes from a certain type of voter, even if what is proposed is utterly insane.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because some people are also psychopaths or who prefer authoritarian leadership.

[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If your analysis stops at "some people [enough to sway some elections] are just born wrong and are bad people," it isn't a very good analysis.

The problem isn't that people are "psychpaths", it is that they live in an environment where they are told that Hispanic people are a threat, that caravans are "invading" the US to pillage it, and that an invasion like meatball Ron here is proposing would effectively be a counteroffensive.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

It's worth looking at how that environment is produced too. There's a need for cheap labor in agriculture, laundry, hospitality and textile industries that dovetails well with the US's history of anti-mexican racism (grounded in the need to dehumanizing indigenous people to steal their land as well as the US-Mexico war).

By controlling people's movement through the border regime, we can make them willing to take sub-minimum wage jobs, while also keeping Mexico poor through lopsided trade agreements like NAFTA and low level insurgency achieved by escalating the drug war and flooding the country with weapons.

In this context of US oppression of Mexicans, it becomes necessary to dehumanize them to justify the violence. This is where fox news comes in. Hell, even CNN plays a role by creating categories of migrants some good and some bad, and playing them against each other while justifying border control (think about the rhetoric about dreamers vs drug smugglers).

To change this environment, we either need to undercut this propaganda by organizing white and brown workers together, or either take back control of media from big business or make our own media with similar reach.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Absolutely, I was just trying to be brief because of it being on lemmy.ml, where an anticapitalist text dump might understandably be seen as a derailment. Still, I should have included more of the "why," so thanks for your contribution.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

This isn't even an anticapitalist text dump on my part, just basic US history and sociology. If you're drawing anti capitalist conclusions from it, that's on you.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

lemmy.ml is nominally leftist, so an anticapitalist text dump is in-bounds, I believe

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Oh it's more complicated than that, but getting in to the psychology of fascism involves a lot of typing and there are more articulate authors who have already explained it at length.

it is that they live in an environment where they are told that Hispanic people are a threat, that caravans are "invading" the US to pillage it

They already hated us-foreign-policy brown people long before that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

These people don't have to be told a damn thing. They suspect the worst of the best, the best of the worst, and when it comes to 'others' they have nothing but scorn, even if it's completely baseless. It seems to be a kind of narcissism.

"Good people can't be good because I look bad by comparison. Bad people are good because I look good by comparison. Other people don't look like me at all and so we must assume the absolute worst..."

To be fair though, I don't know how we can sustain illegal immigration of low income workers.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The people who support him don't know he said this.. They literally don't know shit about these people and only watch Fox news which wont air this

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, no, they know, whats why they like him

Do you think its some sort of fluke so many fash adjacent politicians are popping up more and more?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm reminded of their support for that random Democrat from Hawaii. Turns out she was anti gay and pro intervention.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

the ratchet continues on and on and on

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Tulsi Gabbard is actually a member of a fringe cult that schismed of off the Hare Krishnas, she and her weird cultist dad have switched parties a few times to try to maneuver themselves into positions of political power to advance the cults material interests and ideology. They're super anti-LGBT and anti-Muslim.

She's also an intelligence officer in the US military.

An incredibly untrustworthy person.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago

The DeSant!s supporters I know think it's, quote, based that he wants war with Mexico.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Dunno why you're getting downvoted, you're 100% correct.

Most people aren't on social media talking politics or thinking about any of this outside what they might overhear at church, from family/friends, on TV, shared on Facebook.