Edited to replace original incorrect Herzog attribution with my own version that correctly attributes the quote
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It's gruesome, isn't it? When I was young, I used to believe that people were, for the most part, decent. Misled, often, stupid, very often; but good at heart. Now, I'm convinced that a good third of our society is broken and a third of our society is blind to anything that doesn't affect them.
I actually originally dug this picture up for a post of this RawStory article titled 'Their ignorance is willful': WaPo analyst says enough with the MAGA voter pity, which is highly relevant.
The problem with the majority of right wing extremists isn't that they're just stupid misled bumpkins, but that they're actual psychopaths who vote for people like Trump because he's promising to hurt everybody they hate
I'm convinced that we've lost, at minimum, 20% of our nation to some kind of mass-hysteria style sociopathy. I mean, maybe they've always been lost and we just didn't realize it, but going forward, I don't think anything can be done to 'fix' them. Most people, I think, are responsive to their environments and social standards, but after a point, you get so dug in that peer pressure doesn't work, even on social animals like us. All we can do is save the children of that 20%.
It's the same with conservatives pretty much around the world right now.
I really don't know how we're going to unfuck the situation without a lot of bloodshed – and make no mistake, it would be them who spill that blood like they're already doing, just at a much larger scale. As it is, conservatives are a threat to stable and peaceful societies, and due to their resistance to meaningful climate action they're an existential threat to humanity in general.
I have some hope, at least. People in general are passive, even when they hate the status quo, they often cede to a fait accompli. The trick is getting each bit a done deal before conservative talking heads have time to formulate the best Pavlovian Ten Minutes' Hate for their audience.
And making sure the kids continue to be alright.
It starts with us not engaging in the same thing.
I think what happened is that it became more acceptable to show their nastiness; that they used to have to hide it because our society wouldn't accept it. Then Trump being elevated to president normalized the violence and hatred being out in the open and those people felt safe to come out of the woodwork.
I feel like it was always there, simmering beneath the surface, but I'm a self-admitted (overall) misanthrope who thinks most people are, on average, pretty shitty.
We could start by addressing the actual causes of conditions of despair.