Feelings of helplessness and victimization combined with low levels of education as well as black and white thinking. A lot of Americans want the “system” to not be what it is, but they’ll look to strongman types to make the world what they want rather do it for themselves, alone or collectively. Conservatives want to have their enemies either run out of the country, locked up, or shoved back into the closet so they don’t have to know it exists- they went for Trump. They’re also greedy and seem to assume that anything that benefits someone else or society was taken from them. Boomers grew up on Cold War propaganda, the idea that communism was the anti-America, so they fight hard against anything remotely social (plus add in some bigotry that socialism would benefit the folks they hate). But on the flip side, many on the left have come to idolize the authoritarian left method because it forces the change they want and that old propaganda of “communism is anti-American” has the reverse effect; it’s embraced because they’re reactionary.
It’s all more rabid each way online, the right just managed to find their figurehead around which to build a cult of personality first. The left now in-fights because it’s a three way battle between the old guard Democrats who want to go back to business as usual, the reactionaries seeking their golden goose, and the rest who don’t want to go back to what it was or rewrite the MAGA playbook but with “our guy” in charge.
Feelings of helplessness and victimization combined with low levels of education as well as black and white thinking. A lot of Americans want the “system” to not be what it is, but they’ll look to strongman types to make the world what they want rather do it for themselves, alone or collectively. Conservatives want to have their enemies either run out of the country, locked up, or shoved back into the closet so they don’t have to know it exists- they went for Trump. They’re also greedy and seem to assume that anything that benefits someone else or society was taken from them. Boomers grew up on Cold War propaganda, the idea that communism was the anti-America, so they fight hard against anything remotely social (plus add in some bigotry that socialism would benefit the folks they hate). But on the flip side, many on the left have come to idolize the authoritarian left method because it forces the change they want and that old propaganda of “communism is anti-American” has the reverse effect; it’s embraced because they’re reactionary.
It’s all more rabid each way online, the right just managed to find their figurehead around which to build a cult of personality first. The left now in-fights because it’s a three way battle between the old guard Democrats who want to go back to business as usual, the reactionaries seeking their golden goose, and the rest who don’t want to go back to what it was or rewrite the MAGA playbook but with “our guy” in charge.