#yes I ended this with one of my pretentiously pithy phrases and I apologize

[athelind]

Well said. After my initial round of angry reblogs, I started slowly reaching the same conclusions.

When I heard about that election day spike in Google searches on "Did Biden drop out?", yeah, my white liberal upbringing had some nasty knee-jerk reactions, but it also started me thinking about just how utterly overwhelmed someone would have had to be to have missed the major news story of the last three months.

I work at a computer all day, and I spend around half my workday with the local news radio station playing in the background. I skim Tumblr and chat on my tiny little Discord echo chamber, that is a position of privilege.

Those of us in stable, middle-class jobs don't have any idea how badly the inflation of the last few years have hurt people living on the edge. Me? My savings account isn't in the shape I would like it to be, but all my bills are paid, and that is a position of privilege.

When you're barely hanging onto that edge, sometimes, you just want CHANGE. And sometimes, you just want to punish the people in power.

Ask not how the people have failed the nation; ask how the nation has failed the people.

things we need to address:

gen z men getting pulled into alt-right pipelines through andrew tate, joe rogan, elon musk, jordan peterson etc

the gullibility and stupidity of half the country voting against our collective best interests

the broad effect social media has on public and common good

lazy minds and lack of empathy

outside-country interference (trump and elon’s connections to russia and the amount of bots from other countries spreading misinformation)

the long-term effects of AI and rampant disinformation