Because they’ve successfully been conned into thinking that what’s in the best interests of the rich is in their own best interests too.
This question is actually pretty old. Already ancient Greek / Roman philosophers discussed this.
Google the word ‘anacyclosis’ if you want to learn more. Alternatively here is a video link. I marked the position where the cycle explanation starts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqsBx58GxYY&t=371
Hatred for a minority group, such as transgender people, tickles the idiot part of the monke brain.
Because the rich pretend like it’s in peoples interest, people believe them because oh they are rich they must know what they are talking about, and because people are stupid.
Ignorance and gullibility. I fall for misinformation all the time, especially when it confirms my own biases and it takes real effort to maintain a mindset of “yes this sounds true, but is it actually?” It is also terribly inefficient. If someone tells me, when I was a kid, that daddylonglegs spiders are the most poisonous, I am likely going to just go “neat” and now I think that and say it. If you stop and verify EVERYTHING EVER you have no time to do anything in life. This makes the filter of critical thinking…critical.
Also, it isn’t about being stupid (though that helps). Some of the smartest people I know are conspiracy theory nutjobs. They can easily draw parallels between disparate facts, but can’t filter their findings or understand correlation doesn’t equal causation.
Yep. Lost a good and very smart friend to the anti vax conspiracies and maybe others by now.
I’ve also had to really pay attention and tell myself that I live in a liberal bubble and need to balance that bias against what is truth.
Because they’ve been fooled into thinking it will either benefit them, or benefit people they feel “deserve it.”
I can use my brother as an example for that:
My younger brother is entirely sold on billionaire philanthropy. He watched interviews where people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos on talk shows and podcasts, places where people like this go to advertise themselves, and has been completely convinced that they’re innovative, smart people.
Smart people who, through just being so damn smart, managed to become billionaires.
Who is there to vote for otherwise? Two sides of the same coin. The rich try to keep politics about anything except wealth inequality. The rich keep the good candidates off your ballot long before it’s time to choose between tweedle Dee and tweedle dum.
They’re idiots
Usually this happens when you dont have a democracy. Establish a system with rank choice voting and a few dozen candidates, and you’ll see votes closer aligned with voter interests
Because it’s no longer about benefits or interests.
It’s about the “my side won, your side lost, get over it” mentality. It’s about the tribalism and making sure you keep your ire focused on your fellow man rather than looking up and seeing the source of your problems
And it’s not just the US. It’s fucking everywhere.
Often when I see someone accusing people of voting against their own interests, it’s pretty clear that the person making the accusation has not taken the time to understand the values others are basing their choice on.
If I could rob a person and be confident that I would never be caught and punished for doing so, am I acting against my own self interest if I chose not to rob them because it goes against my moral code? No, of course not. But based on the way some people talk about voting against ones self interest, you might think I just cheated myself out of free money. Is it possible that a person might “vote against their own interests” because of a misinformed view? of course, but you’ll never understand a person’s motivations by chosing to paint them with broad strokes based on your prejudices instead of getting to know them individually and trying to understand what it is they truly value.The answer is fear. Fear is what they truly value.
You just got to get to know the Nazi to understand them?
Oh wait it is more nuanced than that. You gotta get to know the racist to emphasize with them?
Dang it, we got to dig deeper. You have to get to know the misogynist to get them?
Sometimes getting to know someone is not the magical solution people think it is.
There’s those broad strokes I was talking about. I appreciate you providing an example.
Refusing to empathize and understand how people arrive at their views in favor of this kind of prejudice will never contribute to positive changes.
Yes, the best cure to bigotry is love and compassion. Love and compassion start with empathy. It’s easy to empathize with those that think and act like you do - it can be difficult, but all the more important, to empathize with those that don’t. Refusing to do so only ensures polarization of society and a perpetuation of the cycles of violence that permeate society. This is something that has become all the more clear with the rise of social media and the info bubbles they trap people in.
This is a complex question, but up front first and foremost in any Capitalist country, voting will always benefit the rich, even FDR style Social Democracy came about as concessions to prevent revolution in the context of a decimated working class and a rising USSR.
People, generally, vote along their class interests, but these are handled in a different manner depending on which country you are in. Using the US as an example, the DNC caters to social progressivism, while the GOP caters to social conservativism. On foreign policy, the GOP and DNC are near identical, and when it comes to domestic economic policy, the DNC caters slightly more to urban voters while the GOP caters to rural voters.
This is all, however, in the context of parties that function as businesses that sell policy to Capitalists. Both parties serve Capital, because Capital is what holds real power. It holds power over the media, the state, everything.
The answer to how to fix this is getting workers to organize. When workers organize, they raise their social and class awareness and can accomplish far more than atomized individuals can.
Do we actually vote to benefit the rich?
Many vote for leaders that openly cater to the rich, but I don’t know that we actually consciously vote to deliberately help the rich.
Those elected people are the ones telling everyone that the rich are the job creators. They used to feed us the farce that trickle-down was viable, they don’t even bother with the lie anymore. The rich are just squatters on wealth. They get that wealth by consolidating businesses, hoarding assets like real estate, creating artificial scarcity, enshittifying everything, and squeezing labor for more productivity while expending massive effort to minimize overall compensation.
And they own the media. All of it. Even the “liberal” media is mealy at best about taxing wealth or anything critical of the uber-wealthy, anything right of center is openly against tax, particularly of anyone with wealth, making the wealthy the “victims” of the left’s ideas while the wealthy are just parasites victimizing us all.
All that aside, the real crux of the issue is identity politics. Being a sycophant of the rich is no longer any different than being a evangelical supply-side Jesus CINO, pro-gun, anti-government, anti-tax, anti-environmental regs, blah blah and all the rest of the mulish conservative BS.
They don’t actually care if we cater to the rich. They care that their team says we should bend over and give the rich everything. Just like their team says school shootings are an acceptable price for having your own personal arsenal, or spreading a potentially deadly disease is better than being inconvenienced by closed restaurants.
Obstinate tribalism has gleefully supplanted critical thought.
Two camps
- They don’t know any better.
Basically leftists-in-training that haven’t read enough wikipedia articles on Reagan yet.
- People voting and believing political opinions with their gut instinct
Don’t bother, and if you see one with a nazi flag, punch them in the face.
