For one, the United States lacks a good press corps of independent journalists with broad reach.
Everything is either politicized or commercialized. Shock value sells. Balanced rational discourse does not. Polarization makes too much money for too many people.
On top of that, a systematic destruction of education and a stranglehold of religion practically makes ignorance inevitable.
Maybe we could repair it, but it would take Republicans being blocked from making any decisions for several decades at this point.
Many reasons. Regular politics is boring, and pop culture Facebook TikTok YouTube is all so much more captivating.
Also, so many Americans are struggling to survive, so there isn't enough time to engage with the political process in a meaningful way. I wonder if it's an intentional effort by the uber wealthy.
Foreign and corporate disinformation campaigns aided by consolidation of TV and print media as well as social media monopolies. Combine that with a lack of time or energy from working long hours, long commutes, and a lack of ability to take time off, much less devote energy to sorting out disinformation that is so common.
Our media apparatus and schooling don't promote critical thinking.
It's so much easier to take someone at their word instead of looking into the many interwoven facts and details yourself. In fact, it can take so long fact-checking things these days to combat mis/disinformation that people simply.... don't.
It's way more laborious to disprove a lie than it is to simply recount a lie.
Ok so I study political science (second semester so not an expert at all) and last semester I had to research a lot about turnout rates for people in less fortunate situations. The answer is really simple actually. If people live in shit situations they don't trust the government and they start to not care. Education is worse when you don't have enough money. There is also a constant struggle to make politics feel closer to the people because that directly impacts if you will educate yourself and go participate. Unfortunately politics feels like it is either actively against you or at least doesn't do anything for you if you are at the bottom .One thing that might be important in the US is that slums decrease political awareness / willingness to vote because these people who are probably not going to care are surrounded by more people that don't care. So if noone around you says something good about the government you are going to hate it even more.
All of this leads to an underrepresentation of these groups which leads to their problems being overlooked or underestimated which leads to worse conditions which leads to less political activity which leads to less representation....its a cycle that makes millions of peoples lives worse every day. And at some point they just don't care about politics because politics seems to not care about them. None of my sources are in English so get bozoed I could be lying about all of this.
Most people everywhere are very politically unaware. Here's a decent site that demonstrates this. Basically, the knowledge we (by which I mean humans, not just Americans, of which I am not one) have leads us to make inaccurate assumptions about the other stuff.
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Corporate media with bias to keep the discourse between two seemingly distant yet very close poles.
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Lack of corporate and rich taxation
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Structural defunding and discrediting the public education system
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Atomized working class
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Corrupt plutocracy of a government removed the law that prevented mass ownership of news and media outlets. It consolidated everything into just a handful of media outlets that talk to the nation.
That, along with complete over saturation. A person trying to sort through a huge country comprised of their city government, plus their county, plus state, plus national level politics across a nation that's 8,000,000 square kilometers (not including Alaska and Hawaii) is just too much for most people to decipher and sort through.
It's even harder to mass protest here. It's not like everyone can drive inside of less than two hours away and show up in London or something. Getting to our capital to protest could be quite literally a 40 hour drive away.
A mixture of poor education in some states combined with a steady, deliberate demoralizing of the voters by the political class.
It takes a lot of effort to stay on top of things, plus the research it takes to sort out fact from fiction. After all that investment, the amount of difference one can make is miniscule.
I think the real problem is that they think they're aware, but are ignorant or unwilling to learn about the actual issues.
For example, with climate change it's a lot easier to think and want it to be not real. They know what it is, but it's a lot easier to believe it's not real. It's a lot more effort and leaving your comfort zone to learn about it and realize how fucked it is.
Most people build themselves into bubbles, where changing their views would force them to readjust their world views and for most, they dont want to
Because we don't teach people ANYTHING about the political or legal system here (and legal matters a lot, since it's intrinsically tied to how we make and enforce laws here).
For instance, just figuring out where to vote, when to vote, and what you need to bring (and legally can't bring), varies WILDLY state to state. Real examples:
I lived in state A, where the primaries were just done with a ballot, you physically had to show up at a specific day and time to fill put in person
Moved to state B, where the primaries were at a different time and were done as a caucus. Meaning I had to physically go and stand there as my body was my vote. They were unprepared for voter turnout and it took 6 hours to vote. There were almost no chairs. Handicapped people, elderly people, and people who had to work, left. Like they just couldn't vote. It was horrible to witness. That's our rights being denied.
And also at state B, you had to be registered in advance and they needed to have record of it. If there was some weird error where you weren't on the list, tough.
Moved to state C, where everything is super easy and done by mail. Just mail in your ballot. No big.
We need to take kids on field trips to vote and teach them actually how to do it all. Including looking up smaller election dates. It's not actually that easy or that streamlined.
We need to take kids to town halls to show them how to observe public meetings. We need to show them how to run for office. The public deserves a clear and thorough education on this, as much as English or Math.
A lot of people just don't want to think about it. It oftentimes feels like your vote doesn't matter, which is generally true in Presidential elections unless you're in a swing state. And it often feels like you're just voting for the shiniest of two turds anyway.
Getting involved in politics at a local level, where your decisions actually have the most effect on your day-to-day life, is just too boring I guess.
Civics was a single class in highschool.
We need a STEM type push for more civics in highschool and middle school.
Talking heads and a failing education system.
The average American has been convinced that when they are done being a worker for the day, they become something "better" and more important... the consumer. The consumer has no needs other than consumption. The consumer has no wants other than consumption. Their fellows economically simply become their servants as that is the illusion created by the culture of consumption.
Look at most folks making less than $100k/year and who are voting Republican. Ask them why they are voting and they will give you a myriad of reasons, but (in my experience) it mostly boils down to "they're hurting the other team and I want to be part of the winning team." Some liberals will give you the same type of response, but it's less common (or less enthusiastically so maybe). It's less that our electorate has been dulled to political activity and more that politics has been turned into a participation sport with teams, branding, and merchandise.
In my experience, the greatest example of this are the folks who've been completely demoralized saying "both sides are the same." It is true that both the Republicans and Democrats are the same... if the only way politics affects you is economically (or if you can convince yourself that that is the case). It's not the politicians or even the parties that are hurting the average American, it's the Consumer Capitalism all sides of our politics back that's hurting us. Now, I'm not going to sit here and tell you a fairytale like "USSR was good actually" or "PRC is good actually." Just as America and it's systems have problems, those countries and their systems had/have their own problems.
Being the core of the post-WWII Western hegemony, American politics has problems that are uniquely it's own; the old adage of "there are no poor Americans, only temporarily embarrassed millionaires" sadly holds true. It affects every level of our politics, culture, and society to the point where no one needs to propagandize to that effect... it's merely self-reinforces at this point. You work doubles at the Walmart to feed your family and to afford your cell phone plan because you're just one magic algorithm lift away from TikTok stardom... it'll happen -any day now- why worry about politics?
Lots of great answers here.
I think one under mentioned cause is the effect of social media algorithms.
All major social media platforms use machine learning algorithms decide what to show in your feed. The algorithms are programmed to show you the things that have historically kept you on the site longer.
It’s human nature to upvote/read/support/engage with the things that agree with our world views, and downvote/dismiss/disengage/discredit the things that disagree with our worldview.
These two facts combined result in you seeing more of the content that aligns with your worldview, and more of the content from people who share your worldview. We’re all funnelled into communities of like minded individuals that repeat what we already believe, reinforcing whatever that is regardless of how factually correct it might be.
Dissenting information that might cause you to reconsider your position or become more politically aware is automatically filtered out.
And it’s not just social media either, even the algorithms behind search engines display this behaviour.
Long before social media existed, Google was tailoring search results to match the things you tend to click on. If you searched for news and typically clicked on the headlines biased towards one side or the other Google would start ranking site with that bias higher.
This wasn’t intentional (at least not originally) it was just a side effect of the algorithm, trying to figure out what you were most likely looking for.
For someone who, for example, believes the Earth is flat. If they were to type “is the Earth flat?” Into a search engine. They are much more likely to get results that “prove” the Earth is flat, then a person who believes the Earth is round, because the algorithm knows that they tend to click on articles that “confirm” the earth is flat.
Algorithms used by social media and search engines today, make it genuinely difficult to maintain a balanced worldview and find unbiased answers to any question. They are all designed to keep you engaged, And it is human nature to engage more with the things we agree with, regardless of truth.
Are they? Who's doing that sociology stunt?
The media and social media are geared towards reinforcing tribalism. You have to pick a team and anyone on the other team is your enemy. It works well as a means of driving engagement and making money at the expense of having an electorate that is informed.
It reminds me of the town hall Bernie Sanders did on Fox News a few years ago. If you strip away the partisan blinkers and have a debate based on facts, specific policy points, and focusing on trying to improve people's lives instead of scoring cheap points then more people agree than disagree, regardless of political affiliation.
I guess the question is, "who benefits from a divided electorate?"
One argument I don't think anyone else has made here - we have fewer restrictions on what can be advertised, where and when ads can be played, and how close to true those advertisements have to be than a lot of other countries do. I think this has the effect of wearing down people's ability and willingness to engage in logical analysis of the information they receive because we're constantly bombarded with information and most of it is bullshit to sell us crap we don't need, so we have to skim through and tune out a lot, and in that process I think a lot of information that's actually true but that people don't want to believe gets thrown out too.
imo, awareness is already a problem so i think political awareness is already a big leap.
most news channels are incentivized by money so it serves their sponsors and not the people.
Because things were good for a long time and nobody thought we’d lose our rights if we stopped paying attention. Same story throughout history.
As for the people being fed misinformation, they’re just rubes. Our education system failed them and now grifters who don’t care about America are taking advantage of them.
Mostly willful ignorance. They don't want to be aware and so are not aware.
At the same time they'll complain it's too hard to follow and on the other hand go into great detail about their NCAA Men's Basketball March Madness bracket.
american cultural social norms looks down upon talking about politics in public; which creates an entire country of people who lack practice in engaging in meaningful political discourse.
you combine that with american oligarchs using their influence to steer national discourse away from topics that threaten their interests while simultaneously manufacturing consent and you're left with recipe for red and blue magas.
Because they don’t give a fuck.
It looked like a F##k fest so I decided imma go live in my tiny bubble of happiness.
Not like I need more drama and negativity because some old people who know nothing but to never answer your questions with a straightforward answer, tell me what I need to think or do.
I rather go download some ISOs and mess around on different linux distros.
Most Americans are incredibly politically aware, but would not call their understanding political and don’t believe the government can resolve their problems.
They’re wrong about the former and right about the latter.
America is the size of Europe, if you are English would you know what the current political discourse is in the Netherlands? Same kinda thing with something like North Carolina and Oregon very very far apart
I call it the propagandosphere
