You get the feeling that many people see the office of the Presidency the same way the Ancient Egyptians saw their Pharaoh, as the Chief Priest whose main prerogative is appeasing the gods, and the only way anyone can feel that he's "doing it right" is whether or not the crops are plentiful
For the most part I don't think they're ideologically committed moderates, it's just the smart word they know for someone whose a swing voter. It'd take nothing to make them support a national health service and/or public executions for shoplifters. You're witnessing the mind palace of the apolitical normie - their metric for whether the president is a wise moderate or a bad radical is whether or not they get a vibe that things are generally ok. If things are generally ok the president is doing his job and looking after the economy; if you hear about bad things in the news or gas prices go up it means the president is stoking division and playing politics instead of working. So it's basically impossible for any president to not let these people down as living conditions continue their decline for decades now; and even if every single American benefited completely from a new administration, they'd still be 'let down' because they can't escape hearing about bad things from the press / social media. They remember when they could ignore politics so things have got worse.
The manufactured consent of centralism is a resounding success. A scared and desperate Middle class, will Never dare to dream of a different system. Just desperately cling on to something familiar and utterly broken.
My favorite SNL sketch to this day is the Undecided Voter ad. Perfect parody of these people. Simultaneously uninformed, entitled, and insufferably smug.
“All these roustabouts, freebooters and sea rats preventing my molasses from coming in from the colonies. We need a firm hand to hang a few and get a stranglehold on the ports.” - an independent
Here we see consultant Frank Luntz performing quality control for the propaganda industry. The tested group indicates a nearly flawless process. None of them have a clue what they think or why they think it. But it's not a genuinely random sampling. So really he's scamming the producers, but it makes them happy.
7:37 I definitely think there’s a truth to this. When my Grandma was in her 80s she would watch the news and comment on how violent the world was getting. Along with telling me stories from the 1930s and 40s about dealing with stalkers that would try to flash her, the klan burning crosses in people’s yards and trying to lynch their neighbor, and families having feuds where they would shoot at each other.
Financial analysts are not "normal people". When did you ever meet a financial analyst? There are no working class people in this "focus group". Also no one under the age of 30. Infuriating bias.
"I'm kept up at night by concerns over housing, getting sick...and having my bike stolen (?)" Sounds like we need to allocate an extra trillion dollars to the military. Congratulations on having the shadow ban lifted. To the moon.
I am older. It's not so much that we think that this is the worst time because we're about to die. It's more about being about to die and thinking that the world is going to go with you. I really agree with what you said about us being treated like consumers are entire lives and politicians treating us like them.
possibly the greatest reading series in the entire history of the show, like holy fuck i was at work when i first listened to this episode and could not stop laughing out loud during this segment also the eric adams part like right after was fuckin great too lmao
@@JJ44595 i guess he says “I’d like that he’s talking about the meme” or something. He definitely doesn’t say “I’d like to think” but you’re right I think he just omitted the words “to think” by accident and that’s why I was confused. It sounded like “I like that he’s talking about the meme.” The time stamp is actually 31:40.
Calling for a Constitutional convention at the state level is not an impossibility, for the implementation of an Amendment for the Separation of Wealth and State; difficult, unlikely, a massive fight, but not impossible.
12:35 "You need to come up with another solution if you want to defund something." alright, so she either hasn't listened to people who advocate for defund at all or she's one of these people who thinks social welfare is off the table. She voted for Romney b/c she knew he wanted to get rid of Medicaid.
which, in the words of Noam chomsky, "you are effectively a republican". Because if we don't not-vote in Republicans, we cede control to them. So effectively, you are a Republican most of the time and cause the democratic party to simply shift more and more rightward with each eelction.
@@aw2031zap Naom Chomsky has dementia, and he has turned into a neoliberal corporate tool. Nothing he has to say is useful anymore. He recently said that people who chose not to be vaccinated should be put in concentration camps and not fed. If you believe in that then you are not a republican, you are a nazi.
Dismissing someone's world view because of their age is . . . ageism. I'm 68, and I don't remember a time when the country was in such bad shape. As a perfectly-healthy, Marxist, full-time worker (college professor), my opinion is not age-based, but observation-based.
no one dismissed anyone's opinion because of their age, matt just pointed out that older people do tend to think things are worse because of their age. age is a fact and it shouldn't be ignored. you're happy to draw on the authority that comes with experience, but if someone says your experience of old age colors your experience of everything else you get all bothered. you can't have it all. every advantage has its disadvantage.
@@minamur Perhaps the term "dismissed" has thrown you. It was a clear dismissal. The point that the country has never been in worse shape than it is now is a factual statement. Although we have been sliding down that way for decades, we are in a new low.
@@polemius01 no, they didn't even really disagree, matt just said older people are prone to that regardless. it's no different than saying a young adult tends to be over ambitious. that wouldn't be dismissing their point of view.
@@minamur The entire premise is wrong concerning older people; it's a version of the "okay boomer" trope. I am not in my present frame of mind because I might be 20 years away from my death, and Matt is 50 years away from it. Matt's attribution of the woman's comment to proximity of death came across as a clear dismissal. The comparison to a putative trope about over-ambitious young adults does not fit. Ambition is not considered a bad thing, while the position that older people think the country is in bad shape because of end-of-life despair. And, as a college professor, I would LOVE to see more over-ambitious young adults than I do. Many of them are as depressed by the state of US society as I am.
I'm a registered Independent who is leftist who will always vote for the most progressive candidates possible, and it sucks that the "lesser of two evils" standard is the way it has to be in America... But I can't buy in to the attitude of some of these leftists that you should just abstain from voting or "protest" by not voting, we have the system we have at this moment and to say that it's more justified to vote for nobody and indirectly give better odds to Trump or the complicit GOP than to vote for a milquetoast Democrat is stupid. Yes, most Democrats are at best moderate establishment puppets, but to say that there is essentially no difference between someone like Trump who drafted an executive order to seize all voting machines and planned to deploy military forces on US soil, and a boring, self-interested Dem politician is actually a dangerous idea. Hopefully one day the Dems will ACTUALLY be progressives, but for now it's inexcusable to not do the small things we can to keep the GOP in the minority.
As a self described Kid, you are naive to think this system isn't functionally unilateral. There is one federal government with two coats of paint. They're all neoconservative with nearly identical game plans and you're conditioned to vote for the one that doesn't get forcibly smeared in your living room. Unfortunately humans who are against the expansion of federal powers will rarely be incorrigibly consistent to the point of becoming the federal government, but you've no chance of halting or receding oppression by voting blue. From where do you think the precedent came for such drastic executive orders? Biden's White House with Obama.
"someone like Trump who drafted an executive order to seize all voting machines and planned to deploy military forces on US soil" yeah you know shit that didn't happen and is literally you being hysterical
abstaining from voting in a swing state (or in your local elections) is not going to shift the democratic party leftward, it does the opposite. when the right win, the democrats simply say "Oh, we weren't right wing enough to appeal to voters". and then they become more right wing.
@@Hunter_Brandon The reactionary aspect is that the folks who won’t shut the fuck up about inflation seemingly never cared about inflation for stuff like childcare, healthcare, or education or rent but not that inflation is hurting their treats and their gas NOW inflation is an issue and their solution is going to be more austerity bullshit that won’t affect folks in this focus group in any meaningful way and hurt the people who have faced actual inflation for four decades
"Claiming that you're an independent just basically means that you're a Republican." Because anyone who doesn't 100% agree with me on everything is The Enemy. As per _The Critic_, "Yes Mr. Sherman, they all suck."
i hope matt recovers soon, but if i’m being honest i really do not miss his disingenuous spin on every topic and the same tired pop culture references.
