These people are the least politically educated people in the world.
is literally them
It continually baffles me that americans can be this politically uneducated. There are people in the UK who know nothing about politics at all and have never ever had anyone sit down and teach them any theory but they will be able to tell you that there's a working class and a ruling class and who is in each of them with mostly accuracy until you get into petty-bourgeoise elements.
It continually baffles me that americans can be this politically uneducated.
It is 100% by design. The entirety of the education system (what's left of it), media, and culture are grared toward engendering political illiteracy and false consciouness. Everyone is middle class. Baristas are cultural elites. Business owners with rural aesthetic signifiers are working class - even if they live in a large city. Also the working class are all round 40ish bald white men in hard hats. Businesses need profits so they can pay workers .
Its not an excuse, but this is the product of about a 100 years of propaganda and even longer than that of settler-colonial mindset
I’ve heard before that socioeconomic class is part of colloquial existence in the UK. Is this true? In the US our civil religion insists that the class fluidity found amongst white settlers throughout most parts of the country’s existence continues to exist, and now for everyone. So we just don’t talk about class as if it’s real. It’s seen as condescending and rude to act like someone doesn’t have the potential to become extremely wealthy just because they were born a certain way.
A 2020 Gallup poll found that 46% of American adults read below a 6th grade (11 or 12 year old) level. Many surveys have found slightly better but still worrisome reading levels in the adult population. This is not a matter of Americans being able to read what is on a page, but rather that they do not know how to take in and process information.
Any political analysis that does not start with this fact is fundamentally flawed.