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Machiavellian. There’s already a name for it. And to be fair, what they’re describing is exactly how politics actually works in a democratic system. The name of the game is to get people to vote for you and you do that by convincing people to want to vote for you. Propaganda is constant in our system driven into every media and cultural outlet it can be. You’ve been taught to want certain things, to believe certain policies will give you a better life. That’s manipulation, and quite often lying to people, and almost certainly “hiding poison pills under the carpet”.
The truism of politics, no matter what the system actually looks like is pretty simple. If you get power, you get to rule, if you don’t, you watch other people rule. There’s nothing unusual about the concept. In autocratic systems, you have to overthrow the current government, in democratic ones, you have to get voted in. Either way, you have to get access to the levers of power before the policies you have in mind actually count for anything.
And treating peasants like peasants is fairly common. It would be the same in any type of system with any party or faction you care to name. Most people in a nation are peasants or even serfs with little to no political control over anything. The sneering condescension is simply reality — despite what both parties tell the voters every couple of years, you actually don’t matter to them, and they actually do hold you to be beneath them.
It just happened. What do people think Trump just did? If the Democrats take anything away from this election other than "run the most charismatic person you can" and "just tell the bleating sheep what they want to hear" then they are miscalculating
The Democrats tried that, insofar as they are capable. It doesn't work cause people were already pissed and Democrats seem out of touch (crypto for black men somehow fizzled ).
Truth is, on certain issues , Trump simply is the most credible person in the room. His wildness is useful: it's easy to believe he really will deport people. He's built up that credibility. No amount of talk after Biden called for a surge to the border and Kamala wanted to "rethink ICE" will make Harris' campaign more credible.
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Well damn. Why didn't the Democrats do that?
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Yeah, telling the bleating sheep what they want to hear would probably work out better for them than telling the bleating sheep that they hate them and look forward to them being replaced by wolves.
1000% agree. I would add the additional sub-lesson is that as long as the lie is phrased at least partially as something they really want to be true it really doesn't matter how obviously a lie what it said is.
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