"Authenticity"

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Gjolin@lemmy.ml⁩ to ⁨showerthoughts@lemmy.world⁩

Has anyone noticed how society has become so cynical these days? And how this cynicism is abused by politicians and other political actors? People who are genuinely nice because they have nothing to prove are considered fake, while people who punch downwards and are generally selfish and anti-social are considered authentic. And we all want authentic politicians, so lots of people out there are genuinely fooled into voting for the guy who would drop his pants and drop a massive turd on their plate and then laugh in their face, because we are so cynical as a society, that we now think that the only authentic people are the ones who behave badly without hiding it. And then impressionable young men and middle aged white women think this “authenticity” will translate into politicians that genuinely care about that.

What a sad state of affairs.

I don’t blame society completely because the ones on the campaign trail are all snakes. The good ones get rooted out fairly early on. Everyone knows politicians aren’t authentic. But if a politician is a selfish asshole to others, that doesn’t somehow make him more likely to keep his word when it comes to policies that concern you. A politician can just as well be honest about being a shit person, while also lie about what he is going to do with the economy and how it’s going to affect your life.

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Waldelfe@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I noticed that a lot of people who turn right-wing are extremely cynical. All politicians are the same, they are all lying which means that their favored right wing party is of course also lying about the horrible stuff, they just vote for them to shake thinga up a bit. Everything is fake, nothing is real: climate change isn’t real, housing crisis isn’t real (because they have an appartment). Any societal problem is either made up or has always been this way, so lets just support the people that tell us it’s all made up. Right-wing politicians spewing hatred against minorities, left wingers, environmentalists are the only authentic ones 'telling it as it is".

It’s such a lazy cop-out.

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ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
In an ideological vacuum, being hopeless and a complete believer in moral relativism, what else could you have? Nothing is true, nothing is good or bad, so just get the bag and “get ahead in life”, and the only losers are those who can’t get away with it. But ask any of them what they believe in and they crumble. Meh. 😔 And you already know what I think the answer to this problem is if you checked my username, but you can’t coerce people into it, it just doesn’t work that way.

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helmet91@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I don’t know in which country it works like that.

I only have an insight in Hungary’s elections. There, from time to time there is a genuinely good candidate, while most of them are garbage. E.g. during the last election, the main opposition figure was one who never had any scandal on his tab before, and he was actually coming from the labor market - he actually did have an insight into reality, unlike the rest of our politicians who have never done any real work before, they were just politicians all their lives.

Guess whom the country voted for. They voted for this far-right mafia regime, and the outcome was the greatest majority that they have ever achieved.

And the reason for this has two components:

Education. Education in that shithole country was never great - far from it. But when this mafia regime was elected in 2010, they deliberately started to dismantle it. And at the same time they have been pushing their stupid propaganda on full blast through all the channels they have plus what they acquired. And people are crazy stupid. They believe the propaganda. They lack the ability to think even just one step ahead. They fail to detect the bullshit in the propaganda, and that’s really a very low bar.

Being a moron. Throughout these many years, the regime has acquired a considerable number of companies - and masses of employees with it. From there it’s simple: any one of them, who doesn’t vote for these shitheads, loses their job. And for these fools, their shitty job is worth more than the long term improvement of their and everyone else’s lives.

Because of these two factors, the sole candidate in so many years, the one who finally showed a pure track record while having a very reasonable agenda, collected the least amount of votes.

This had nothing to do with authenticity or cynicism.
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QuarterSwede@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
My experience is this is just online. It doesn’t track the same in the real world, at least the places I travel to (all over the US). People are generally still very nice and accommodating to all kinds of people and generally don’t like what the government is doing.

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- ArgumentativeMonotheist@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  What does far left mean to you, if you don’t mind me asking?
  
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