Ask Lemmy

Because they are.

Two answers.

Thomas Picketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century

Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine

Even reading a brief summary of the main points of both books gets you to a decent explanation.

Evil is not winning. Greed is. If it was evil, it would be worse

Capitalism

Good times create weak people. Weak people create bad times. Bad times create strong people. Strong people create good times.

Repeat.

Otherwise - because you are being absolutely nuke-blasted by negative news all around the world. If you wen't offline for a month, you wouldn't see any issue at all.

Because we have been taking the high road. Time to play on their level. Have no shame!

1. Rampant unchecked capitalism of recent decades has created large wealth disparities akin to the earlier decades of the last century. It is no longer possible for one person in a household with a regular job to support a modest lifestyle for their family. All benefits especially medical for the whole family, being completely intertwined with the current job reduces mobility and further feeds into the wealth gap by keeping wages low. It’s easier to blame the powerless for this state of affairs than the powerful because the powerless cannot object.
2. The fear of the other has been accentuated by media and misinformation. Targeted algorithms feeding most of the information that is consumed has created echo chambers that reinforce existing beliefs and fears. The propaganda state has never had it easier.
3. The large military and police has given never before control to the state about what is allowed to be protested. Combined with the day to day struggles, it’s extremely hard to come together for what is right. The ruling class is able to maintain the fine balance between absolute misery and general dissatisfaction that it is still better to struggle through a thankless job than to say fuck it. Failures of recent large uprisings like Middle East and Hong Kong have reinforced the futility of standing up against the rulers.
4. Evil has many heads and there’s always one head that you can find alignment with. It could be the deregulation of businesses, lower taxes, anti abortion, racism, but as long as there’s one thing you can align on, the general sense of powerlessness makes it easier to overlook the other heads.
5. The line between evil and good has never been murkier, especially with globalization. If you focus on the betterment of your community, it would be considered good, but what if it leads to suffering of others outside the community. Is it also evil? What is community - is it the people in your neighborhood, your religion, your country, fellow business owners? The fuzzier these lines are, the harder it is to untangle them.

Because most people are either stupid, evil, or stupid and evil.

I don't know what the solution is, I can only hope its mostly just the "extreme ignorance" type of stupidity and not evil or "willing ignorance" stupidity and after experiencing the suffering they've enabled for themselves that they put 2 and 2 together and things maybe recover partially or enough to prevent the end of human civilization as we know it.

Well, I'd say it's because they don't even hide it anymore. They know they can do whatever they want, and get away with it.

Enshitification is a real thing, and companies and evil people are being blatant about it, because they know they don't have to hide it because they know they can't be stopped.

It sucks. I hate it. I wish we could do something about it.

It depends on perspective. If you look at the news, online on new sites or shareable news articles, it seems to rampant. If you avoid the news and look towards your community you’ll be far less likely to believe it. It’s the interconnectedness that leads this but at the same time you aren’t being educated and helping said evil. So it’s there, it’s not a populous as people think but definitely is there. Evil isn’t global, it’s the few. It’s the people outside that you interact with daily that aren’t evil.

That's, ironically, how the white supremacists felt all these years lol

Sure does feel that way 😔

Unpopular opinion, but in the west particularly, folk have mistaken writing on the internet for action.

Tweeting resistance rather than performing it.

A lapse into inaction framed as radical rest and self care.

Online they are fierce warriors of justice, offline they go to work in Starbucks, use their apple devices to talk to their families and enjoy the treadmill of streaming services.

And this isn't to blame them. This is the point of consumerist capitalism. To trap you in a gilded cage.

Because class war is being raged but most of the global north working class don't have any class consciousness. Capitalism is working on doing what it has done to the global South for decades but this time to the global North. Fascism is Imperialism turned inward. Welcome to the rest of our lives.

The common version of the phrase...

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,”

The actual version of the phrase...

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

I saw a chart that globally, the incumbent parties have lost more in these elections than before. https://www.ft.com/content/e8ac09ea-c300-4249-af7d-109003afb893

I'd guess this is because things are going badly economically, so people wanted change.

Change requires a massive push, and apparently people need to suffer much much more, to inspire that momentum.