Capitalism and mortality: Death rate soars for middle-aged US workers

[hifiguy]

19. It isn't that people couldn't stand up and fight back,

The problem is that for the last 35 years (maybe longer but it's at least 35 years, dating from 1/20/81) there has been an all out effort to de-educate and dumb down the populace, and to make sure that people who have gone through the educational system since then have been carefully molded and propagandize into unquestioning zombies.

Of course the process is not 100% successful, but it doesn't need to be. Around 1/3 of the American population has been, over time, racist, xenophobic, religulously insane idiots, as any assessment of national history will conclusively prove. The Neofascist machine, brought to you by the same Nazi-lovin' plutocrats behind the Business Plot against FDR and the importation of vast numbers of Nazis into the American government after WW II, working hand in glove with idjit religion, especially of the fundymentalpatient persuasion, only needed to turn another 15-20% of the population against which their psyops and propaganda were directed. Given the attention span and critical thinking faculties of the average 'murkan, that was a piece of cake.

That gives you a figure of between 45-55% of the population, depending on the issue (hating on brown people and gay people has usually garnered a higher percentage) to give their idiot minions effective controlof the country.

And the propaganda/psyops runs 24/7/365, carefully researched and crafted by the M$M (owned by the same handful of plutocrats) to reinforce the paranoia, dumbing down and inability to logically evaluate any argument. Combine that with religion's millennia-long war against any form of clear thinking and a nation where a moron majority can be mustered at the polls when really "necessary" exists for the exploitation. And just in case, there are plenty of mechanisms in place to steal elections (voter suppression, rigged machines, unlimited dark money, gerrymandering.

This is not something that happened overnight. It has been brewing ever since FDR was elected president. Google "General Smedley Butler" and "business plot" for the history there, or search DU for Octafish's marvellously documented history of this deliberately erased part of our collective past.

Read Rick Perlstein's "Before The Storm" "Nixonland" and "The Invisible Bridge" along with Kevin Kruse's "One Nation Under God" for the rest. These guys are major, respected, award-winning historians, not woo-merchants.

It is all as plain as the nose on your face, and it is deeply frightening.