“In psychology, learned helplessness is a state that occurs after a person has experienced a stressful situation repeatedly. They believe that they are unable to control or change the situation, so they do not try, even when opportunities for change are available.”
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There have been a couple of diaries about this recently, and it is a favorite topic of mine, so here are my two cents...
To me, every time we personally give in to the algorithmic doom-spiral, the Republicans are gleeful, absolutely delighted. Hopelessness and fear are the tool of dictatorships— they count on shock and awfulness to knock us on our behinds, make us give up unilaterally, because of the perceived stakes and because of their scarily insane clown personalities.
This psychological assault is very real, but works best if we confuse its effects with reality.
Throw in the nausea of seeing our fourth estate, once again, trivialize the election, as if it were a super bowl or opera— that we all can somehow remain reasonably detached, and remain bystanders, from the spectacle of our floundering Democracy.
Well, it can be fucking dispiriting to say the least.
More enraging to me, are these unnamed senior Biden campaign staff who are doing the work of the assholes on the other side, by leaking their dumb acceptance of the Republican narrative ( that we will lose), to friendly press sources. The press is so fucking lazy, who knows if some of these deep throats are even real. But nevertheless, the people leaking this nonsense are truly low lifeforms. They are either on the take somewhere else, or simply displaying that famous Beltway Douchery that reflexively turns so many people off to politics in the first place. And as AOC points out— it is also not the type of person you want to run your campaign staff, especially if you are trying to win.
Democracy is as good as the people willing to step up and breathe life into an idea. That is to say, in a very literal way, we all, collectively, choose to invest our power in this system, by voting and participating, and laboring ( or not). Are there other pillars that hold up the system? Yes, of course. But we still wield considerable leverage, if we wish to use it with great intention.
Even dictatorships depend on mass cooperation, either coerced ( through violence and threats), or voluntarily induced. People are either invested in such a system, or they are not. There is always a choice.
