I’m dumbstruck as to what to do. The US is building literal concentration camps, and none of my co-workers care at all.
In fairness, I work in healthcare with an almost exclusively cishet white population who are financially well off.
Many of them espouse to be Christians, and no one cares at all that the American government is following the exact playbook from Nazi Germany.
What do you do? How do you make people care before it’s too late?
Lots of good answers here already. I’ll just add that Jon Stewart recently did a great segment that touches on this. Basically, he says if everything the government does is “OmG nAzIz FaScIsTz TrAiToRz!!!” then people who aren’t already paying attention will continue tuning it out. I forget at which time in the video he gets to this point, but honestly the whole 20-minute video is worth a watch.
IMO ‘comedy’ does a lot more to further political debate & informedness than it gets credit for.
I remember watching a congress inquiry or something into something like student debt or subsidies (iirc) where comedian/tv personality Hasan Minaj was included in the panel. He was a bit out of place next to the usual gov office types cracking jokes half the time (although never inappropriate) and serious the other half and i think someone even noted his presence there being strange. I forget if it was someone in the video or just a comment below the video but they pointed out that they wouldn’t have even been watching this legislation discussion if it wasnt for him and his occasional humorous answers or comments and i realised i wouldnt be watching either. Im not even american.
If comedy is the gravy you need to put on some veggies to make them more palatable for people to consume them then by all means, pour that shit on and get people interested and engaged with the issues at hand.
The every day person doesnt have to agree or change their mind, they just need to be aware and informed so when it comes the time to vote or support a choice they are given then they at least have some further knowledge beyond ‘my political team is going this way so i suppose ill do that’.
I love Jon Stewart but I think he’s a little off base with this take. Are we supposed to not call out the overtly fascist stuff the government is doing? Will that get more people to listen the next time we have to call out an overtly fascistic act or will we have to hold our tongue then, as well? How many grannies need to be eaten and impersonated by wolves before we’re allowed to move past the “ooh what sharp teeth you have” crap?
With fascism especially, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem. The people going through life like everything is fine are implicitly supporting the fascism. I’m not going to stop yelling about how a pack of wolves has taken over the government, just because some people think the word is overused.
Yeah, it’s kind of a bad take. Maybe we should teach people what the word actually means so that they can understand that the applies to everything they’re doing*