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Words matter.
Always use simple direct language.
Don't use complex words.
Reminds me of how many people were really against Obamacare, but loved the Affordable Care Act.
Reagan's smear campaign on welfare is still paying dividends
Anyone can be poor, but only they are on welfare.
Publishers note: They usually refers to African Americans, but can be used for any suspicious minorities.
its almost always used as negative connation against blacks, or unsavory demographics. while the people, white conservatives railing on these people are the biggest welfare queens.
don't forget wall street and corporations. if you fuck up, congratulations now you're homeless. if they fuck up, congratulations you're gonna bail them out.
As someone that works with the general public.
People are fucking dumb. Like not I'm not even kidding, there's a skill gap to even get to a site like this...and not everyone has the ability to do it...I'm not even kidding. People are just stupid.
One of many lasting “gifts” of Reagan.
We’ve got to get all those ~~welfare queens~~ 25 year old males playing video games back to work! They’re getting a free ride that they don’t deserve. People only have value when they are working!
He started that evil welfare queen idea back in California. It gained traction there so he continued to use it on the national side.
Yep. Never use a ten dollar word when a 50 cent one does the job better. The left wing needs to dump it's highbrow (and cringe celebrity endorsements) and use the language of the common people in simple terms that cannot be demonised (or would sound insane to try).
Also, this is a prime example of how demonising words, especially buzzwords, is the strategy they use to make it lose all rationality with the public... the notion of being "woke" originally a good thing, welfare a good thing, etc...
They managed to make DEI a divisive word, I presume because they always used the abbreviation, because how else can you poison these words.
Doesn't work, they take the cheap words too. "Fake news" was originally used for right-wing propaganda. The only solution is education so that future generations are more aware of and resistant to dog whistles and doublespeak.
Why US americans are against welfare ? In europe most nations are pro welfare and pay appropriate taxes. Why are US americans against helping each other ?
Why are US americans against helping each other ?
For many people "freedom" only occurs when you don't (think you) depend on others.
And, maybe it's just a me issue, but I think a lot of Americans dislike receiving help because in their experience it always costs, and often costs more when the person giving it make it seem free.
But, mostly it's Capitalist / Protestant propaganda that anyone that receives assistance is a moral failure due to the "sin" of laziness.
Why are US americans against helping each other?
There is no simple answer to your question. Generally speaking, the US ethic is largely built on a foundation of rogue settlers who were encouraged to take what they wanted by force and duplicity. Whether it was the attempted (and ongoing) ethnic cleansing of the tribes, or total destruction of the environment, or massacring fauna to extinction, or the brutal subjugation of African people, early americans operated at a level of entitlement, ignorance, and the absolute belief in a zero-sum competition.
This mindset has been useful to the people in power, and it has been frequently stoked to manipulate a large minority of the population into a fearful and angry existence, effectively preventing a cultural shift that embraces social enlightenment. Even the US education system is designed to perpetuate the propaganda while preventing critical thinking skills and empathy.
Interestingly, even the most virulent USers, on an individual basis, exhibit selective social welfare tendencies, while still maintaining their cultural bigotries. To be fair, most US americans are in favor of social welfare. The rich in the US, who are in control, will always fight reform, because it isn’t profitable to them.
Propaganda works
I’ve always said that if you really wanted communism or socialism to take off in the states you’re gonna have to call it something else
I also don’t use cis because the machine has already made that a thing people don’t want to be called
I don’t mind being called a cis male, but I’m secure in my sexuality and manhood. Conservatives not so much.
This one gets it. The key takeaway should be that humans are very fallible and propaganda works alarmingly well.
Just want to point out that this negative association is based on racist dog whistles like the, "welfare queen," which were propagated by right-wingers to convince low-income whites to hate the programs designed to help them.
because welfare has been propagandized as used by "lazy and homeless, and poors, and blacks" its usually based on racism as well, the true welfare queens are Conservative voters.
The issue is entirely a media problem. Can you tell yet?
Ah, ~40% of Americans are complete fucking morons, that sounds about right.
~40% of Americans also read and write at an elementary school level or worse, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence.
... I think we've found the mythical 'independent, median voter'.
They got me! I have to admit, "welfare" leaves a bad taste in my mouth where "helping the poor" sounds fair enough. I grew up under Reagan, heard the bullshit, know it's bullshit, I get it.
And you know damned well what those words really mean. Welfare = black, poor people = whites. (That's from a GenX perspective.)
Welfare = black, poor people = whites.
Ding ding ding! We have a winner.
Psychological damage is present.
Nobody is immune to propaganda
Yup, I consider myself better than most at critical thinking, playing devil's advocate, and identifying sources of propaganda. I'll still find myself getting overly agitated and upset when I read five articles and posts within thirty minutes that all tell me why to be upset and who to be upset with.
"Think of how stupid the average person is, then realize that half of them are stupider than that." - George Carlin
One of the main reasons why USAID was the first part of the government targeted was because of things like this.
If you frame their work as "Assistance to disasters" or other variations, plus the context of it being under 1% of the Federal budget, Americans were find with it. If you call it "giving taxpayer money to foreigners" then it's wildly unpopular.
Which is to say that the lesson is that most people are idiots and have no idea what's going on in the world. Framing a narrative can get the same individual to simultaneously support and hate literally the same thing. It can get people to support policies and actions that directly harm them.
IIRC "ACA" and "Obamacare" had similar divides. Propaganda is a helluva drug.
Assistance implies that it is temporary, that it is help to help themselves.
Welfare implies that it is continuous.
If you have to continually support a part of the population then you have a systemic problem. The correct solution would be to change the system. People who support the continuation of the current system either profit from it or don't see an advantage in a change.
Assistance implies that it is temporary,
Not it does not. Ever heard of "aim assist"? "Assisted living"? "assistive touch" (the iOS feature)? I don't see how any of these are temporary.
But yeah the correct solution is indeed to change the system. There will always be naysayers who argue that "no one system can suit everybody" so I guess we'll need a system of systems.
People are emotional creatures.
Someone was joking in another thread, but maybe we should seriously consider just taking socialism and calling it, like, americanism.
"Freedomism"
I'd bet if we started calling them "societal subscription fees" people would be much cooler with taxes.
That's just associations' war.
Complex words have more specific associations. Except specific associations are easier to change via propaganda than generic associations. And people love to pretend to be smart like I do, so use complex words when they can.
This rule shouldn't be limited to outsiders. It should be used when talking to your own as well. Using compound concepts of simpler ones in discussion helps preserve understanding (and filter the kind of people not better than tankies).
The timeline is this. The 1950s boomed and created the middle class. Why? FDR decided subsidizing the American people, instead of the robber Baron class, was the way. This subsidy approach to the working class had never happened before in American history.
A middle class cannot happen organically in a capitalist society. It requires government subsidy.
The 50s were built on the backs of women, forcibly ejecting them from workplaces to be housewives, and excluded people who were not white. But the American middle class was born due to these subsidies.
And so it went.
Then, in the 80s. The concept of the evil welfare queen was touted on the national level, and our government decided subsidizing corporate instead of a middle class was the way.
This doesn’t happen overnight, but they begin chipping away at subsidies for Middle Class America and flip those subsidies to corporate America. The belief is, or at least the sales pitch is, subsidizing corporate America is more fiscally efficient than subsidizing the middle class and will ultimately benefit everyone to create a booming, thriving nation.
And so it goes for 40 yrs. Both parties, in tandem.
The chipping away to go back to the subsidizing of a middle class started in the oddest of places. 2020. After the massive destruction of the middle class, and abject proof of how disastrous to the working class subsidizing corporate America is, absolutely squeezing everyone making less than $300k/yr, by the numbers, it was that old man’s admin that tried to shift back on the disaster. Infrastructure, junk fees, internet as an essential utility, student loan forgiveness, etc
The breadth of the problem cannot be fixed in 4 yrs. Or even 8 yrs. Consider how long it took from the 80s to truly feel the oppressive shift of the subsidy change. (I’m old. I mark ~2012-2014 when things started to feel squeezed.)
Also note that you can’t mention Reagan or trickle down economics in this or you lose people.
I get the critical comments here, but I think there's a basic association of the word "welfare" with the CURRENT system of assistance which leaves too many people out. Democrats have made the current apparati too hard to qualify for with their means-testing. If they were sincere in working for the masses, they would push more universal programs, but at least on the national level, they are bought out by the same corporations as the Republicans.