These "regular people" that you seem to condescendingly speak about absolutely notice it at the pump and at the grocery store. They aren't mindless robots.
> These "regular people" that you seem to condescendingly speak about
There was zero condescension in my tone or intent.
I put “regular people” in quotes simply because I think most people who do follow the news absolutely don’t realize that the vast majority of people don’t.
A simple litmus test for this is to ask random people you meet outside of your personal social and professional circles (e.g., the front desk person at the gym, a cashier at a grocery store, a rideshare driver… whatever) a simple question like “Who are our US senators?” or “What is the NIH?” I’ve done this, and the sentiment was largely “don’t know, don’t care”.
This isn’t a criticism. It’s just an observation that some issues that some folks on HN care about (e.g., details about how lesser known parts of the government function — for example, what’s happening at the NIH and NSF) just aren’t on the radar for large swathes of the population.
> absolutely notice it at the pump and at the grocery store. They aren't mindless robots.
I think we agree on this, right?
And my point is that price changes for most things won’t hit immediately.
1. There have been delays in most of the tariffs.
2. The impact of some tariffs will take longer to hit than others. Fresh food will be fast. Goods with longer shelf lives canned goods, alcohol, and prepared foods might take a while.
If your engagement with politics, civics and public policy begins and ends with how much groceries and gas cost, then you are the perfect consumer, and something less than a thinking, rational human with agency and awareness. What is a human without curiosity or critical thinking, but a biological consuming robot? Which incidentally is what the new department of education will try to create a population of, by destroying public education.
Edit: Scratch that, they plan to abolish the department of education
Yes - and states actually control much of the curriculum.
However, the DOE does things like make sure there is funding for children with additional needs, which lets be honest, are not going to be replicated in certain states if the DOE is indeed disbanded.
Does this mean there is no value in maintaining federal education standards, or do we want to let states decide if they want to abolish theirs as well?
I just had a follow up conversation with a lady at work who had said she was voting for Trump because things like eggs were too expensive. Her comment about egg prices now was that she didn't understand why liberals were saddling Trump with egg prices, because the president can't control things like that. She literally did a complete 180 on the topic seemingly without any self awareness. I don't know how to reach people like that. I honestly don't.
Orwell wrote about this in 1984 (and also, incidentally, fought fascists on the ground during the Spanish Civil War):
"To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink."
There was zero condescension in my tone or intent.
I put “regular people” in quotes simply because I think most people who do follow the news absolutely don’t realize that the vast majority of people don’t.
A simple litmus test for this is to ask random people you meet outside of your personal social and professional circles (e.g., the front desk person at the gym, a cashier at a grocery store, a rideshare driver… whatever) a simple question like “Who are our US senators?” or “What is the NIH?” I’ve done this, and the sentiment was largely “don’t know, don’t care”.
This isn’t a criticism. It’s just an observation that some issues that some folks on HN care about (e.g., details about how lesser known parts of the government function — for example, what’s happening at the NIH and NSF) just aren’t on the radar for large swathes of the population.
> absolutely notice it at the pump and at the grocery store. They aren't mindless robots.
I think we agree on this, right?
And my point is that price changes for most things won’t hit immediately.
1. There have been delays in most of the tariffs.
2. The impact of some tariffs will take longer to hit than others. Fresh food will be fast. Goods with longer shelf lives canned goods, alcohol, and prepared foods might take a while.