[AndrewKemendo]

I absolutely blame the individual.

Who is responsible for the system if not the individual - and the collective thereof?

The fundamental problem is the citizen not being educated or caring enough about their own independence and state of being in the framework of a global economy and sovereign nation state

[eunoia]

I would highly recommend the book Amusing Ourselves to Death if you are looking to understand how the populace got to the point where truth is irrelevant and nothing really matters.

It helped my mental model a lot at the very least.

[AndrewKemendo]

I’m extremely aware of amusing ourselves to death

I think we came away with very different conclusions

To me it is abject proof that individuals do not have the mental emotional or other capacity to actually behave in the modern world such that they retain their mental independence and develop a sense of personal epistemology

Humans are way too dumb and prone to propaganda to actually have a coherent society at the scale needed so that we don’t collectively kill each other through poorly identified and attributed externalities

[eunoia]

Unfortunately I think we actually agree on this and did come away with the same conclusions.

[specialist]

I believe, but cannot prove, that our malleability was an evolutionary advantage. It enabled homo sapiens to gather in ever larger social groups.

Media, from obelisks to tiktok, enables exploitation of our evolutionary quirk.

[embedding-shape]

Similar to how we investigate and figure out airplane crashes, the system should not allow you to get into those situations in the first place, that's the solution that works across time, instead of for just individual situations.

For example, how is someone who led/incited an insurrection against the government able to become head of said government? Already there, something is gravely wrong. You don't let undemocratic leaders lead a democratic society. So the system is broken, and the current administration is proof of that.

Otherwise what other commentators said will happen, someone who might even be worse than Trump will eventually lead the country.

[AndrewKemendo]

So then again my question is who ultimately audits and holds the system accountable such that if the system needs to be fixed it gets fixed?

The only answer to that is the people who form the citizenry.

If the citizens cannot influence the system such that they can actually affect change on the system then they are irrelevant in it and the system needs to be replaced

As long as they continue to fail to organize then they will continue to be dominated by it

That’s just reality

There is no alternative organization that can counter the global capitalist system currently