amanda | 22 | this blog is one giant gay shitpost | with lots of she-ra

iput-witch-inmyurltofeelvalid:

generalchelseamayhem:

davidessman:

His restaurant was robbed at gun point, and he was shot in the arm…

The person in this cartoon is intentionally pitting two separate demographics of people with similar grievances against each other.

Implicitly, the veteran thinks that the fast food worker does not deserve $15 per hour because he does not work hard enough for it, whereas veterans have been shot at for a living and still do not receive enough care. The fast food worker’s obvious reaction is to be indignant and provide the veteran with a blow-by-blow account of how he has to deal with the foulest dregs of humanity on a daily basis.

This puts the veteran and the fast food worker on opposing sides: each thinks that the other is in some way holding them back and distracting from their own issues.

This creates a villain for each side to focus on, which distracts them from what should obviously be the primary target, that both sets of people should be teaming up against: a system which can’t even pretend to care about the issues that either of them face.

Divide and conquer.

Politicians do this all the time, and it’s amazing how we as voters keep falling for it. All you have to do is show up in front of a crowd of angry people, and tell those people that an Acceptable Target is to blame. Could be White People, could be The Jews, The Illegals, The Godless Heathens, whatever works. Then all of the disparate groups which should be united against you are instead warring against each other. And at least one of those groups is looking to you to stop the Other Group Menace. Voila, you have a voter base that you can exploit and screw over for as long as the Other Group remains a credible threat.

Of course, sometimes the ploy is not as obvious as that. Sometimes it’s as subtle as this cartoon.

Guess this was my political rant for today.

^^^^^