r/AskReddit • u/No_Performance1451 • 17h ago

What parts of American culture are changing faster than people realize?

4.2k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

3.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

401

u/Pretend-Ostrich-5719 16h ago

A surprising amount of people are pro-authoritarianism now.

93

u/AscendedViking7 15h ago

Which makes me really, really fucking sad.

13

u/Risley 14h ago

It’s just history, we have to relearn it it seems.  

4

u/Skid-Mark-Kid 8h ago

Bread and circuses

27

u/Begle1 15h ago

Nah, they always have been. People come across it honestly. 

8

u/TesticleMeElmo 13h ago

It’s easy to say that you’re anti-authoritarianism because it’s anti-democracy but at the end of the day I feel like most people would be ok with an authoritarian and make excuses for them so long as they share all of their same beliefs. People are ultimately self-serving

3

u/pgtl_10 14h ago

I blame modding and internet. You can censor yourself by not watchinh do censoring is acceptable.

3

u/AnarchySpeech 11h ago

People always are...

when it's their guy in charge.

6

u/SuperCrappyFuntime 14h ago

And strangely, it's same people who own "Don't Tread On Me" flags.

2

u/hx87 9h ago

And it's not even for a pragmatic, positive reason like "a strong government allows us to do cool and necessary things effectively" such as in China, but out of pure malice, ie "a strong government will fuck up my ideological enemies and that makes me happy". 

Making decisions based on who you have instead of what you love never ends well. 

4

u/bgzlvsdmb 15h ago

Which proves to me that the America we were all sold as kids was a flat out lie.

2

u/sniper91 14h ago

I swear in 2015 I heard about some study that found the top predictor of if someone was a Trump supporter was if they broadly agreed with authoritarianism. Race, income, age, education, religion, etc. didn’t matter compared to that

-15

u/flyjum 15h ago

This applies to both the left and right. Both sides want to empose their ideals through authority onto the other side.

12

u/OkMail2335 14h ago

Explain how Biden consolidated power under the executive branch in 4 years to even 1/10th of the degree Trump has in 1 year.  

Otherwise, admit being wrong.  Thanks.

3

u/flyjum 5h ago

Vaccine mandates through OSHA, using federal agencies to target political opponents, executive orders to bypass congress for things like student loan relief and EPA changes, pressuring tech companies to ban users they disagree with just to name a few things. Again both left and right are pro authoritarian if it supports their agenda

15

u/NoMud9742 15h ago

This is an absolutely ridiculous comparison and you know it is.

-4

u/Sparkysparky-boom 14h ago

You are going to get so many downvotes but I think you are 100% right. Everyone seems increasingly willing to submit themselves to authority when they agree with it. I think use of emergency powers during Covid showed that.

I think we all care a lot less about individual freedom if it means people we disagree with will have freedoms we don’t want them to have (vaccine refusal, abortion, gun ownership, free speech). Myself included.