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Comment by favflam | Hacker News Reader

Voters in Red states destroyed any motivation by foreign companies to build factories there (tariffs) and Democrats to focus infrastructure spending there (CHIPS, IRA being worthless in getting votes).

And now Republicans are ok with impounding Congressionally assigned funds.

So I guess outside of facebook brain rot and doom-scrolling, there is no way to convince voters to vote with policy (requires attention span of more than 30 seconds and high school level reading skills).

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In Michigan, there were several IRA-catalyzed investments worth many billions for battery facilities or various components — and the announcements were met with vehement protests because some of the companies involved were Korean or Chinese. It didnt matter that they were going to create many thousand good jobs and use tons of local construction, the weird conspiratorial bigotry was just too strong (fanned by the now-President and VP).

Just no idea where to go from here. Feels really dire to be honest.

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/power-switch/2024/09/13...

At some point we need to cut these people loose, understand they’re beyond saving, and move on with things.

Oh how I wish we would be able to split the country and not have to deal with the deplorables any longer. Unfortunately we would also have to split with the deplorables the national debt and the nuclear arsenal. Imagine what would happen then…

While that sounds like a solution it’s of the “simple but wrong” kind. Just like you, they are product of propaganda, though theirs is less based in reality than yours. If you don’t counteract the source strategy (like the lack of education, biased fox “news” and adjacent media), nothing prevents it from being repeated in the resulting halves of your solution, Zeno style.

Honestly, no. That’s enlightened centerist nonsense. Being for things like freedom of speech, free and fair elections, a non-totalitarian form of government, and being against economic suicide, masked goon squads kidnapping people off the streets is not some sort of insane propaganda that I should be questioning.

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