is that they think people like me are dumb. I’m a half black american, I grew up in the projects. I experienced food insecurity, unchecked (severe) child abuse, shitty education, other modes of trauma that I won’t mention here, lived off food stamps and had to work when I was 11 so we could pay bills. I remember often understanding as a child that I was “supposed to be a statistic”.
However I did not wind up falling in line with the statistics.
I graduated high school with a 3.6GPA despite the horrific major depression and cptsd symptoms I was experiencing (and active abuse still). I did not start a family before 20 (and still have no kids). I did still wind up being a statistic - I have no family now after cutting them all out for their abuse, and I became an alcoholic, and have struggled with sobriety for years. Yet, I did not go into some dead end job and never try to work towards something better. I went to college, got a college-level certification, worked in my chosen career for 7 years and am now back in college, studying cybersecurity with a 3.9 GPA.
The thing about these billionaires is that they conflate class with intelligence.
They believe that since we are poor, we must have all been born with a baseline level of intelligence that is lower on the spectrum than theirs and their children’s, and because we receive the worst education possible that we are incapable of thinking for ourselves and having rational, independent thoughts.
On some level, they are correct. I have often been astounded by the level of “stupidity” that I’ve met in my daily life. But the thing that I’ve learned is that, in general, Americans just want to be heard and be allowed to live and let live. When that is threatened, it does not matter how much education you’ve gotten. It does not matter whether you fully understand what’s happening or not - what matters if that you recognize that something you were used to and comfortable having is now suddenly altered or gone.
Those folks are our backbone.
What the billionaires didn’t account for is those of us who came into this world poor as shit, are still poor as shit, and can see clearly and rationally exactly what they are doing and can show our “statistic” peers what we see. I have met poor people of all backgrounds, ethnicities, wills and hopes and dreams. One thing we can all gather around about is that we are sick and fucking tired of being poor. We’re sick and fucking tired of struggling to put food on the table, to pay our rent, to keep the electric on, to keep a vehicle, and to have literally anything left over for leisure.
Everyone is sick and tired and rightfully so.
The billionaires were banking on all of us being too stupid to think for ourselves. What they didn’t realize is that intelligence doesn’t discriminate. Not through race, not through sexuality, not through gender, and certainly not through class.
Those of us who see what’s happening and are part of the impoverished America can (and do) show our peers what we see, and I hope that terrifies them, because it should.
They think we’re all stupid. At our hearts, most poor Americans aren’t as stupid as they believe or even as middle class outsiders might be tricked into believing. If you talk to poor people, one on one, treat them like the human beings they are with the respect to their intelligence that they deserve, they are receptive to what you have to say and you can typically meet common ground, which is almost always around the fact that they can’t afford anything!
Fascism relies on all of us being complacent. Lots of the country is stupid and complacent. Lots of the country is stupid and just trying to survive the day. It’s no one’s fault that they received a sub-par education. The thing is that just because someone doesn’t know a lot, doesn’t mean they are incapable of knowing a lot.
This is the reason why these dumbasses will fail.
Education is rife in this country whether it’s government-sponsored or not. There’s nothing they can do to keep us from talking to each other. From sharing our knowledge and making the guy next to us just a bit smarter.
The vast majority of Americans want the same thing, they just don’t have the rhetoric being fed to them that shows them that.
Originally Posted By u/pomkombucha At 2025-05-13 08:11:29 AM | Source
