Ya good point. This Thom Hartmann video popped up in my TikTok feed today and explains where the anti-public-education movement came from, as the primary way to destabilize self-governance (democracy) to continue the status quo (classism):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUHOVxjMIDA
The title may be political, but the subject matter is not. This is the kind of stuff that we used to learn in civics and social studies, which have largely been eliminated from the curriculum. Which can now be thought of as stuff like critical race theory.
Some examples of the Big Lie -> hidden truth:
* job losses due to immigration policy -> actually lost due to education spending cuts, misaligned incentives around outsourcing and tax cuts incentivizing the wealthy to keep their money instead of reinvesting it in growing their businesses
* crumbling infrastructure because nobody wants to work anymore -> actually due to loss of tax revenue because the wealthy are only taxed at 1/3 to 1/2 their pre-Reagan administration rate
* national debt because we spend too much on woke social programs -> actually due to spending more on our military than next dozen countries combined, because any non-capitalist economic success is viewed as a threat to US white/male/wealthy hegemony.
Of course the other party has its own issues. But I would argue that it hasn't had significant power since JFK, which left us in this flip-flop era where it primarily plays defense, since the loss of certain basic rights is so unthinkable that it takes vast mobilizations to stay ahead of the threats.
In other words, sabotage is a much more lucrative policy than building bridges. Which goes along with the status quo's endorsement of cheating via control of the media, judiciary, etc.
Now that mobilizations have failed in the face of stuff like the Roe v. Wade repeal, I predict that big political changes are coming in a Fourth Turning (I haven't read the book by that name yet, by William Strauss and Neil Howe).
The parties may switch sides on certain key issues. The older generation will probably find itself suddenly stripped of power, as the younger generation decides that it no longer wants to pay retirements, after a lifetime of stagnant wages and ever-increasing rents/student loans/etc. Young people may find that they have more in common with friends overseas speaking different languages, now that universal translators have arrived. Nationalism may fade after a last-ditch effort by elites to crush the proletariat beneath authoritarian fascism. And so on and so forth. So many bastions of the status quo are set to fall like dominoes should any fall, that a huge global propaganda machine works tirelessly to prevent any and all progressive wins.
Admittedly I have blind spots around failures of the left. I want to emphasize that I'm more interested in learning what those are, and raising the quality of life for the middle class, than supporting them outright based on ideology and my own biases.