this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2026
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In the end we all get the government we deserve, don't we?
Depends if you are fatalistic or not I suppose. Sometimes it is hard not to be honestly.
https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba
I mean it in the way that how we treat others is being reflected by how the government treats us. This article is a fine example of people acting like they don't need to listen to those they disagree with because they already figured out how the world works. I wish I could say I'm immune to this, I am not.
A lot to unpack here.
I get the golden rule ideology, but I am not sure it can really encompass human behavior.
For instance, propaganda drives of how people treat each other. Take anti-trans or anti-gay rhetoric in the US. This is what drives people's opinions and the government uses this to influence people.
We can see evidence of this with bathroom bills. The government uses basic psychology of people feeling vulnerable in the restroom as a cudgel to attack a group of people that are not known to create unsafe situations.
Transposing this fear onto trans-people is a form of psychological warfare. This isn't about treating others as you would have them treat you. It is about propaganda and control of voting blocs.
As I mentioned it is hard not to be fatalistic because evidence shows that 90%+ of all regulations, policies, and laws passed are at the request of corporations. Business makes the vast majority of decisions the government enacts.
Rather than view this the end point of understanding how governments work we can use it as a launch pad to create new forms of governments that don't suffer from the extreme regulation capture we see today.
If pointing out the truth is disheartening I would say that is more reflective about someone's inability to deal with the real world.
We have to be present and recognize what is really going on. We cannot change if we don't even recognize what needs to be changed. Wasting our time lobbying a government that will never listen to us pointless. We need to move beyond the paradigm we are in and see through the falsehoods.
Less thinking of the golden rule, more about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but he was a theologian so maybe that's part of it. He said something to the effect that some politicians come to power through cynicism of the people and that the antidote is a politics that utilizes people's ability to act independently (or alternatively without coercion).