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Apathy is not the problem in the United States. The problem is that people are perplexed about how to win even a little bit of what they want. And the problem is that people are hopeless about the possibility of winning ALL that they want, namely to shape society by their egalitarian values as discussed here.
Because people feel hopeless about removing the rich from power to have real, not fake, democracy with no rich and no poor, they do not think it makes sense to devote time and energy to activism aimed explicitly for that egalitarian revolutionary goal1, despite the fact that they would love an egalitarian revolution. This is why I have only persuaded a tiny number of people to be involved in the Brighton Assembly of Egalitarians despite there being 142 people (at last count) whom I’ve met at my local CVS drug store who support its egalitarian revolutionary goal and who have provided me their email address to receive my emails (with links to my Substack articles) and who, when I meet them on the street, tell me they love getting these emails.
Most people engage in activism when, and only when, they believe that it will make a positive difference, even if only a small one. The ruling class creates opportunities for activism that are designed to absolutely avoid any mention of egalitarian revolution.
For one example, the ruling class has organized the No Kings demonstrations that aim to replace Trump-style government with Democratic-Party-style government: anti-egalitarian in either case, but lots of people prefer the latter to the former and so they eagerly participate in these demonstrations, knowing (because the Democratic Party organizes them) that they will be large and, so they hope, effective.
For another example, the ruling class has organized Trump rallies that aim (supposedly, at least) to “drain the swamp” and overthrow the “Epstein class” and make America great again (by which most people at the rallies mean make it so that the wealth Americans produce is used to serve the needs and desires of ordinary Americans and not the people in the “swamp” and in the “Epstein class.” People go to these rallies knowing they will be large (because the Republican Party organizes them) and, so they hope, effective.
For another example, the ruling class holds elections for politicians who say they are for things that people want. Many people vote (and get active in campaigns, etc.) because the mass media works hard to make people believe that by voting they can make a real difference even if it is small compared to the egalitarian revolution they really would love. Related to this is the recent emergence of DSA politicians winning some elections. DSA promises much more than the other politicians, and some of the good people who are now activists in DSA seem to derive hope from Marxism, which (as I discuss here in detail) is unfortunately a false hope because it is a theory with a false understanding of ordinary people and in consequence is profoundly anti-democratic and always leads to anti-democratic governments when Marxists gain power.
For another example, the ruling class has made it legal for workers to organize a labor union. Read here and also here why the ruling class does not fear labor unions. But many workers are hopeful that by getting active in a labor union they can make the world (where they work at least) be a little bit closer to the egalitarian way they really want it to be. Read here how they could be far more successful than they typically are.
None of this activism threatens the power of the ruling billionaire plutocracy. It is all designed by the ruling class to keep people busy/active doing things that don’t aim to remove the rich from power.
What will change this and lead to the growth of an egalitarian revolutionary movement is people doing things to counter what the ruling class does to make people hopeless about the possibility of egalitarian revolution. I describe the main three things the ruling class does for this purpose in the footnote #1 below. Read here my suggestion for concrete actions to counter these ruling class strategies.
Read where I recount how I learned “What Causes a Political Sea Change?”
This hopelessness stems from 1) the ruling class censorship of this egalitarian revolutionary aspiration in all of the mass and alternative media, which makes people conclude that hardly anybody else has this aspiration; 2) the ruling class’s rather successful effort so far to frame social issues in a manner that, by censoring key truths, divides people into two approximately equal-sized camps, each viewing the other as the morally despicable enemy, which makes the idea of achieving the massive solidarity required to remove the rich from power seem impossible; 3) the ruling class’s propaganda designed to make people believe that any attempt to create a more equal society will only end up making things worse, where “all the animals are equal but some are more equal than others” and where economic productivity will end up destroyed.
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