Why are people turning on each other rather than those running the country?

[Daisy03]

On threads lately it seems to be an absolute race to the bottom.
There's the pay rise thread where we have people bickering about public or private sector pay rises.
There's the thread about the squeezed middle which has a bit of benefit bashing along with a bit of north south divide arguing.
Any time people are striking for job conditions that leads to more bickering.
Any thread about salary ends up in competitive misery and some posters expecting everyone to be happy with any small scrap.
Is this what happens in a financial downturn? Everyone just blames each other? What about government who don't seem to actually be doing anything at the moment?

MN is like this all the time, and always has been on certain topics.

Because it’s easier to act like everyone else is lazy or a benefit scrounger. People don’t want to admit that voting Tory got us into this mess.

People on a modest income don’t understand how hard minimum wage is and think it’s just people being lazy when they can’t afford their energy bills.

We've had a media and government that have encouraged culture wars for years now because the alternative is that they are held to acount - the end result of that is an automatic assumption that someone must be the average person's fault. e.g. "the country doesn't have any money to spend because people like Bob took it to pay for his wheelchair". When, in fact, people in power just don't want to spend money on contracts that don't enrich their own bank accounts. They soon found billion for PPE contracts that went to mates from down the pup, and sisters, and wives, didn't they?

The worse life gets for people, the worse they will display this kind of behaviour because the more the media etc will encourage it and the more desperate people will become, I suppose.

Because punching down is easier than punching up.

what @AffIt said.
Turn people against their own-Hitler/Chairman Mao - history seems to prove it’s an excellent way for Governments to to get the public on your side - with some terrible outcomes.

Because it's frightening to think gov really are that terrible. Because then you'd have to do something about it.

Tbf a thread on here about grapes in a supermarket can lead to bickering so it’s not a surprise bigger topics do too

I don’t think people are turning on each other necessarily but I do think there’s some painful times coming / already here and people are worried

Here we go again
It is never "what can I do to help myself in a difficult situation"
It is always
"It is the govts fault they need to fix all my problems"
S media also has many people who do not have real friendships they get off on being rude
When I go for a drink meet mates etc none of us are angry we just accept life is harder than it was
The world has changed and will never be the same
We are dealing with it

The Tory "government" don't want people to look at what they're doing, so their media pals and Internet trolls are stirring up hatred of poor people, foreigners, remoaners, the "Left" etc.

Meanwhile, they continue to strip us of our rights, destroy our democracy and fuck up the country and eachother. Oh and PM Johnson has approved the new nuclear plant. I wonder what else he'll squeeze in before they prise him out of Downing Street.

Too many years of divide and conquer.
This was set of years ago and now the balance has tipped so far that the majority think it really is the less fortunate persons fault. They need to keep believing it or their own weakness is exposed so they prop themselves up with at least I'm not XYZ.
They can't admit we've all been conned by a self serving bunch of feudal lords by another name.

I've never hidden so many threads, my blood pressure can't take it.

Well I don't want to sound like one of the tin foil hat brigade - but the demonisation of certain groups is a tool often used by politicians and people with power (mass media and so forth) as a distraction.

You see it in newspaper headlines - lazy/greedy/selfish strikers are planning to ruin YOUR holiday/Christmas/etc.

www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2017/02/amnesty-international-annual-report-201617/

Interesting report on 'us and them' politics from Amensty International.

The tory backed media has spent the last 12 years creating rampant tribalism.

Its always a them vs us situation.

Just take a look at the daily excrement or the daily heil.

leave vs remain
gb vs eu
wfh'ers vs go to workers
vax vs anti vax
they've even managed to make people hate their GP's and the NHS.

We have just had the same conversation with one of our relatives.

She is a very educated lady, but yet she has started getting angry about things that quite frankly are ridiculous and its absolutely directed at the wrong people.

She cant see the issue lies at the government's door, not joe bloggs in her street. Its a lazy approach when people are frustrated and know the government won't change anything.
That was her reasonings, theres no point getting angry with the government they won't change anything.

The more the public turn on eachother the less they look at all the diagraceful things those in power are doing, thats why the daily fail rally the troops, anger their people at the wrong people so they don't look at those in power, it works a treat for them, as it appears most of their readers play right into their hands.

I see Samuel Smiles’ concept of ‘self-help’ hasn’t fallen out of favour with some posters here.

I read something the other day.

Imagine cavemen, your caveman ancestor.
Imagine he saved £10000 a day, every day.
Imagine one of your ancestors saving £10000 a day every day from caveman times to today. Never spending anything just saving that £10000 for you, every single day.
You would still be poorer than Elon Musk.

Because, frankly, this kind of attitude has been a very successful policy of government. That and ‘poor people are poor because they make bad choices’. Maybe it makes people feel better about themselves, they of course, having the same bad luck would see it a terrible misfortune that had befallen them, the deserving poor vs the undeserving poor.

I've never seen anything like this on MN like it's been the last week or so. The panic. The hatred towards others, the poor, big families, the disabled.

People seem scared.

It's a vicious environment. No support or empathy.

The government get off scot free.

No one is actually running the country 😳😾😾

And it's running aground. All sectors of society, business groups, the NHS, food producers, as well as past PMs are screaming at the government to sort this.😱

But our Tory politicians are too busy doing other, more important stuff to do with their careers.

I think social media makes things much worse. I grew up before SM was a thing and remember being a child in the 70s with all the strikes, power cuts and three day week. People tended to moan to their friends but otherwise just got on with it.

Now people get wound up by what someone has said on Twitter or Facebook (or Mumsnet!!) and they become more and more anxious and because of the SM algorithms they will have their worst fears confirmed.

I am not denying that things are shit and there does seem to be a push to demonise certain groups but this is made easier by the fact that we have 24 hour online news and also some people do seem to be more fragile after Covid.

I don't think people are turning on each other in RL. The whole point of MN is it allows people to vent anonymously.

Instead I see people clearing gullies, sharing and stacking firewood, planning evenings together to share heating and cooking.

The people on Mnet are, for the most part, real life people. They may be sweet as pie to their mates, doesn't mean they don't harbour resentment and vent their nasty prejudices on other real life people who use Mnet.

Yeah I'm nice IRL but a total cah on MN.

The Tories did a great job over brexit...they realised that divide and conquer was a strategy to ensure they won. Everyone fighting each other rather than direct blame at themselves.