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Ya wanna know the best way the US can fight propaganda? Take steps to enact real change in the current quality of life for the middle/lower class here. When people aren't fighting to live, it is easier to overlook the current governmental issues. Not saying that complacency is what people should be fighting for, but it is legitimately the best way for the government to fight foreign adversary's propaganda.
That won't fight propaganda, because propaganda doesn't have to have any basis in reality. It can be nothing but straw men and Potemkin villages. You can literally lie, and it's going to take far, far more effort to debunk the lie than it would be to simply prevent the lie from propagating in the first place.
The believability of that lie is tipped by the reality we live in. I could say, "if we had communism, the clouds would be made of cotton candy." Nobody would believe me. If I said, "I see you are having major housing issues. look at _____, they don't have housing issues, so why don't you adopt their political ideology?" The US govt actively avoiding improving living conditions opens up tons of those opportunities.
Yeah, and, on the other hand, turning around and pointing out the reality that _____ does have major housing issues, and that they're in many ways worse than what we experience, and that their gov't is even less responsive to fixing real, serious problems than ours is, well, that's going to take far longer than lying about the housing conditions in _____.
My point is that improving quality of life directly FIGHTS propaganda. I am not pushing for any particular ideology here or saying a particular ideology, like communism or capitalism, will solve all of our problems.
...I feel like you're not hearing me.
You can simply lie about the material conditions of life in other places, under other regimes, and that becomes propaganda itself. If everyone in the US had their very own tiny home on a 1/10ac plot, and TikTok started pushing videos about how everyone, even the meanest beggar, in _____ had a palatial mansion of a home with the best and flashiest new tech, etc., you would have the same effect. It doesn't even have to be that material conditions in any given place are necessarily bad, you just have to make it appear that everyone living in _____ is better, and you'll create the same discontent.
I feel like you really overestimate how greedy the average person is. I don't think most people expect the government to give you a mansion. I feel it is a reasonable position that the government should not allow investment firms to push the average person out of the housing market because the firm wants endless growth. I feel this way because of the current housing crisis. If the crisis did not exist, I would probably not be looking for answers as to why I cannot afford a house with a full time job.
You vastly underestimate it.
A minimum wage worker now has a vastly better lot in life than 99% of laborers from the immediate post-WWI era (but prior to the Great Depression); better housing, better food, better healthcare, and so on. A minimum wage worker right now lives in far, far better circumstances than any kind of subsistence living. But that's not what people see. People see other people around them, compare themselves to what other people have, and determine if what they have is fair and just based on what they see. Why do you think we have so many problems with conspicuous consumerism? No one 'needs' a luxury car, and very, very few people need a lifted Ram 3500, and yet people feel driven (pun not intended) to buy them because that's what they 'deserve' based on what they see peers driving. If people wanted cars based on real need, then Fiats and Smart Fortwo cars would dominate the landscape.
People living outside their means does not mean they expect the government to fund that life style. Your argument is that improving quality of life does not decrease the effectiveness of propaganda because people are too greedy, right?