There needs to just be a blanket, punitive, 100+% tax on any and all single use plastics that are not medical devices. Obviously there’s lots of other bigger environmental issues that need to be tackled but this really seems like a pretty obvious one imo.
100% not a psy-op or collusion. They really just both bought deeply into the shift to neoliberalism in the 80’s, and it has so defined politics for the last 4 decades that few politicians have wrapped their heads around the fact that the continual rejection of both parties by the people is really a rejection of that neoloberalism that we’re clearly in the death throes of. Trump succeeded not because every person who voted for him was a racist (I mean, that’s definitely a big cadre among his supporters, but it isn’t what got him in), he succeeded because people are so desperate to end the neoliberal norm that’s crushing everyone that they’ll vote for a guy that literally soft-pedals fascism over another neoliberal.
But I really do think the majority of them are true believers. They’ve been born and raised in that politically environment. It’s all they know and they really can’t imagine anything else, even if it’s really only been a few generations ago that things looked very different.