USA Politics

Sheriff_of_Huddersfield said:
Taking joy in a bad patch in American politics isn’t going to help America’s allies.
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...and who are those these days? Russia? Israel? El Salvador? I think they've had enough help.

Sheriff_of_Huddersfield said:
Most Americans are against racism.
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Most of the 2,788 people polled in this study are against racism.

Sheriff_of_Huddersfield said:
The remedy to Trump’s populism would be to for the Democrats to propose less inflammatory and more reasonable solutions than Trump’s camp does to address the grievances that got Trump elected.
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In theory, you're correct. But you're talking policy. And the majority of people voting with the loudest voices don't care. They don't even research it. They're voting for the next American Idol.
 
The point is that we're alienating our allies because of Donald Trump. And we're not alienating even the ones the most progressive of voters would call "questionable", we're alienating fucking Canada. The "uninformed population segment" is literally running the country and running the media. No one is taking joy in it except the ones perpetrating this farce.

Better policies aren't going to win new ground for the Democrats. It will help, sure, but not enough. As long as Trump still has his hooks in the Republican party, the only hope the Democrats have is to find someone incredibly popular and charming - another Obama (although probably not in today's climate as we're now more openly racist than we were even ten years ago) or Bill Clinton.
 
I'm not gonna cast judgement on an entire nation; such a thing is impossible. But seeing stories like this recent one:


Where a white woman had a meltdown and hurled racial slurs (with the hard R) at a kid, and then managed to raise half a million dollars... Well, it certainly shows that racism is still a major issue in America. And that's before we start talking about the dogwhistles like DEI.

Also, to clarify: I'm not experiencing schadenfreude. I'm seeing that all the warnings I gave to certain posters are coming true and things are getting even worse than we originally feared. It's not "being mean" that divides the population. It's a huge chunk being fine with fascism as long as it is painted red, that divides people. Instead of getting the progressives to give in and compromise with thr far right, who is actively trying to limit the rights of American citizens, how about you put some pressure to the conservatives to show a tiny shred of integrity and put their country before their party affiliation.

We are talking about adult human beings who have to deal with the consequences of their actions. I'm sick and tired of people infantilizing conservatives who fucked up. We've been screaming and warning them about everything that is happening right now for years. Maybe it's time for them to finally listen for once. Aren't they the ones in favor of "personal responsibility"?
 
Sheriff_of_Huddersfield said:
My comment on schadenfreude is directed at people from other countries who seem to take joy (or at least enjoy feeling superior) to the US’s predicament, which doesn’t benefit them, either.
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Is that something you are seeing in this thread at the moment? Because none of us are happy with Trump's shitshow, I can tell you that much.
 
Sheriff_of_Huddersfield said:
Here’s an NYT video article on the mid-term elections, the challenges the Democrats will face, and their potential strategies. Backing Independents in states where the Democrat brand is unwelcome isn’t the worst idea I’ve heard.
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I'm absolutely in favor of independents filling the government. In a perfect country, neither party would have a majority and those independent votes would be incredibly important. But for that perfect country to exist you'd also have to have Republicans in those seats who aren't greedy, evil, incompetently idiotic people. Not sure those exist in today's Republican party.
 
Sheriff_of_Huddersfield said:
I really wish we had more political choices than the two parties.
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The two-party system leads to extremes, not only are the policies more or less randomly decided (I mean, why should "socially conservative" automatically mean "economically liberal"?) but in this opposition, they influence each other and falling deeper and deeper into the grotesque and the parody. There is absolutely no space for compromise, all that politics amount to is merely yelling louder why my party is right (which it can't be, because of the aforementioned randomness of the positions it must sustain under the party policy) and it leads nowhere.

Combine that with social media and post-modern, post-factual, post-covid society and you get what you get.

The plurality of political suspects might lead to more deadlocks and might be considerably less effective, but it would force the parties to go out of their bubble, discuss and argue, possibly even reach compromises. I mean, I often complain about my country's politics, but all things considered, I'm actually happy with what we have, because it ultimately feels less hopeless.
 
Sheriff_of_Huddersfield said:
I know, Bad Orange Man = Americans all so stupid (that’s the schadenfreude I referred to). But someone might find it informative or interesting.
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Uuuh... that's not what Schadenfreude means lol

I agree that the US would be far better off with more parties being in play and having to form coalitions to encourage compromises.

At the moment you have the Dems, who as flawed as they are actually have some kind of policies they stand behind. And then there's the GOP that has no integrity or consistency in any way and seems to purely exist out of spite. And to usher in the rise of fascism that's currently happening, that needs to be emphasized whenever we talk about them.
 
Sheriff_of_Huddersfield said:
schadenfreude /shäd′n-froi″də/

noun​

  1. Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.
  2. Malicious enjoyment derived from observing someone else's misfortune.
  3. Delight in another person's misfortune.

As in “haha, looking at those stupid Americans with their crazy leader. They are so fucked. Those idiots! Haha, their misfortune brings me a joyous sense of superiority because I don’t live there.”
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I'm not sure what about my post made you read it as this, but in any case, it's not the case, just to be clear. I would much rather US being okay with a working political system and with a prominent party which I wouldn't find despicable in one way or another.

I compared it with the plurality system which we have and which I think is better, but certainly not in that way like "ha ha, gotcha", if you took it that way, then I'm sorry. I certainly don't think what you say here, I'm not even happy that Trump won because it did "own the progressives" (although that is a very small - and ultimately useless - comfort). I wish the country would get better, really.
 
Well, like I said, in my country we have this tendency to see the US as a cautionary tale nowadays - although as people and their worldviews differ, we do not agree what is the warning here and how it all came to be. We see something is very wrong, we see that it happened frighteningly quickly and that there seems to be no end in sight - and honestly it's baffling, because many still remember thirty years ago, when we were freshly free (after the Communist regime fell), we were looking towards the US in everything. I mean, the visuals of TV news broadcast, the Coca-Cola, Bruce Springsteen, Bill Clinton playing the sax with our former president, we actually made some amendments to our voting system to bring it slightly closer to the US one (too complex and too miniscule to go into, just take my word for it) and so on.

In fact, to this day we tend to inadvertently copy some of US ways, even long after they have been slowly going out of style there (like the über-corporate culture, that one tends to have its pinnacles with significant latency after actual Western companies stop doing it).

And then it all goes to shit and some people here even speculate about potential US civil war and we're not exactly sure how it happened.

But even people who really hate the two-party system and who hate US's obsession with itself and both US progressivism and its redneckishness (I am guilty of all of these) are really not happy about it. I haven't met anyone having Schadenfreude, to be sure, bar a possible online troll or two.

Sheriff_of_Huddersfield said:
Make politics boring again, please!
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Indeed!

EDIT:
Oh,

Sheriff_of_Huddersfield said:
I think a lot of people around the world like to see the US taken down a notch or two and I understand why.
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I mean, kinda? But this is not the way, first of all it's too depressing and destabilising ("taken down a notch" doesn't mean "completely dismantled"), second of all, nobody seems to be actually willing to take any lessons from it and improve, which makes all taking down a notch utterly futile.
 
Sheriff_of_Huddersfield said:
schadenfreude /shäd′n-froi″də/

noun​

  1. Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.
  2. Malicious enjoyment derived from observing someone else's misfortune.
  3. Delight in another person's misfortune.

As in “haha, looking at those stupid Americans with their crazy leader. They are so fucked. Those idiots! Haha, their misfortune brings me a joyous sense of superiority because I don’t live there.”
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I have not felt that sentiment at all on this forum and I would say this is probably my most direct line to what people outside the US think.
 
Sheriff_of_Huddersfield said:
schadenfreude /shäd′n-froi″də/

noun​

  1. Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.
  2. Malicious enjoyment derived from observing someone else's misfortune.
  3. Delight in another person's misfortune.

As in “haha, looking at those stupid Americans with their crazy leader. They are so fucked. Those idiots! Haha, their misfortune brings me a joyous sense of superiority because I don’t live there.”
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German is one of my mother tongues, so no need for the dictionary definition. I've asked you before and you ignored it, so I'll ask again:

Where on this forum have you seen schadenfreude? You keep bringing it up, so you must have seen it, right? Otherwise why bring up something that's happening outside here where no one can affect that?
 
Sheriff_of_Huddersfield said:
Hey, I’ve been around long enough to know that, while Trump’s the worst of it now, it’s not like everyone was unironically singing that “Amerika ist Wunderbar” line from Rammstein before.

I lived in Europe during the G.H.W. Bush and Clinton years and heard plenty of critical views on the US from my friends and neighbors there.

Didn’t make me like them any less.

Maybe America is just the world’s best known reality TV show.
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Who didn't you like any less - your European friends/neighbours or Bush and Clinton?
 
Sheriff_of_Huddersfield said:
schadenfreude /shäd′n-froi″də/

noun​

  1. Pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others.
  2. Malicious enjoyment derived from observing someone else's misfortune.
  3. Delight in another person's misfortune.

As in “haha, looking at those stupid Americans with their crazy leader. They are so fucked. Those idiots! Haha, their misfortune brings me a joyous sense of superiority because I don’t live there.”
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i don't think anyone thinks that, possibly because guys like Conor McGregor, Nigel Farage, the AFD, Marine Le Pen and all sorts of others that we have over here, wouldn't let us get up on a high horse about Trump. It's mainly worry that he's empowering these types that are driving the comments I would think.
 
Also, most people aren't going "ha ha, look at these dumb Americans, look how they are suffering". Most folks are looking towards the US in horror and frustration. They see years of warnings ignored. They see the most powerful government in the world blatantly disregarding the rule of law and turning towards tyranny.
 
Some interesting political observations from @GLandsbergis, Former Foreign Minister of Lithuania.

"I had ringside seats for US Vice President @JDVance’s speech this morning in Washington. Like most people in the room I was prepared to be hit with another lecture, to see the fractures in the transatlantic relationship deepen before my eyes. But we were surprised, positively.

The tone has altered. JD Vance now considers Europe and the US to be important partners. So what exactly changed, and why?

My best bet is that what has happened during recent months could be described as US foreign policy disruption overreach. Fundamentally, the notion that America, in the spirit of Silicon valley disruptors, can offer a new and universally accepted worldview is based on the indispensability of the United States to other nations.

And what just happened was a reckoning that the US is still a tremendously important western ally, but… the worldview that it wants its allies to accept is simply not acceptable to most of them.

JD Vance offered a couple of points that to my mind show the main vulnerabilities of the US.

1—EU procurement of US weapons.
The US wants a piece of the trillions of euros that will be spent on defence. And the administration is upset that Europe seems to be choosing to replace American products by making its own kit instead of staying weak and vulnerable by shopping around for subtier alternatives.
All the messaging throughout recent months led Europe to doubt that the US is a reliable partner when it comes to dealing with the greatest security threat—Russia. And if Europe doubts that partnership—Europe is not going to spend money on US equipment, at least not in the amounts it planned to when there was less doubt. You cannot have cake and eat it. Either the US is ready to defend Europe against Russia together with Europe (and that includes Ukraine), or Europe slowly, ineffectively but inevitably will start building itself up, and with that will gain autonomy and leverage.

2—EU regulation.
JD Vance mentioned that the way Brussels treats US tech companies is unfair. My gut feeling is that this sentiment is at the heart of the attack on Brussels by the US administration. You can laugh, despise or criticise Brussels, but it wields enormous regulatory power in an extremely populous and rich market. And if you want to reach that market, your road leads through Brussels.
And what's even more horrifying from the US administration’s perspective—most Europeans actually appreciate this regulation. Many have a sense it makes their life safer and in that way better. So the attacks on Brussels because of its supposedly undemocratic nature are simply another attack on any limitation of Washington’s power. You can broligarch your way to the highest echelons of US power, but apparently that doesn’t help you change things in Europe.
I admit, this might be wishful thinking—but I get the sense that Trump burning all those burning bridges did not scare or paralyze Europe into submission. And the price that American people are paying for the disruption might also be larger than initially expected.
If all this is true—the lesson is clear. Hold your ground, stay firm, keep the door open, remind everybody of common values and common interests and continue doing the right thing. And who knows, people can come around, so maybe countries can as well.

So I left the room hoping that my gut feeling will turn out to be true. At least, for once, my gut feeling was not gloom.

But still, the first victim of Trump’s disruption was trust. It is a very expensive commodity that was built up through decades of hard work and it will be very tough to regain. Trust will have to be at the core of all the conversations between Brussels and DC—be it about trade, regulation or security.

If there had been a chance to address the Vice President, I would have told him frankly:

Russia is the aggressor.
Ukraine is the victim.
We support the victim.
There are red lines that Europe cannot cross, and will not cross."
 
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So The new Pope is from the U.S Robert Prevost aka Leo XIV. Time to make the Vatican great again?
 
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