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I’m sad to say you may find the grass is always greener on the other side - government corruption exists everywhere that government exists.
by seibelj 6y ago
I’m sad to say you may find the grass is always greener on the other side - government corruption exists everywhere that government exists.
- zanny 6y agoTheres a sliding scale of it though. The disinformation and anti-intellectual campaigns are generally weaker in mainland Europe and as a consequence the governments are less broken. The US is at the point where 30-40% of the country would drink bleach and shoot their neighbor at the presidents command while probably similar numbers are functionally illiterate. Not to say the democracy has been functioning, but you can't have a functional one with these preconditions. And its structurally intentional. This is all a product of decades of machination and effort to craft this cultural zeitgeist of zealotry and active war against one another while robber barons pillage the commons.
- howlgarnish 6y agoWith all due respect, you're engaging in the same zealotry yourself here. Trump is an idiot, but his ramblings about disinfecting the lungs do not mean "30-40% of the country would drink bleach" or that his voters are "functionally illiterate".
- treeman79 6y agoHe was correct on the lungs issue. There is a treatment that involved UV light tube inserted into the lungs. I don’t think it panned out, but it is a real thing.
- tommoor 6y ago> The US is at the point where 30-40% of the country would drink bleach and shoot their neighbor at the presidents command It sounds like you may have succumbed to some of that disinformation yourself
- zanny 6y agoThen talk me down from my lofty vantage because looking at ICE internment camps and seeing women forcibly sterilized en masse is making it awfully hard to not conflate my WW2 history curriculum with the present day.
- TuesdayS77 6y agoYou really do absorb the disinfo like a sponge. That must be exhausting.
- p1esk 6y agoWhy don't you live somewhere else for 10+ years and then report back how much better it is over there. Until then your opinion is not worth much.
- anon9001 6y agoTo be fair, there was only one doctor forcibly sterilizing women, and it appeared to be for personal profit rather than some eugenics directive from above. It's bad, but it's quite as bad as you're making it out to be.
- js2 6y ago[deleted: irrelevant to RGB]
- anon9001 6y agoIf we're going to compare it to WW2 where they were doing experiments on humans and running eugenics projects, I think we should acknowledge that this is fundamentally different than that. Someone who didn't read the intercept story [1] might take the WW2 comparison too literally and think we've begun official mass sterilization programs. We haven't. What happened is tragic and awful, but it's not the same thing that Hitler did. [1] https://theintercept.com/2020/09/17/forced-sterilization-ice-us-history/ https://theintercept.com/2020/09/17/forced-sterilization-ice...
- bilegeek 6y agoUnfortunately, in a global world run mostly by the US, China and Russia, Europe won't be immune from these effects; in fact, it isn't, since such ideology is clawing through there as well. Moving away will work in the short run, but it will only delay the inevitable. The only way the entire world gets through this is an equal amount of intelligent, thrifty democratic zealotry and luck. If we fall, it's only a matter of time until the entire world goes with.
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- _qulr 6y agoThere's a tendency to overstate the popularity of our politicians. The President received 46% of the vote with 56% turnout, which means only 26% of the eligible vote. And many of those voters "plugged their nose" at the polls (though they may do it again). We have minority rule in this country, and many people don't realize how small the minority is. Both political parties are hugely unpopular (even with their own members sometimes) and fail to represent the majority.
- nr2x 6y agoThe minority is even smaller if you consider how few states determine the outcome, especially with primaries.
- sudosysgen 6y agoIt's by design. I've said, and I'll say it again, from 1776 to 2020, the US was never really a democracy. The power was not in the hands of the people.
- xpe 6y agoYour exaggeration hurts your argument.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoSure, but, for example, Jacinda Ardern isn't Donald Trump or Boris Johnson.
- ibejoeb 6y agoIs the point to say that Ardern is somehow above it all? She just suspended the election, citing Covid, even though there were no transmissions for over 3 months.
- caf 6y agoShe didn't suspend the election, she delayed it by 4 weeks. Her opponent in fact argued for that to happen. And at the time they did have a new cluster of locally-transmitted cases. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53796434 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53796434
- redbluff 6y agoErr - what? The whole reason the election has been delayed is because of community transmission in Auckland. Additionally all parties have agreed to the suspension. In fact it was the opposition who called for the intitial suspension.
- p1necone 6y agoThe major opposition party and most of the minor parties wanted the election to be suspended. It wasn't electioneering, it was literally just making sure thousands of people didn't go to the polls during a pandemic. Of course I will have zero surprise if the right wingers now start pointing back to it as if it was a bad thing, because blind opposition to everything is just what they do. But at the time everyone was calling for it.
- TuesdayS77 6y agoI will never be able to get the image of her in a burqa practically kneeling before foreign men begging for their acceptance in the days following the Christchurch massacre. That was utterly inappropriate and humiliating. For all their faults, in this respect, thank heavens Trump and Johnson aren't Ardern.
- loceng 6y agoCanada's looking fairly decent at the moment, however similar threats and pressure from global bad actors to deal with including in political arena.
- refurb 6y agoAs a Canadian, it’s not that different. We just had our Finance Minister quit because he was taking money from a non-profit that gets most of it’s money from the Federal gov’t. Oh and his daughter got a cushy job there too. Completely based on merit no doubt. Trudeau says “oh we’re sorry about that”. And that’s it. No harm no foul.
- Fordec 6y agoHe at least had the public accountability to quit. US can't even manage to forceably remove major bad actors
- refurb 6y agoYet Trudeau, who was present at the meetings where these corrupt decisions were made gets by with a "sorry". And which bad actors are you referring to? There are plenty of US politicians who have been guilty of corruption who have gone to prison.
- throw0101a 6y ago> As a Canadian, it’s not that different. As another Canadian, it is much different. Though Trudeau et al have done two serious problems (SNC-Lavalin, We), they do not hold a candle to the grifting and absolute corruption that is Trump and GOP. Further, the much vaunted "checks and balances" of the US system have been shown to be a complete sham given the enabling that McConnell has allowed, the court packing that went on with the Supreme Court and this is happening with the lower courts. And that's not even getting into the impeachment trial. At least with the Westminster system the electorate can throw out bums and have a clean slate where the new party can sweep away the more terrible stuff of the previous administration. The Liberals were able to backtrack on some of worse things the previous Tories, and implement some important policies relatively quickly (e.g., climate change). If the CPC manages to get in, at the very least they'll probably cancel the completely useless Order in Council regarding firearms, and perhaps at least implement more useful gun violence policies (like reducing inequality). Of course if they continue to reject carbon pricing (or perhaps at least move toward cap-and-trade) then their chances of getting in are slim giving the general public's view toward climate change.
- acdha 6y agoYou’re saying there’s no difference between, say, Denmark and Syria? You’d just flip a coin between Russia and New Zealand?
- res0nat0r 6y agoAlso this is a good article written a few years ago that tries to tamp down a bit of the RBG cult, and that she should have retired during Obamas term if she really was concerned about keeping a liberal justice on the SCOTUS. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/11/what-cult-ruth-bader-ginsburg-rbg-got-wrong-obama-trump/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/11/what-cult-ruth-...
- tunesmith 6y agoWhen? Was she to have perfect foresight in the first two years of Obama's two terms that that was her only window?
- res0nat0r 6y agoWhen she was ~75 years old, and that doesn't take any political foresight to know she was old then.
- p1necone 6y agoThe foresight wasn't about her being old, the foresight was about just how much the next Republican administration would skirt precedence and the rule of law.
- remote_phone 6y agoIt was obvious she should have retired then. I think she was great but her not retiring during Obama’s last term was arrogance. And now there is a good chance that filling the Supreme Court with another republican justice will motivate a lot of anti-trump voters who will hold their nose and vote him in just to pack the courts.
- tunesmith 6y agoI said the first two years of his first term. That was her only window.
- 3131s 6y agoIf you are not an American it's hard to understand the extent to which there is a cultural vortex where everything around you feels manufactured. I left seven years ago and now live in a terrible third-world dictatorship actually. It's not that America is so bad to live in (if you have some money), but that things should be much better for young people especially and the justifications for why it can't be better are so deeply warped.
- p1necone 6y agoI see this on HN all the time - there will be some discussion about a problem that America has, and some one will suggest some solution. And then there'll be resounding cries of "that's impossible, too expensive, can't be done etc", but the suggested solution is something that > 50% of other western nations already do and there's plenty of evidence for it's effectiveness.
- sudosysgen 6y agoAnd often, implementing that solution is much cheaper than inaction, and people still complain about cost. Except when the solution is war.
- luckylion 6y agoThose other nations have very different setups though. I don't believe anyone thinks it's "impossible, too expensive" as in physically impossible, but rather "impossible to do it and keep the basic setup of the American society as it is". Of course it's possible for the US to have the same social systems as European nations, but every American would have to pay a lot more taxes. I understand "it's impossible" to mean "it's impossible to do in this configuration". You can build a sky scraper instead of a single family home, but it's impossible to do on the same budget.
- ngcazz 6y agoWhitewash much?
- ixtli 6y agoNah. I’ve lived in other countries, but none as long as America. It is truely the door through which satan enters the world.
- p1necone 6y agoAs someone from outside of the United States, no. The treasonous corruption in the American Republican party is uniquely much much worse than basically anything going on in the rest of the western world. Edit: The clusterfuck that was Brexit was pretty bad though.
- monkeycantype 6y agoThat's true, but the united states is the big prize, which means the US is where greed and corruption is playing hardest. Having lived in the US and out of it, I believe that other places and not less selfish or petty, but there are places where greed and corruption just doesn't have it's shit together.
- patcon 6y agoHonestly, no. The USA is uniquely fucked up. Seriously, everyone else in the rest of the stable world-leading countries is looking in with disbelief every week
- Fordec 6y agoAs an Irishman in Canada and previously lived in the US, I can safely and concretely say the political and governmental grass is greener in both countries above the US.
- sudosysgen 6y agoVery few countries at this extent.
- andkenneth 6y agoSure, but I could name many countries that are not nearly as bad as the USA is now. The same could be said comparing the USA to say, Belarus. Both are bad, clearly Belarus has much worse corruption.