I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Recently I looked up what has been going on in various European countries, and it seems like with a lot of them there’s an extreme populist party with about 20% control, there’s a less extreme party that’s still queerphobic and anti-abortion but more willing to compromise with maybe about 15% control, and then there’s more liberal but economically conservative parties parties making it so the total of economically conservative parties including the above two is above 50%. These countries also have actual progressive and even some left-wing representation in government.
Contrast this with the US, which only has a populist party and a socially liberal but economically conservative party that a bunch of people are brainwashed to think is literally communism. There is very little progressive representation even though the country has a significant number of progressives, and people who want less government regulations are voting Republican regardless of their stances on social issues. Meanwhile polls say that opposition to LGBTQ rights and abortion is probably around 30% which is not much different than the European countries I looked at. So I think half the problem is that democracy in the US is basically dysfunctional.
However, 30% opposition to LGBTQ and abortion rights is still fucking bad, and I’m still trying to figure out whether it is the propaganda to blame or the people themselves. Additionally racism and xenophobia had been on the rise everywhere and has basically gained popular support at this point so democracy clearly isn’t going to solve this.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Recently I looked up what has been going on in various European countries, and it seems like with a lot of them there’s an extreme populist party with about 20% control, there’s a less extreme party that’s still queerphobic and anti-abortion but more willing to compromise with maybe about 15% control, and then there’s more liberal but economically conservative parties parties making it so the total of economically conservative parties including the above two is above 50%. These countries also have actual progressive and even some left-wing representation in government.
Contrast this with the US, which only has a populist party and a socially liberal but economically conservative party that a bunch of people are brainwashed to think is literally communism. There is very little progressive representation even though the country has a significant number of progressives, and people who want less government regulations are voting Republican regardless of their stances on social issues. Meanwhile polls say that opposition to LGBTQ rights and abortion is probably around 30% which is not much different than the European countries I looked at. So I think half the problem is that democracy in the US is basically dysfunctional.
However, 30% opposition to LGBTQ and abortion rights is still fucking bad, and I’m still trying to figure out whether it is the propaganda to blame or the people themselves. Additionally racism and xenophobia had been on the rise everywhere and has basically gained popular support at this point so democracy clearly isn’t going to solve this.