Yeah no. Your choice has global impact. Sadly enough.
I mean, I follow the presidental race somewhat because it has global impact, but watching the debates is not worth my time, and I’m fairly certain it’s not worth anyone’s time, especially non-americans.
Plus it’s unlikely to change anyone’s mind. At this point you’re either pro or anti Trump and you’ve had at least eight years to pick your side.
That whole attitude of picking sides is what got us in this mess to begin with
Yeah crazy that people have to pick the fascist or not fascist side haha
They’re both fascists.
bOth ARe tHe sAMe!!!
They are, if you’re older than 11
You have no idea what fascism means. Stop making yourself look dumb.
It’s obviously a common vernacular simplification from authoritarian with a broad definition. This is a commonplace and accepted vernacular in most modern western media based social media outlets.
Fascist can be liberal, they can also be conservative. Or communist. Or almost anything. More often fascists will lie and say they are more socialist than many of their policies would lead you to reasonably expect.
Grown ups are talking. Go play outside. You obviously need to touch grass, child.
They’re both right wing, but moderate right wing bought by corporate interests isn’t the same as fascist. It’s trending towards fascism, sure, but it’s less likely to go on a killing spree.
… Picking a side is literally what an election is.
It’s what modern elections are, and maybe even all historical elections, though I’m not old enough to determine that. What elections should be is throwing your support behind someone that you think is going to be beneficial for everyone. I know that is idealistic, and unfortunately the current system makes that basically impossible, but Washington said that partisan politics would be the downfall of this country, and his words are playing out in front of us. I really wish we would throw the parties, and lobbyists, out and force candidates to run on policy and merit.
See, you’re talking partisan politics, I’m talking “you literally have to pick someone”. We’ve had these candidates before. You already know which one you’re going to vote for. You picked your side four years ago when you were asked the same question.
Beyond that though, there’s “parties” and then theirs “sides”. One side is xenophobic, homophobic and actively wishes harm on a lot of people. The other side doesn’t, for all their flaws.
There are more parties than there are sides in the past few elections.By saying you think you should vote for someone who will be good for everyone, you’ve picked a side. The side that doesn’t want to do good for only the “right” people, or make sure only the “right” people get hurt.
The only question is if you’ll vote for that side to win, or if you’ll let idealism or anger drive you to vote otherwise.I shall, once again, for the 6th time in my life, hold my nose and vote for the milquetoast candidate the DNC has foisted on us. I wish we had RCV so I could vote for someone good, like Bernie, or heck I’d almost take Vermin Supreme at this point.
A side as opposed to either side is how it should be. But don’t take my word for it, George Washington allegedly warned us of the potential perils of a two-party system on his deathbed but I’m unsure if that is common myth or actually true
George Washington eschewed political parties because he didn’t want to establish a precedent where his choice as first president set the standard everyone else had to conform to, and there’s a little irony in people holding him up as an example in that light more than 200 years later.
He, and the other founders largely, disliked political parties in their entirety, not just having some specific number of them.
They also built the system that enshrined the two party dichotomy as the only option, actively sought to ensure that the “right” people could override the will of the people if needed, and founded the parties they had previously argued against.
They are far from infallible bastions of correctness in this matter.
It’s 50% a desire to stay informed and 50% sports entertainment
I’m right at the border (Windsor) and I don’t want to live that close to Gilead (which will happen if Trump wins).
It’s not that us outsiders like to watch your elections closely. But we need to since they’re gonna have a big impact on the world we live in, whether we like to admit it or not.
Americans, humble? We could never
Yea, sorry, no. You Americans cannot be trusted with something so important.
The conspiracy theorists all say Joe is supposed to step down and Gavin Newsom somehow is added to the ticket which then will win. These conspiracy theorists also say that candidates are selected in advance by the powers that be and it’s all pagentry to deceive the gullible masses. Was this debate really an unepected plot twist, or was it planned?
It was just…. ugh. 😞
It shouldn’t come as a surprise.
Its … horrible how you treat your elderly in closed wards.
I shall avert my gaze.
Didn’t mean to pry, it was just too loud to not notice it.I’d rather look at our … increasingly hard-right EU politics … wait, that can’t be right, wtf.
We used to say that conservative politics in the EU would still be considered left in the USA. Well, I‘m not so sure about that anymore.
I mean, in previous years we did pass some environmental laws (like banning internal combustion cars), not as much or as strict as I hoped, but change was there. Sure hope that doesn’t all get undone ‘to boost the economy’ (in the USA sense - so help the existing big corps to boost their profits & do nothing for the majority).
Hell, I rally like the vast majority of EU regulations (various directives and delegated acts) that were passed & are being constantly updated (to keep up with the times/trends & tech) over the last 20 years, I think its a rally good balance between protecting the people whilst at the same time working with the market to actually achieve a meaningful & painless change over several years. That’s why we have representatives. The added “bureaucracy” as companies call it is just extra reporting & testing (to confirm compliance with standards). This benefits us all & is of unbelievably marginal cost when you look at the economy, regardless of what lobbyists say.
Biden’s immigration policy is honestly a wet dream for most right extremists in Europe
The US far right actually made a project of helping the far right in Europe.
I’ll just leave this here… :’-)
And there’s quite a few missing!
Even the Pentagon doesn’t know where they are!
The one on Greenland, for example
And the surveillance station in the middle of Australia (pine gap)
That BoyBoy video is so funny
What? there’s nothing important in Pine Gap.
Yeah I heard Australia has some issues with gaps between pine trees, a certain boyboy told me ;)
nice try DoD
That’s what they want you to think
Add to this one another map of past CIA-backed coups and despair.
Honestly that’s something I never learned about until I was like, 23, 24. Still know bugger all about it and that’s fucked. Do you know any good resources where I can learn about this stuff?
There’s a Wikipedia article on US interventions but it misses some afaik.
Wilson, and to a lesser extent Monroe are the presidents that caused those, with Wilsonian Military Doctrine, and The Monroe Doctrine, specifically so perhaps start there.
You could start by reading about the School of the Americas, Operation Condor and Operation Gladio. See how the USA treats its “friends”.
Read about cointelpro and see how it treats its citizens. Some tactics are still in use today.
grabs popcorn
As part of the CUSMA trade agreement, I think us Canadians and Mexicans are allotted one sigh of disappointment…
Como parte del acuerdo comercial T-MEC, creo que a los canadienses y los mexicanos se nos permite un solo suspiro de decepción…
Mexicans should absolutely be keeping an eye on American politics. Especially since half the debate was: Sir please explain how much you hate Mexicans and what you’ll do to prevent any Mexicans from entering our fair country and how you’ll remove the Mexicans problem when you’re in power.
Trump: internment camps, American Auschwitz if he can
Biden: further tighten border control and further restrict ability to obtain legal entry
This is comparable to a loud family feud carried out on the streets with yelling and throwing stuff at one another and then yelling at the shocked onlookers to move away.
We’re the family that gets kicked out of the Applebee’s for having a very loud and emotional fight while some other family is trying to celebrate their kid’s 8th birthday
Too late, I watched it all. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so sad.
Well I suppose the answer I’d give is that because of how right-wing the US is compared to much of the Western world, it becomes a patient zero for whatever the far-right is cooking up - which inevitably influences far-right groups in other Western countries
America sneezes, the world catches a drone strike or something
I mean Brexit predated the Trump election by 5 months
I follow closely what is happening in the US from France because even though we have a very different culture I still think US politics is a preview of what’s to come here.
Right now I consider we are at the step where our media are crumbling and becoming unable to properly inform us. A step that has been reached a couple of years ago in the US in my opinion.
The next step will probably be our own coup attempt in a few years and a steady increase in the division of the country and far right movements.
Word.
Putin planted his seed with Trump in his greatest enemy (democracy/America). It quickly caught on & has spread globally.
Hundreds of Billions of dollars in US defense hasn’t done a thing to halt the attacks on democracy Putin has wraught with a few million spent on his troll army.
The man can’t carry out a physical attack for shit, but his cyber attacks have no equal, only willing collaborators (Murdoch et al, the maga army).
Putin planted his seed with Trump
Please don’t post your fanfics here 🤮🤮
It’s no fanfic. It’s assessing the enemy. Kind of important to do if you want to beat em.
Don’t be a snowflake. The right is claiming that territory madly.
You’d rather believe Trump is result of foreign interference, that our own institutions would never result in this without being sullied from outside. It’s fan fic, it’s Cold War nonsense.
Trump is the consequence of our political systems, of our spiteful culture, of our economics that promises success and leaves people sick, broken, and in debt. So what if the Russians had a few hundred Facebook posts? That “seed” would not have taken if the soil weren’t already fertile. Frankly, I don’t think it made a difference. We were barrelling toward Trump with or without the oh so spooky slavs typing on a keyboard.
Independent party exist, we need to wake up and vote for one great candidate that is not either of the two they present to US
Unfortunately, that isn’t feasible in the current system. In first past the post every vote is damage control at best.
We need ranked choice voting everywhere before people will even consider a third party.
It’s best to start doing that in county and state elections first.
I found your ballot box:
This way of thinking is how we end up watching this shitshow debate
We’re so fucked it’s absolutely insane.
I thought Trump had a chance before, but now… My god Biden embarrassed the shit out of himself… Fuck the goddamn DNC for condemning us by REFUSING to have primaries… Yeah it’s the tradition because usually the incumbent has a chance, but 90472828 year old Biden? Ffs…
Yes Trump is old too but it was plain as day how much more lucid trump is than biden…
Does it really count as “lucid” if you enunciate your lies, fabrications, misrecollections about… everything?
It was a goddamn travesty that there was no fact checking by the
button pushersmoderators.Everything was allowed to stand as fact. It was disgusting :(
Loud and lying every second word != lucid.
For his voters, his lies and fabrications are the truth. They don’t listen to fact checking because they are conditioned to see it as fake and a goverment ploy to fool them.
True. But they were going to have the same criticism of Biden regardless.
It’s part of the reason I didn’t even watch. Looking over the polling, the debate didn’t really change anyone’s opinions on anything to any significant degree.
No-one is going to switch sides, but this performance may affect turnout.
I don’t think it has been long enough to have gathered enough data on that. Just watching it myself I could clearly see a low information voter seeing Trump as a more fit choice as Biden struggled to even form sentences :(
No. He was not lucid, just loud.
This might be a hot take but any leadership selection where candidates are ranked in terms of how lucid they are is a bad time for all involved.
Being lucid is supposed to be a minimum requirement to even apply. But here we are.
I need to shake the hands of potential presidents before I can make any judgements on who to vote for.
Hank?
Yessir, I sell propane and propane accessories. Ronald Reagan was the best president we ever had.
I see so many people screaming that primaries should have been held, especially today.
Biden would have easily won the primaries.
He did win the primary in states that had them. There’s no if about it. Unfortunately.
The only reason I agree with this is that I was still living in the Midwest during the 2016 primary. I moved to California during August of that year. Time after time, I got told by Midwestern democrats that Bernie just wasn’t electable / was too progressive. The coasts would have primaried Biden, but flyover country would have messed it up.
Hmm…
Iowa, North Dakota, New York, and Massachusetts are the only ones that really surprise me in that grouping.
Yes Trump is old too but it was plain as day how much more lucid trump is than biden…
And also an unrepentant crook and liar. Who also dreams of being a dictator and getting revenge on his “enemies”.
Preaching to the choir, but I’m worried about the ignorant people that simply don’t know that about him. All they see is an old bumbling feeble man vs a “strong man.” :(
And unfortunately, the media is not informing people. I can’t believe there was no question last night about Project 2025. Just unbelievable.
Plus no fact checkers. Again, unbelievable.
For sure. It’s a shame that being correct isn’t the strategy for electoral politics.