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by _username 3901 days ago
I registered just to reply to your comment.

I live in Europe, and from here, your comments sounds like the grumblings of someone born and raised in some far shore of the USA where creationism is still taught at school and who genuinely believes that more guns are required to prevent mass shootings.

> have no budget, no endorsements, a tiny donor base, no institutional support from the Democratic party, no grass-roots campaign organization

That's the very reason why the American system is fucked up : you shouldn't get a chance to get elected for the sole reason that you have any of these.

And I'm not pretending that European models are perfect, far from that. They are just less fucked up - North American elections look like a joke from here, almost as much as South African "democracies"/North Koea where they are president from father to son and get elected with scores approaching 90%. The only downside to the joke is that USA are far more powerful than NK.

> a billionaire with universal name-recognition like Trump

Outside of the US, nobody knows who he is.

I'm 27, engineer, speak four languages and have traveled around Europe, North Africa, "Middle-East", and South Asia.

The only things that I knew about him prior to the 2016 presidential campaign were that he is an eccentric billionaire and has/had alleged bounds to the mafia (and the only reason why I knew that is because I care about national North American politics - which most of the non-USA residents don't give a shit about). Since then, the only time he is referred to in the European media is to underline the stupidity of his statements/behavior.

On the other hand, I've learned about Lessig during highschool : his legal challenges ; his role at Harvard, Yale and Standford ; his role in the creation of Create Commons, etc. He is seen as a dedicated, brilliant, man who tries and tackles tough issues. Every educated person knows or at least have heard about Lessig and/or Creative Commons.