[Arech]

No it is not.

(if you really "living in Scandinavia") You literally don't understand what are you talking about, which is damn obvious when you comparing Scandinavia or even US to Russia. You basically comparing Tesla car to horse-drawn carriage and draw similarities on a basis that both have 4 wheels and therefore they are both great and safe transportation devices.

[jhgb]

I'm not from Scandinavia and the vast majority of US politicians look like interchangeable parts to me as well.

[ansible]

> I'm not from Scandinavia and the vast majority of US politicians look like interchangeable parts to me as well.

USA citizen. What's hilarious is that 10 years ago, I would have readily agreed with you. Both parties were too deeply beholden to special interests and corporate interests. There were some policy differences, but not that much, really.

In the last five years, however, one party has gone completely batshit insane. Norms, precedent, common decency, acceptance of basic facts, acceptance of basic common sense... these have all gone out the window. And been replaced with cult-like unwavering loyalty to a single man.

The other party, though still frequently dissapointingly inept and incompetent, now has my unhesitating support. It is not even close in my mind anymore.

[rurp]

Same here. I used to vote for a third party candidate in most elections since that was usually who my views aligned most closely with, but in recent years I've switched to voting for the least bad major party because of how awful and terrifying the opposing side has become.

[sershe]

The way I see it, one party has gone dumb, and the other party is obviously going evil (I am from Russia so you can guess what I think of leftism). The question is whether you prefer your government dumb or evil; I think dumb is... the lesser of two evils.

But I can agree on the timing aspect, I'd vote for Obama OR Romney over literally any politician prominent in 2021.

[tialaramex]

If you're from Russia, what part of the Democratic party looks like "leftism" to you?

[sershe]

I am of course comparing to the USSR, not modern Russia. Pretty much the entire "progressive" wing of the party, with its anti-capitalism and fostering massive welfare state dependency, as well as the recent focus on "oppression" and "power", and purity testing.

I am pretty meh/cynical about the economic aspects, actually; sure, I think these are bad ideas, but unless they run the thing entirely into the ground, I believe there's going to be enough for me until old age at this point, and of course I view legally abusing government programs as libertarian activism - e.g. if there's universal healthcare it would make it so much easier to retire early and use it for all it's worth ;)

What I am actually genuinely afraid of is the cultural garbage, esp. as it infiltrates the education system. See the capitalism/socialism approval polls among the young people, etc. USSR has collapsed when I was 7, but I was still brainwashed enough that I remember asking my parents about the English Premier League - how come they have soccer in England? I was surprised because I thought it was a capitalist system where everyone was oppressed, so at 6-7 or whatever I didn't understand how they could have a soccer league. That was of course while living with 2 STEM MSc parents and a sister in a 700sqft 2-room flat, not being able to afford a car, and knowing nothing about the actual living conditions in England.

From what I know about the school systems in big cities (I know some people who work at schools who are pretty left-wing and they talk about this stuff as if it was a good thing, plus from the news/leaks to right-wing sources), the oppression/anti-capitalist propaganda is rampant, and the current "far-left" wing of the Democratic party are very popular. If it's between this stuff and dumb nationalist rednecks with whom I disagree on 90% of pretty much everything, I'm going to throw my lot with the rednecks.

[tialaramex]

> USSR has collapsed when I was 7, but I was still brainwashed enough that I remember asking my parents about the English Premier League - how come they have soccer in England?

Uhuh. So in 1991 you asked about an institution that wasn't created until 1992, because you believed it couldn't exist under capitalism even though it's actually explicitly a capitalist endeavour to make the richest clubs in English soccer even richer?

I would say that most likely you should watch less Tucker Carlson, or at least be mindful of the fact that Tucker gets paid millions of dollars per year to make you "genuinely afraid of cultural garbage".

However maybe this is a good time to explain the Football Pyramid for both imaginary Russian seven year olds and HN readers instead.

In the US system major sports leagues are purely business, no matter how terrible the Yankees are they will continue to play every year so long as it makes economic sense. The outcome of games isn't rigged (usually) but no matter how terrible you are at whichever sport, your "punishment" is typically just better chance to win next year.

In England football teams are arranged into a Pyramid of leagues. In principle over years of failure/ success, Liverpool FC, an internationally renowned team could swap places with Kingsley United, a bunch of amateurs from the Liverpool area. Each year, up to three worst performing Premier League team can be "relegated" to the league below, the Championship, and up to three of the best Championship teams are "promoted" to the Premier League, while the same happens in the Championship, League One, League Two, then the National League, and after that there are regional leagues, with promotions or relegations being regional right down until we reach the likes of Kingsley United.

The creation of the Premier League all those years ago, and a more recent attempt to do the same at a European level, is because very wealthy clubs envy the US system. In England you're only ever one bad season away from relegation, and relegation means much less money coming into your club from fans (local "true" fans may stay, but who supports an obscure Division Two team from across the globe the way people support Manchester United?) and from TV rights (the Premier League rights sell for a lot of money, the Championship is much cheaper, and most other games are not televised). More tiers means fewer slices of the cake, more money for the very top clubs which they can spend ensuring they stay there (e.g. buying star players for eye-watering sums of money). The relatively recently abandoned "European Super League" was intended to be even more like the US system by not having relegation. So some of its clubs might have been awful but too bad, they're staying, and gathering the resulting cash, forever. Blergh.

[ansible]

The "left wing" in the USA is the "center-right" in other parts of the world. We're still a ways away from basic stuff like universal health care that every other developed country has.

[sershe]

Not really... somebody posted here recently, I cannot find a comment; supposedly posting CDU (German center-right party) policies into the recent NYT poll gets you lumped with trumpist wing of GOP. Many policies that are considered right-wing in the US enjoy broad support in European countries (e.g. official languages). Some things practiced Europe, like the Danish "immigrant ghetto" policies, would cause the US left to melt down so hard they'd burn a hole thru the Earth and come out in the Indian ocean (to be clear, I don't support or don't know/care enough to have an opinion about most of this stuff).

Universal healthcare is provided by many countries from Singapore, that few would call left-wing; to outright totalitarian regimes, e.g. modern Russia. It's an indicator of statism, not leftism; I am not a big fan of that either, but non-leftist statism (a-la Singapore) is ok and totally different from what I'm talking about. Tangentially but helpfully, I would recommend looking up the difference between social democracy and democratic socialism, as described by democratic socialists.

[Arech]

It doesn't matter. What matters are how many of them and their staff or supporters gets bullied by the authorities, forced to flee the country, found themselves or their relatives in the middle of absurd lawsuits, gets beaten, poisoned or killed?

[jhgb]

My point was purely about elections, and that elections only matter if you have a reasonable amount of choice. You're arguing about something completely different.

[Arech]

My arguing is exactly about that! You can't name something as "elections" when ~~a huge~~ any part of country's people not just don't have a political representative at all, but gets actively counteracted to have such representative.

[jhgb]

What is "a huge any part"? Looks like too many determiners to me, so I'm not sure what you're saying there.

> don't have a political representative at all

That doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you live in a place like Puerto Rico. I'm not sure if Russia has similar places, but I assume it doesn't.

[lotusmars]

All people allowed to take part in elections are sanctioned by Kremlin.

Try to sign up as a candidate and best case you'll get rejected, worst case beaten, bullied, jailed or murdered.

[Arech]

> What is "a huge any part"?

HN doesn't support a strike-through markup. "~~a huge~~" means striked-through font here. I've written it first and then after some thought tried to show that actually the proper word there is "any".

> That doesn't make a lot of sense, unless you live in a place like Puerto Rico. I'm not sure if Russia has similar places, but I assume it doesn't.

You are so much disconnected from what is and how it's happening here...