[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.

[sershe]

Is that really your answer? If I were to respond in the same spirit, I could only suggest you watch less RT or I dunno, read less Jacobin.

I don't remember what it was called back then, I asked about the league in general. Spartak Moscow had a good run in Champions League that year and that was probably the year I started watching soccer. I know now how leagues are organized, but Soviet teams were at least officially amateurs, and associated with social organization (e.g. CSKA is an "army team" and Dynamo is a "cop team", etc.); even in late 90ies/aughts, opposing fans still used e.g. "musor" (Russian cop insult that means "trash", kinda like "pig" in the US) to yell at Dynamo fans. Or "myaso" ("meat") at Spartak, cause it was associated with a food factory for some time ages ago. So, I didn't understand how "workers" can play soccer when they are exploited. Didn't occur to me that you can get paid to do it and not be "oppressed". Which is the idea you get from even childrens' books, e.g. Neznayka on the Moon, which basically describes how bad capitalism is directly; and others more generally. As well as patriotic movies etc, incl. on how taking stuff from "bourgeoius exploiters" and later from "kulaks" was great and noble.

It's not even about individual books, facts, etc. it's the general outlook in life that one gets when constantly exposed to this. That is where struggle sessions come from (source: former coworkers who immigrated from China as adults). The economic aspects of the ideology also eventually produce this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Sovieticus#Characteristic.... This slow conversion of everything to a similar collectivist, morally-outraged ideology via schools and colleges is what, as I see, might be a risk in the US. Hence the recent changes in Democratic party.

Currently it's a relatively small, if loud, part of the Democratic party, but it is clearly ascendant, especially with younger generation. The reason for that is hardly some horrors of "late stage capitalism" (again, I have direct experience with early stages ;) and numbers also don't lie - millennial per-capita wealth tracks boomers by age, the housing to income ratio in the US is one of the lowest in the developed world, poor Americans have more disposable income than middle class Europeans, etc.). It's mostly propaganda, and maybe a somewhat increased sense of entitlement (also seen in e.g. grade inflation). Both feed into general envy, when one believes the only ways to get more are dishonest or evil - it's a very Soviet sentiment btw, and I hear it all the time, incl. in person in Seattle.

Regardless of the cause, this would literally be the last thing I would ever support. Under a dumb government, individuals can still thrive (one great thing about trump era was how laughably bad he was at achieving most of his agenda).

EDIT: Remove some stuff I added in the prior edit, this is too long :) EDIT2: Make shorter yet.

[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.

[abandonliberty]

Politicalcompass.org is super helpful for items like this. It turns out we're living in a very authoritarian/right wing world.

Here's a country comparison for the EU. Turns out most of Europe is fairly authoritarian/right wing: https://politicalcompass.org/euchart

Most countries at least have a somewhat relevant political party in quadrant 3 (libertarian/left), as you can see in the charts for EU, Germany, and Canada.

The 2020 US political candidates show very little differentiation between Trump/Biden, with both very authoritarian/right wing: https://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2020

[sershe]

So, apparently Sweden, with massive taxes and welfare state, is 85+% right-wing (on l2r axis), and even the democratic socialist (literally meaning worker control of means of production), free-everything Sanders just barely makes it to the left side. It looks like this compass needs some declination adjustment.