America responds well to showmenship. Its kind of our core problem.

You summed it up correctly. The thing is the presidential race used to be a horse show, but that format was somehow easily hijacked by a rodeo clown.

90% of Americans are no better informed than you are on how realistic of a portrayal it is. In fact, I've met many people who are proud of how willfully ignorant they are of politics.

No, that's fairly accurate. It's a clown show.

Yeah it's that terrible, but look at the rest of the world. Putin enjoys a lot of support from the same people he's sending to die, Modi in India wins elections by a large margin on a platform of basically "Fuck Sikhs and Muslims". Add China and basically most of humanity lives under someone who is blatantly racist, corrupt, generally horrible, or a combination thereof. And Western Europe doesn't have a leg to stand on either, the UK ignored dire warnings and voted for Brexit without even understanding what it is.

Humans don't believe what's objectively correct, they believe what they want to believe. This makes feeding people what they want to hear a very successful strategy, and one that psychopaths have an advantage in pursuing.

I wonder if the issue here is you don't appreciate how stupid your own proletariat is (i.e., as stupid and vulnerable as the American populis, but not exposed to the same intense propaganda). I think humans everywhere are surprisingly gullible and illogical.

it is as batshit as it appears.

But for us at least, it is quite sinister as well, since Trump it quite literally attempting to instill himself as a dictator to avoid prison, and this is being facilitated by white nationalists, religious zealots, tech billionaires, and an easily decieved under-educated populace that are acting against their own interests.

The really interesting thing about Harris is so much of her support comes from people who hate Trump and want to stop him at all costs. There's this large contingent of voters who have never voted for a candidate they like, they've only ever voted strategically to stop the candidate they hate. "Democracy"

Absolutely it's a clownshow.

If you ask me, the whole point of it is to get everyone to sort themselves into one of two horrific camps, where they'll feel like any criticism of the people in power is an attack on them for voting for them - or, if they don't vote, then they generally disengage from politics entirely. It's probably the most effective system of propaganda ever designed, because you don't even need to tell people that horrible people are on their side, they'll happily convince themselves of it all on their own. It's basically a race to the bottom where one side being dogshit allows the other side to be dogshit because there's no alternative, and of course every politician wants to be as dogshit as they can get away with because that's how you win favor with the corporate donors, who have no practical limit on how much money they can spend to influence the outcome.

There's also this level of spectacle in our elections that's above and beyond anywhere else in the world, we treat it like a reality show, and our debates are complete jokes where nothing substantive is ever discussed. We have absurdly long election cycles and entire industries around milking them for entertainment. It's unlikely that we will ever even begin moving in the right direction in the foreseeable future, because the brainworms run so deep.

The worst part is when the spectacle becomes so eye-catching that people from other countries get drawn into it and start thinking in terms of our politics and what we define as normal or reasonable. Americans rarely learn from non-American perspectives and we have corporate influence constantly pushing in the direction of maximizing short term profits over all other priorities, and so our country is unable to understand or adapt to the changing conditions of the modern world, which is why we are in decline.

Look at us only as a cautionary tale of what not to do.

No, we’re seeing the same thing on the inside too. The fact that Trump actually has another chance in hell, or that he likely would’ve beat Biden, is a sign of how far gone this country already is. Do people not remember the absolute shitshow that was Trump’s 1st term?

Weekly, sometimes daily, WTF moments where I was just wondering where any of the adults were. Constant, blatant corruption and incompetence on full display. And we had to hear everything he fucking said over and over because everybody had to repeat the same news over and over again.

It’s been relatively good during Biden’s tenure, I would hear/read about him about as much as a normal president. Like, the president is the president, but I don’t want to hear everything going on with the president unless it’s important. So for us to go from that absolute shit show to relative peace (as peaceful as all this can be considered), I don’t understand how anybody would want to go back.

Ask not for whom the right-wing propaganda bell tolls. It tolls for thee.

Biden isn't quite as bad as the soundbites make him seem, but he is slowing down (physically and mentally) in his old age and was just generally an extremely uninspiring candidate. Trump, if anything is worse than you portray. He's way more senile than Biden, in addition to the blatant corruption, rulebreaking, childishness, and being horrifically and openly racist and sexist. He has literally quoted Hitler! No decent and reasonable person who is paying the slightest attention to what he says and does would think he is remotely qualified for any position of authority. The fact that he is polling roughly evenly with an extremely qualified and intelligent person like Kamala Harris is indeed an absolute clownshow.

It’s important to realize that in most democracies this isn’t a bug, it’s a feature of the system. The founders of these systems wanted to ensure that major decisions were deliberated, not rushed into, and that there wasn’t a lot of room for an executive power to make snap choices that would determine the future of the nation.

No. You seem to have the jist of it. Clownshow election, manchild orange oompa loompa, dementia riddled president, new woman who's condescending of bullshit.

Congrats. You're now qualified to write for SNL until November 5th. Don't worry, no pressure. They have 1-2 good sketches per week, and a ton of crap sketches.

The education system in the US is screwed beyond oblivion, that's why this is happening.

And it's not just the US. I live in the Balkans and things are... well, very bad to be honest. We have the lowest average IQ in Europe.

The problem is, stupid people benefit both sides, left and right. They're easy to control, as voters. No one wants voters which can think critically.

Democracy is flawed IMO. There is no fixing this. People do rule, but at what cost. There are alternatives, but, let's face it, none of that will be implemented, at least not in our lifetimes.

Yes, genuinely

This is a clown country

Yes, it's a clown show and half the country would rather throw away the whole US than vote for a woman. Please send help, fascists don't give up power easily.

Often I think it's because of big psyops against America.

The thing with American politics is that Americans love, LOVE TV shows and movies. Everything they do publicly has to be framed, presented, and consumed, as if it were a TV show or movie. So that's what the political machine does. Kamala Harris raised like a $1000000000. A BILLION dollars! What does the political machine do with that much money? It puts on a damn good show and broadcasts it to the world hoping it's a better show than what Trump is making. So yes you are watching the same show we are. It's entertaining, horrifying, hilarious, disgusting, sad and hopeful. But if you want to see what the real work is like in politics then you will have to read the book. A LOT of books, and many Americans don't like to read.