A lot has been said about how shocking and awful the results are, and I do agree with them. I definitely do not condone any of the far-right parties, their representatives, or their policies.
But what hasn’t been said (and might be a bit controversial) is the fact that liberal parties are the biggest problem that the world is facing right now. It’s the parties that pretend to be an opposition force, but in reality they just keep shitting on voters, making broken promises, and saying “it’ll be better next time, just one more term!” They keep trying to convince people that the system works and that iterative changes will make things better. But in reality, things have actually been getting worse for 10, 15, maybe even 20 years… (the exact number depends on where you live and what you do for a living).
After a while, people stop believing in those broken promises. And the longer they refuse to put up any real opposition, the more and more they empower the far right.
In Canada, Trudeau needs to implement proportional representation NOW. If he doesn’t want to do that, he might as well just come out and endorse Poilievre, because he damn well knows what will happen if he doesn’t give people a real alternative (even he can’t pretend it’s any other way at this point). And no, ranked choice voting is not the answer here.
In the US, I have to be honest: it’s not a country anymore. It’s several countries, all jammed into one, and half of whom hate each other with no limit. And to be honest, this is how it’s supposed to work!!! This is how the constitution is framed! Federal government is supposed to be weak and state governments are supposed to fill that void, but the States refuse to actually work that way and keep looking to control a Federal government in a way that they’ll never be able to.
The USA really ought to break into constituent countries. The West Coast is a country. The Northeast is at least one country, maybe 3-4. And you can slice up the red states however you like - I honestly don’t care. Maybe this way, they can finally actually get shit done in a way that starts making people happy, because there’s far too much animosity between different and disparate parts of the “country” in its current form. It’s definitely not going to come from the Federal government.
I know that none of these things are going to happen, so things will just continue getting worse and worse over the next decade or two. Fair warning to everyone: we’re not even close to rock bottom yet.
OMG this. The worst thing too is that liberal parties block actual left parties (helped by our first-past-the-post voting system) that want to do more than incremental change while empowering the far right. Ultimately a lot of elite liberals would rather the far right win than a genuine left party. One of the MSNBC talking heads accidentally let that slip when he said he’d sooner vote for Trump than Bernie Sanders before being forced to retract by one of the other hosts.
I think it’s a total propaganda line to say nothing is getting better under liberals.
Better medical coverage, forgiving student loans, improvements to education, just few examples that benefit everyday Americans rather than billionaires. There’s so much more to making society better for everyone than just a bit more money at the end of the day. Besides if china tariffs come in big time count on everything getting far more expensive almost overnight.
You better bet none of that will happen with the current republicans at the helm.
They’ll happily screw over everyone to line their pockets and weaken the working class while selling them lies about how much better off they are with a minor raise to minimum wage or something insignificant.
I actually agree (more or less) with everything you’re saying. But the problem is, I don’t think it really matters to anyone. I think there’s still one point that people still don’t seem to be understanding:
Inflation and economic issues trump (pun not intended) all of the things you listed. We have to eat every day. And when you’re living on the edge, every meal, every time you eat, you’re constantly reminded of how precarious your life is. All the things you mentioned are great, but frankly they don’t matter when you’re just worried about whether you’re still going to be able to afford food at the end of the week.
Revolutions are not started by people who don’t have healthcare or education, or any of those other abstract things that may affect them in the future. They come from people who are hungry. And stressed. Stress and hunger really start eating your brain after a while, and people experiencing that start doing very nasty, desperate things like resorting to the kinds of demagoguery that the far-right is pushing. And this is what I mean when I say nothing is getting better under liberals - more and more people are falling into the cracks day by day, and if you don’t address this, then none of the other things don’t matter. Yes, in theory, all the economic policies that liberals propose should help with that, but if the effect is not immediate, then it’s not happening fast enough and people will continue to revolt.
I really think people who keep bringing up how this will ultimately hurt their voters need to understand this better. They’re not wrong, but I do think they’re missing the point. The standard of living in the west has been declining for a long time as I alluded above, and that’s why people are starting to do desperate things - because they’ve run out of patience and have seen the status quo for long enough, they’ll take any alternative and have no choice left but to overlook all of the criminal things these despots say and do. Maybe they do care about all those criminal things, or maybe they don’t, but what really matters is that they want drastic action to take place. They don’t want policies - they want results and they want it fast.
And I don’t think liberals understand or care to understand this. That’s what I mean when I say that liberals are making things worse. Until you stop the tide of more and more people falling behind economically, none of the things you pointed out are ever going to matter to people. You’re not going to win elections that way - even against the likes of Donald Trump.
I think liberals understand this, at some level, but they know they are powerless to do anything about it within the system they’ve built for themselves. They can’t outright say this, or they would never be re-elected.
They have completely embraced neoliberal economic policies, and thus depend on corporate money and support. The only thing they can do is toss people a bone here and there, and implement slow policies that might help over time, but won’t rock the boat now. Business do not like sudden changes, they want predictable stability as that’s what their investments and forcasting is built on.
Conservatives are also in the pocket of corporations, but they simply have no problem lying to their voters. They will point the finger, blame the other, make outlandish claims, and purposefully mislead the public while having no intention of helping them. They just want to solidify their power and line their pockets. People fall for these lies because they’re tired of the status quoe and any kind of major change sounds like a benifit. They’re shooting themselves in the foot, but they don’t know it yet.
A lot has been said about how shocking and awful the results are, and I do agree with them. I definitely do not condone any of the far-right parties, their representatives, or their policies.
But what hasn’t been said (and might be a bit controversial) is the fact that liberal parties are the biggest problem that the world is facing right now. It’s the parties that pretend to be an opposition force, but in reality they just keep shitting on voters, making broken promises, and saying “it’ll be better next time, just one more term!” They keep trying to convince people that the system works and that iterative changes will make things better. But in reality, things have actually been getting worse for 10, 15, maybe even 20 years… (the exact number depends on where you live and what you do for a living).
After a while, people stop believing in those broken promises. And the longer they refuse to put up any real opposition, the more and more they empower the far right.
In Canada, Trudeau needs to implement proportional representation NOW. If he doesn’t want to do that, he might as well just come out and endorse Poilievre, because he damn well knows what will happen if he doesn’t give people a real alternative (even he can’t pretend it’s any other way at this point). And no, ranked choice voting is not the answer here.
In the US, I have to be honest: it’s not a country anymore. It’s several countries, all jammed into one, and half of whom hate each other with no limit. And to be honest, this is how it’s supposed to work!!! This is how the constitution is framed! Federal government is supposed to be weak and state governments are supposed to fill that void, but the States refuse to actually work that way and keep looking to control a Federal government in a way that they’ll never be able to.
The USA really ought to break into constituent countries. The West Coast is a country. The Northeast is at least one country, maybe 3-4. And you can slice up the red states however you like - I honestly don’t care. Maybe this way, they can finally actually get shit done in a way that starts making people happy, because there’s far too much animosity between different and disparate parts of the “country” in its current form. It’s definitely not going to come from the Federal government.
I know that none of these things are going to happen, so things will just continue getting worse and worse over the next decade or two. Fair warning to everyone: we’re not even close to rock bottom yet.
OMG this. The worst thing too is that liberal parties block actual left parties (helped by our first-past-the-post voting system) that want to do more than incremental change while empowering the far right. Ultimately a lot of elite liberals would rather the far right win than a genuine left party. One of the MSNBC talking heads accidentally let that slip when he said he’d sooner vote for Trump than Bernie Sanders before being forced to retract by one of the other hosts.
I think it’s a total propaganda line to say nothing is getting better under liberals.
Better medical coverage, forgiving student loans, improvements to education, just few examples that benefit everyday Americans rather than billionaires. There’s so much more to making society better for everyone than just a bit more money at the end of the day. Besides if china tariffs come in big time count on everything getting far more expensive almost overnight.
You better bet none of that will happen with the current republicans at the helm.
They’ll happily screw over everyone to line their pockets and weaken the working class while selling them lies about how much better off they are with a minor raise to minimum wage or something insignificant.
I actually agree (more or less) with everything you’re saying. But the problem is, I don’t think it really matters to anyone. I think there’s still one point that people still don’t seem to be understanding:
Inflation and economic issues trump (pun not intended) all of the things you listed. We have to eat every day. And when you’re living on the edge, every meal, every time you eat, you’re constantly reminded of how precarious your life is. All the things you mentioned are great, but frankly they don’t matter when you’re just worried about whether you’re still going to be able to afford food at the end of the week.
Revolutions are not started by people who don’t have healthcare or education, or any of those other abstract things that may affect them in the future. They come from people who are hungry. And stressed. Stress and hunger really start eating your brain after a while, and people experiencing that start doing very nasty, desperate things like resorting to the kinds of demagoguery that the far-right is pushing. And this is what I mean when I say nothing is getting better under liberals - more and more people are falling into the cracks day by day, and if you don’t address this, then none of the other things don’t matter. Yes, in theory, all the economic policies that liberals propose should help with that, but if the effect is not immediate, then it’s not happening fast enough and people will continue to revolt.
I really think people who keep bringing up how this will ultimately hurt their voters need to understand this better. They’re not wrong, but I do think they’re missing the point. The standard of living in the west has been declining for a long time as I alluded above, and that’s why people are starting to do desperate things - because they’ve run out of patience and have seen the status quo for long enough, they’ll take any alternative and have no choice left but to overlook all of the criminal things these despots say and do. Maybe they do care about all those criminal things, or maybe they don’t, but what really matters is that they want drastic action to take place. They don’t want policies - they want results and they want it fast.
And I don’t think liberals understand or care to understand this. That’s what I mean when I say that liberals are making things worse. Until you stop the tide of more and more people falling behind economically, none of the things you pointed out are ever going to matter to people. You’re not going to win elections that way - even against the likes of Donald Trump.
I think liberals understand this, at some level, but they know they are powerless to do anything about it within the system they’ve built for themselves. They can’t outright say this, or they would never be re-elected.
They have completely embraced neoliberal economic policies, and thus depend on corporate money and support. The only thing they can do is toss people a bone here and there, and implement slow policies that might help over time, but won’t rock the boat now. Business do not like sudden changes, they want predictable stability as that’s what their investments and forcasting is built on.
Conservatives are also in the pocket of corporations, but they simply have no problem lying to their voters. They will point the finger, blame the other, make outlandish claims, and purposefully mislead the public while having no intention of helping them. They just want to solidify their power and line their pockets. People fall for these lies because they’re tired of the status quoe and any kind of major change sounds like a benifit. They’re shooting themselves in the foot, but they don’t know it yet.