this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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The last election was a shitshow.
As usual, the younger generation didn't bother voting, and the older one voted en masse for conservative candidates because they are those our media push for, while at the same time slandering progressive ones.
In the election runoff, we had the choice between an openly fascist candidate from a party literally founded by former Nazis, and a "light fascist" one that people were seeing as the lesser evil. Though it's pretty obvious now that his fascism isn't so light (he openly admires Petain, a french leader who collaborated with Nazi Germany), and I hope people will remember that for the next election and understand that voting for a democratic candidate in the first turn if very important.
Weird how this sounds alot like what's happening in the US. Almost like fascism is encroaching all acrost the world as it crumbles.
Yeah, it's happening all over western liberal democracies. Inflation is going crazy and wealth inequalities are growing at an alarming rate. Because of that, people in power are afraid of a popular uprising, and they would rather see fascists rise to power and protect capitalism, than an economical shift to the left and lose some of their wealth.
It happened many times before. The more commonly known examples being:
History tends to repeat itself.
Scratch a liberal...
To add to this, it would simply be remiss for any actual rival of the west to not attempt to stir their democracies against them.
It's a fundamental weakness that only representative governments have, and authoritarians would simply be stupid not to target it. It's very inexpensive to operate in the modern information space.
I mean, we got all these checks and balances in the first place because our systems are fundamentally very vulnerable. If you'd like a story on a less-secure system, look into the fall of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
I mean, in the craziest of crazy scenarios, we could wind up with civil wars. Wouldn't there be some folks out there that'd just love to see that? You think they can't make bots, produce content, hire cheap labor?
Oh yes, voter manipulation is very concerning. Even the simple fact that foreign powers can legally finance a candidate for another country's presidential election is absolutely crazy to me.
But I think there is something even worse than that:
When participation is so low that barely 50% of electors cast a vote, with one category of people (the elderly) being massively over-represented.
When there is no possible recourse if the majority of electors isn't satisfied with their options, and blank ballots aren't even accounted for.
When the main platforms where campaigning happens are all owned by and handful of billionaires, who can choose to present in a good light the candidates that will be the most favorable to them, and do the opposite for others.
When political campaigns are funded privately (and as I said, sometimes even by authoritarian foreign powers), those who favor billionaires being again at a massive advantage.
The game is so strongly rigged, I'm surprised that the general population still widely considers us democracies. Starting by reforming our electoral systems would do a lot of good and would be a lot simpler than trying to stop social media bots in my opinion, even though we should also tackle that issue.
Main problem is election reform would permanently destroy one of our political parties in its current state, and they are fully aware of this. They will burn our country down with us inside before they let it go, so it is wise to proceed with caution.
I don't think the rest of the world wants to see not Russia's nuclear arsenal dispersed, but ours.
Fighting a foreign power, however, rings straight to a huge strength of my country at least, the good ole US--our love of righteousness, competition and victory. This leaves a gap in their strategy, where they intended to inflame tribalism, but that can be turned definitively against them at the drop of a hat.
Recently I read it's actually worse in Europe, because the far-right has noticeable youth support, unlike here where it's proportional to age.
That makes me very, very nervous.
This seems to be the case yeah. The rhetoric of the left is preaching acceptance and solidarity, but in an uncertain world "feelgood rhetoric" isn't strong enough. The right are preaching what appear to be solutions (close borders, nationalism, tax cuts to income and gas, segregation and defunding social programs to adress debt) so people buy into it.
What they don't realise is that the tax cuts hurt the debt cutting messures and eroiding social security hurts nations and paves way for more insecurity, hate and fear (which fuels the right wing machine).
There's precious little education on politics and choices for 20-somethings, and people are left to try and understand what the media pushes out. Finland benefits from a trusted national news media, though they have been criticized by the right of being politically biased and not worth their budget. So people slanting toward the right tend to be sceptical of it, and are pushed away, toward other news sources.
What does it look like, in your experience? Here we study our political systems throughout the upper grades, and in secondary school we study local political parties. As a bonus, in the final year we study general ideologies including Fascism and Marxism where I live, but I don't think that part is typical for North America.
That describes the situation in Canada too.
As it stands, vocational education is faltering but high school is still ptetty strong - and they are mandatory untill you are 18. Not all vocational school/trade schools suck, but I've talked with a good deal of young students (hundreds) to get s feel that there are staggering differences in how much the teachers care, or are able to motivte the kids into caring about learning.
If you take vocational education/trade school, there's a good chance you have a single course or two of publics, history or similar subjects and that's that.
It's also turning into a bit of a gender issue, since our high schools are skewing heavily toward female students, with boys opting more and more to do trade school, partially due to lack of grades, partially because they feel like the school system isn't for them and studying theory is unpleasant or downright hard. So they get demotivated and go where it's considered "easier", and scrape by.
After you graduate secondary education, a lot if guys don't pursue further studies, so their access to education and discourse stalls. Young women do pursue higher education though, but it is not an idel situation at all.
Interesting. There is a noticeably higher interest in academics among girls here as well.
I imagine young people use more government services and pay less taxes (do to lower wages) over there too, so that's not a great selling point for the right. One thing I've wondered is if the "culture wars" message plays better in a country where there's actual continuity into the deep past.
As far as I know in the Global South we have a wave of left wing governments, maybe you forgot white people is not the world.
In Latin America, definitely. But I'm not sure that there have been a wave of left wing governments elsewhere the Global South, unfortunately.
If people get out and fucking vote like it’s your last chance, we can get some sanity.
Oh, I'm voting alright; but it's more than likely gonna be all write-ins. My hand to my gods; I would sooner wipe my ass with my ballot and fling that fucker up a tree than cast it for a democrat after what Obama and Biden have done.
Oh? Should people vote for the lesser of two evils? Because that's your only choice if you continue to insist you can vote your way out of this.
Absofreakinglutely!
There will never be a perfect candidate. This is politics.
I mean, if one candidate is like "Hell yeah, let's actually do more fascism" and another's like "This is bad but we mustn't get rowdy, our dignity will shame the others into doing the right thing" and others are in between those two
then voting won't actually do anything
Well then enjoy voting for Hitler (D) because that's what you are going to get.
Why would young people vote when they can stay at home and browse tiktok instead?
/s