Random Politics Thread

[Ciarán12]

You could compare him to Trump insofar as he's a conservative populist with a cult of personality around him who many people think is going to shake things up and make big, sweeping changes. He's also a fascist, racist, homophobe who apparently wants to arm the nation so the citazenry can go shoot up the bad guys in the streets. You know, instead of social reforms and investment in policing.

[md0]

This video reconstruction of the events surrounding the murder of a Greek musician Pavlos Fyssas by the neonazi Golden Dawn party members in 2013 was recently released. It was produced last year and was presented in the trial which is still on-going.
https://www.forensic-architecture.org/c ... os-fyssas/

It's an impressive forensic work and they walk watchers through their methodology step by step, and it establishes a new fact as far the trial is concerned: the police was at the scene of the murder 3 to 5 minutes before the murder took place yet they failed to act preventively -- more specifically, the police left the scene without announcing their action and justification on their radio communications with HQ, allowing the Golden Dawn members to chase after and catch up with the fleeing victim and his friends.
In their testimony, police claimed that they arrived at the scene 5 minutes later than they actually did.

[france-eesti]

You could compare him to Trump insofar as he's a conservative populist with a cult of personality around him who many people think is going to shake things up and make big, sweeping changes. He's also a fascist, racist, homophobe who apparently wants to arm the nation so the citazenry can go shoot up the bad guys in the streets. You know, instead of social reforms and investment in policing.

Actually the problem is often that the alternative isn't good, or good enough for the citizens (and voters).
I remember Americans didn't really wish to elect Trump but they didn't wish to elect Hillary either.
And for all the conversations I had about this with my Hungarian teacher - they don't wish to elect Orbán but sadly they have no serious alternative - so people take the easy way of voting for him.
I'm afraid it's the same kind of scheme in Brazil - right, he is a fascist and so on, but people won't vote for PT instead because they've had enough and it's made a terrible mess in the country. So that's true this choice doesn't look good - but sadly that's all they have!

[Luís]

Bolsonaro got 46% of the vote So yeah, he's probably going to be the next president of Brazil.

Fortunately the referendum in Romania was a flop.

right, he is a fascist and so on, but people won't vote for PT instead because they've had enough and it's made a terrible mess in the country

It's interesting how you say "he's a fascist and all, but..." in such a nonchalant way

IMHO, there's no reason to vote for a fascist, even if the alternative isn't very appealing either. I mean, I'd rather vote for a corrupt politician than for someone who clearly says he hates democracy, that has Salazar (the former Portuguese dictator) as his role model, who defends the military dictatorship and openly wishes they had eliminated more people and who says he'll gladly dissolve Congress because it's useless *. Brazil isn't the US, they have a much younger democracy, so there's a higher probability things will go wrong if he's elected...

* not to mention he's a racist, misogynist, homophobic gun lover

[france-eesti]

I'm not saying it is a good idea, nor the good solution to vote for a fascist. Actually I wouldn't know what to vote at all in this situation but both times in France we had Le Pen versus someone I didn't like, I voted for the one I didn't like and that's all. But I cannot really put myself in a Brazilian's shoes and get to vote for Lula's party - I am not enought aware of what happened with him. As we say in French, we have the choice between Plague and cholera and so let's try to get the less worst one... But it seems Brazilians still elected the worst...
What makes me sad is the they're not the only country with that kind of situation and only those options to vote - it's getting more and more common and I feel so sorry for the people who feel they don't really have a choice in something we insist on calling democracy!

[Ciarán12]

I agree the PT are not exactly an ideal party to vote for, but literally anyone would be better than Bolsonaro. I don't think I've heard any polititians in my lifetime say anything as outragous as what Bolsonaro has said. I'd vote Trump in over him. I'd vote fucking Putin in over him. Putin literally has more respect for human rights than Bolsonaro.

NB: Dá uma olhada neste pra saber melhor o tipo de cara que é.

[Yasna]

What makes me sad is the they're not the only country with that kind of situation and only those options to vote - it's getting more and more common and I feel so sorry for the people who feel they don't really have a choice in something we insist on calling democracy!

These personality contests are going to be the death of democracy. Germany, the UK, and Japan have got it right. Elect parties and their representatives, and let the head of government reflect whatever governing coalition emerges. It eliminates these "pick the lesser of two evils" situations which everyone hates, and it encourages cooperation and convergence between political parties instead of scorched earth tactics.

[Luís]

I don't think I've heard any polititians in my lifetime say anything as outragous as what Bolsonaro has said. I'd vote Trump in over him.

Yeah, I think Trump would be ashamed of some of these proposals (for those who don't speak Portuguese: forced sterilization of poor people, bombing favelas, leaving the UN, ending indigenous reserves and selling the land, arming all citizens with guns and giving most top positions in the government to the military)

[linguoboy]

I don't think I've heard any polititians in my lifetime say anything as outragous as what Bolsonaro has said. I'd vote Trump in over him.

Yeah, I think Trump would be ashamed of some of these proposals (for those who don't speak Portuguese: forced sterilization of poor people, bombing favelas, leaving the UN, ending indigenous reserves and selling the land, arming all citizens with guns and giving most top positions in the government to the military)

I don't actually think Trump has any shame. And offhand I don't see any political positions he would necessarily disagree with. He doesn't give a shit about poor people or their rights, so he'd be fine with sterlising them. He'd happily bomb inner city areas. (He was ready to dispatch the military to Chicago to "solve the gun problem".) He's got nothing but contempt for the UN and native sovereignty; he's unabashedly pro-development and would sell off native lands in a heartbeat. He's pro-gun and he hired an ex military man to run the White House. As long as he has enough sinecures with which to reward his cronies and they all swear fealty to him alone, sure, why not let the military run everything else?

[vijayjohn]

Does he really even have political positions to begin with? It seems like he does everything on a whim. (I also get the impression that people are more and more inclined to believe that he's mentally unstable, but maybe I'm wrong about that).

[linguoboy]

I don't know that he has political positions as much as he has idées fixes. Proposing strongman solutions to every political and social challenge has been a leitmotiv of his rhetoric.

[france-eesti]

I just can't believe he said thos things! That he'd prefer to see his son dying in a car crash than to see him gay! Are Brazilian people aware of those declarations before electing that guy? That's such a shame for such a beautiful country... And I guess now there's no way back

[vijayjohn]

I've read that there are cases in Jamaica where men actually encourage mobs to beat their own sons to death if they're even suspected of being gay. (Not aware of any such men seeking political office, though).

[Osias]

Lots of people are saying he's "our Trump", including me.

[kevin]

These personality contests are going to be the death of democracy. Germany, the UK, and Japan have got it right. Elect parties and their representatives, and let the head of government reflect whatever governing coalition emerges. It eliminates these "pick the lesser of two evils" situations which everyone hates, and it encourages cooperation and convergence between political parties instead of scorched earth tactics.

You mean because we don't directly elect the head of government? I don't think that really makes a difference for personality contests. Yes, technically you vote for a representative for your constituency or the party, but everyone knows that in the end it's May or Corbyn, Merkel or Schulz, etc.

In Britain, at least how your vote is related to the future government is still relatively clear, but in Germany it's not really any more because it has become kind of hard to predict what the parties will do with that vote after the election - especially since someone thought it was a good idea to form one grand coalition after another. The result is that even a vote for Schulz' party meant supporting Merkel's government in the end.

The choice between the lesser of two evils as the head of government gives you more control than the choice which of the smaller parties should be part of Merkel's coalition. This is cooperation and convergence taken too far, the vote has become more or less meaningless, because you just get a different shade of the same colour anyway. So if you don't want to support her, the only option is to vote for the extreme left or the extreme right, neither of which would be able to form a government.

This is not the way to strengthen democracy either.

[vijayjohn]

This whole governing coalition thing sounds an awful lot like India to me. It's a fucking disaster in India. Anybody will form a coalition with anybody as long as they think they'll get more votes. It means none of the parties have any principles, and they're all equally bad, equally greedy, equally casteist, equally murderous, and equally rapey.

[kevin]

It works decently when you have two blocks and you know the parties in a block will form a coalition if they get enough votes. This is how it used to be in Germany. When I was younger, you would either get CDU/FDP or SPD/Grüne, no problem at all.

The trouble started when the fifth party became strong enough that both options didn't work and their "natural" block refused or didn't dare to form a coalition with them because they were too left. Today we're seeing the same thing happening on the right. The result is that in order to secure a majority at all, parties of the original left and right blocks form coalitions together, so it turns into a center versus the extremes thing. And that doesn't work because the only way to vote against the government is to vote for the extremes, which only makes forming a government even more difficult.

That's kind of like the situation we had in the Weimar Republic until people decided that anything would be better than the umpteenth coalition of basically always the same parties who didn't manage to improve anything, so finally they did vote for the extreme right (i.e the Nazis) because that was the only way left to get rid of the government.

I find this parallel kind of worrying. It's not quite as bad yet and we still have moderate opposition parties, but we're headed in that direction.

[Yasna]

You mean because we don't directly elect the head of government? I don't think that really makes a difference for personality contests. Yes, technically you vote for a representative for your constituency or the party, but everyone knows that in the end it's May or Corbyn, Merkel or Schulz, etc.

The chancellor's position is much more fragile than that of directly elected heads of government. The coalition could collapse, or their own party could overthrow them. Choose your favorite personality and you may be sorely disappointed when they are overthrown after a year.

In Britain, at least how your vote is related to the future government is still relatively clear, but in Germany it's not really any more because it has become kind of hard to predict what the parties will do with that vote after the election - especially since someone thought it was a good idea to form one grand coalition after another. The result is that even a vote for Schulz' party meant supporting Merkel's government in the end.

The choice between the lesser of two evils as the head of government gives you more control than the choice which of the smaller parties should be part of Merkel's coalition. This is cooperation and convergence taken too far, the vote has become more or less meaningless, because you just get a different shade of the same colour anyway. So if you don't want to support her, the only option is to vote for the extreme left or the extreme right, neither of which would be able to form a government.

Your problem seems to be with voters' choices rather than the electoral system itself. The centrality of Merkel and the CDU in recent German history is the direct result of voter preference. If no other group of voters coalescing around a set of ideas and policies (i.e. a political party) can get anywhere near the vote tally of the CDU in free and fair elections, why should they have the right to rule?

And your vote isn't nearly as meaningless as you paint it. The greater a party's vote tally, the stronger their hand is in coalition negotiations, and the more ministerial positions they get to fill if they join a coalition.

[Prowler]

Bolsonaro seems like a more hardcore version of Trump.

Also it seems David Duke supports him, but Bolsonaro doesn't want his support. Smart PR move by him.

[linguoboy]

Also it seems David Duke supports him, but Bolsonaro doesn't want his support. Smart PR move by him.

I'm a bit surprised to find that Duke has any kind of profile abroad. He's a marginal enough figure in our own country, one who hasn't held political office of any kind since I was a college undergraduate.