💾 Archived View for voidcruiser.nl › ramblings › election.gmi captured on 2021-12-04 at 18:04:22. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I asked a friend what I could ramble about due to being bored, and his response was, "The US election", so here we go.
Let me start with making my position clear.
I am glad that Donald Trump practically lost.
I am not happy that Joe Biden won.
I would've preferred someone like Bernie Sanders.
But ultimately I would prefer not to have to worry about what the biggest bully in the school yard has to say, because that's what the US is, a big, idiotic, international bully.
That same friend often describes the US as saying "You are being liberated, do not resist" to other countries it invades due to oil or whatver the current reason is.
One thing I find fascinating about watching the US from the Netherlands is seeing them have only two parties. In the Netherlands we have a few dozen parties spanning quite a wide margin on the political spectrum, the only things that aren't represented are, for as far as I can tell, overt anarchy and overt fascism.
From my perspective at least, most of the politics in the Netherlands are being thought out quite reasonably about half the time. At the very least people in my circle most of the time don't care enough about politics to ever bring it up outside of something more extreme happening (the exception being one nationalist who keeps worshipping a cherry coloured bidet), like another US president being elected.
The American system on the other hand appears to be mostly shouting and very few things actually happening.
Which is not to say that we don't have any shouty people in the Dutch political landscape, but compared to Trump, they are very normal and capable people and I would possibly even be willing to drink a beer with those representing my opposition after drinking half a bottle of whiskey beforehand.
As for Donald Trump... I think one of the more neutral things I can say about him is that he as a somewhat uncanny resemblance to Disney's Donald Duck, both in appearance as well as behaviour.
When it comes to Joe Biden, I don't really know too much about him, my mental health not appreciating diving into politics too much, but calling him a "lesser evil" still requires a downright silly amount of qualifications to ultimately say that, yes, Trump is indeed even worse then Biden.
But choosing between them is choosing between thinly-veiled fascism and neo-liberalism, which in itself is extremely vulnerable to fascism.
The whole idea that there are two parties who are almost a war with each other while representing the positions "centre-right" and "far-right" just seems utterly absurd and horribly overblown.
It really is a shame Bernie Sanders lost in the primaries, he was the only one, who I am aware of, represented some actual centre-left values, like the idea of universal health care. Sanders becoming president would've shown the rest of the world most Americans are less idiotic then Trump or Biden would lead us to believe.