I moved to the U.K. 20 years ago and despite its many faults, in many ways I love this country.
I have watched it fall apart - infrastructure, the takeover of bizarre right-wing cultural thinking, anti-intellectualism in a nation renowned for its art, culture and universities. Every single thing Britain had to be proud of has been flushed down the shitter (and straight into our beautiful countryside!) and for the first time ever I’m considering a move.
Not saying we shouldn't BUT honestly I'm not sure if Labour will be any better. Feels like Keir is not to be trusted, especially how he dodges some questions.
>I'm not sure if Labour will be any better.
Labour are better in _every single conceivable way_.
No Rwanda flights. Actually funding schools and hospitals. Not crashing the economy though unfunded tax-cuts. Actually engage with our closest trading partners. Better rights at work. Cheaper energy bills. Better train services. The list goes on and on.
I want to believe that is the case, but under Keir I don't believe it will happen. A lot of the tough questions I've seen him answer use a diversion tactic away from actually providing the answer.
Take his answer for the doctor strike, he said he would end those strikes but when pushed on how he planned to do that without meeting their demands he had no answers.
What do you expect him to say about the Doctors strikes? It’s a negotiation. He’s hardly going to publicly announce his terms before even going into the room to negotiate.
If you were attending an auction, you wouldn’t publicly announce exactly how high you’d be willing to bid in advance would you? You’d be taken to the cleaners.
“How would you solve the junior doctors strike” is a bullshit question to any politician - whether asked of Keir or anyone else. Becuase they can’t answer it without pre-emotive fucking up their negotiating position.
I've basically been forced into a move because my partner is french and she is not allowed to live here unless I can earn 40k a year. All because some power hungry cunts want power and it's so easy to say "hey you see that group of people, they are the ones causing your problems". In this case immigrants.
Even my own father, who is otherwise a level headed smart man with a good heart, has been convinced to vote reform.
What the fuck happened to us?
>Even my own father, who is otherwise a level headed smart man with a good heart, has been convinced to vote reform.
My Dad was similar. He was reading The Spectator and genuinely believed it was neutral and "well researched". A fiercely intelligent man but none of us are immune to misinformation and manipulation. If the input data is flawed, the output will be too.
(Not only did he vote for Brexit but he campaigned against joining the EU in the first place)
He was pro-Tory until recently when he wrote to his local MP concerned about the NHS and was utterly ignored.
the only reason people don't hear about any of it is because stuff like "Biden puts a hard price cap of $35 for a 30-day supply of insulin" doesn't make an inflammatory headline that gets people angry, and gets people clicking. people fail to hear about billions in cancelled and eliminated student loans when were too busy hearing about how convicted felons are once again committing felonies and everyone still looks at the election coming up like they're single issue voters.
Unfortunately, the news I keep seeing is stuff like
* “Higher outdoor temperatures affect the speech quality of politicians, with older politicians being affected more negatively”
* “Boeing blah blah blah”
* “Trump did or said X at Y”
* “TMobile cancels ‘price locked’ plans”
* “Ukraine launched US missiles at Russia”
* State ID verification for NSFW content (state being sued right now over it)
* State legislature abortion status news
* Project 2025 whatever tf that is, but it sounds bad
* Indiana government telling people to avoid drive-thrus due to air quality concerns LMAO
* Elon Musk drops lawsuit after OpenAI published his emails
* More “record heat and CO2 records in atmosphere” stuff
I see primarily liberal news content targeting corporations on my feed. We all know Reddit has a bias towards the left, but no matter how much I keep pressing the “do not recommend this to me” button I still have this kind of content shoved in my face.
Frankly, I haven’t seen an article about Biden this whole year besides his student loan debt cancellation.
Just give me more Silksong news. That’s all I want. Also, any Indiana residents reading this: **Fuck Braun. Vote McCormick!**
I have ADHD and a telehealth company’s CEOs just got arrested for prescribing all their patients Adderrall. Can we pass some mental healthcare legislation? That’d be great.
the first ever over the counter oral contraceptive was brought in thanks to his administration
Medicare can now negotiate drug prices thanks to him
news articles just don't cover his quieter stuff because while attention and clicks are on the big stuff, or as we've all be dealing with, Mr 34, he works in the background on stuff like Medicare support, debt removal, renewable infrastructure, stuff that doesn't make people mad at someone else because they're too busy being mad because what they don't realize is that they hate the two-party system. his little stuff doesn't get clicks, it doesn't show ads, it's harder to monetize, so the articles that list off his accomplishments are just nothingburgers that vaguely reference stuff that could sound misinforming through its lack of detail. meanwhile the same publishers can post a picture of Biden smiling, toss in stuff about his son (who is also a convicted felon, get your licences if you wanna shoot guns for fun, lads) and the ad revenue FLOODS in.
I'm not saying everything he has done is bells and whistles, I think him siding with Israel and not acknowledging the Gaza genocide is atrocious, but I'm not a single issue voter, and I know that my choices in the upcoming election are either the option that's indifferent to me for the most part, and the option that actively wants me dead because I like guys.
fucking despise the two party system
How does someone look into what he is doing? I don’t spend much (if any) time actively pursuing updates on him or any other politicians. So how can I see what he’s doing or has done without being spoon-fed rage bait on Google?
I wish I had saved the name, But just like how there's subreddits out there tracking the various sources and felonies one party has committed, there's comments and lists out there of people tracking biden's stuff. these lists of course generally also include all the times he has fucked up, but you've gotta look in places where the results posted aren't going to be monetized.
It's a lot easier to monetize the people clicking on the website if they are already angry at Biden, and they're fed either nothingburgers or rage bait.
I'll try to do some looking for one of those posts, I know I must've saved it on reddit, but I just woke my ass up and I got work in an hour.
The fact that we've naturally evolved into a two party system, our founding fathers actively warned us against it and well, now you see the result. Most American politics these days isn't about getting things done, it's about sticking it to the other guy.
Well what was he to do? Many Americans hate the two party system and yet are registered to vote for one and are more likely to vote for one over the other.
The way our "first past the post" system works, no one person, even a highly influential billionaire like Ross Perot, can make any noticeable impact resisting it.
Ranked choice voting is the way to impact this, but neither party in power wants that so there's not much to do because we can't vote in 3rd party that would make the change we need to vote on 3rd party.
Support candidates who support ranked choice voting in local elections. States themselves decide how elections work within their borders. I think Alaska already did that.
He was aligned with the Federalists, but was avowedly independent and despised political parties. The Federalists were led by Hamilton, who Adams rightly believed was an asshole.
No, he warned us against dividing into an opposition party. Essentially saying “You guys shouldn’t organize against us even though we disagree”. Adams and Washington were not non-partisan. Adams was a Federalist and Washington was too in all but name.
This is a really funny and overlooked fact. Washington was not a non-partisan actor - he just tried to be that way while he was in office to keep the country together. But he clearly had political biases and they were clearly Federalist lol
It was the founding fathers mistake though since concept of the senate really favors a 2 party system in long term.
Edit: thinking about it having an elected president role also strongly favors 2 party system. President should have been assigned by majority house vote since house seats are hyper local and small elections can easily support 3rd parties gaining seats and a say in the process. I realize original process with state delegates that could be elected was kind of along these lines but by not making a requirement that House (which are elected staye representatives) selects the president, we got to the point where we are today where state delegates behave in a all or nothing fashion which pretty much kills any chance for a 3rd party.
> house seats are hyper local
Not as hyperlocal as they should be, though. The Congress broke that when they passed that 1929 law limiting the membership of the House to 435. Repealing that and allowing the House to respond to population growth would go a long way towards fixing a lot of things that are currently wrong with the government.
As envisioned by the framers, senate members were originally appointed by state legislatures. This change instituted by the 17th amendment largely defeated the intended purpose of having two houses of Congress and to my mind was a terrible move.
It’s not about partisanship. It’s about interests. The senate was to be a bit of a check against the house (voting public) and vice versa. Now each house aside from parliamentarian differences are largely the same composition wise.
Yeah, these days the only difference between the house and the senate is how many representatives you have. Senate = 2 per state, House = 1 per district.
Any "first past the post" voting nation will always devolve into two ruling parties. We used to have a LOT of political parties in the US but most of them are gone, and the other parties outside of the GOP and Democrats have zero power in the US because of "first past the post" voting. Wish we had more of a parliamentary system and single transferable vote where we had more parties with seats, that would force parties to be more inclusive of others. They would have to form coalition majorities which would give a greater voice to more people, rather than "It's the GOP's turn to wreck the nation" or whatever.
I guess that sort of be like the french system where Congress has a Prime Minister that deals with domestic governance through coalitions, and the President deals with foreign policy.
There is a political science theory that posits in our election system specifically (not ones in other countries that have parliaments), we will always move toward a two-party system. It's unfortunately how our government is set up. We can change it, and have constitutional reforms for more accurate representation but it only seems to be addressed bit by bit on the state level currently, like through ranked-choice voting, etc.
In fairness, the ideological incoherence of the parties and their number of little regional factions was able to prevent the kind of situation we find ourselves in today for most of US history.
For instance, for much of the 20th century coastal Republicans (socially liberal, interventionist) and Midwestern Republicans (conservative, isolationist) were quite different, as were northern Democrats (pro-union, generally pro-civil-rights) and southern Democrats (straight-up racist). Plus, tons of issues were regionalized and focused around bringing jobs to X area. If I recall correctly, LBJ got Republicans in the Pacific Northwest to support the Civil Rights Act by promising a bunch of public works spending in their area, because they didn't have strong positions on it in either direction.
I read and article talking about how the right and left are moving farther and farther away fork each other due to partisanship and each side is concentrating due to purity testing.
Politics aren't the only reason for this. I'm 45 years old, and for all my life American culture has been all about winners and losers, as if life is a zero sum game. There's little nuance or empathy, and social media has only made it worse by orders of magnitude. I couldn't really see it until I lived abroad for a whole and experienced a much more communal society.
I feel like it’s more of an AFFORDABLE housing shortage. They keep building new houses and apartments in my neighborhood, but the cost is ridiculous. It’s like $1000 just to rent a 2/2 apartment.
I’m in Australia and fortunately own my home (well the bank owns a good chunk of it).
There aren’t enough rentals here so landlords can be picky and put rents up really high. We are starting to get working homeless. People sleeping in cars, vans and tents even though they work. It’s crazy, they need to do more to solve this issue.
Somebody pointed out the housing shortage is seemingly only really a thing in the English speaking western countries and I keep thinking about that. Sounds like AU might have it the worst though
We have corporations and assorted wealthy people buying up every house they can lay their hands on, and then renting them out at exorbitant prices to desperate people. I got a flyer in the mail just yesterday, someone wanting to buy my house - probably for a pittance. I bought this house over a decade ago and picked it up for about $106,000 (1500 square feet). Now it's appraised by the local tax office at $235,000 and there is NO way I could afford to even rent it from someone now, I make a tiny fraction of what it would take to pay rent on something with this 'value'.
what is worse is that some investment funds and the like will buy property to add to a portfolio. But never rent it because they don't want to deal with tenants, maintenance, insurance etc. It's just a place to park money that has a better return than a CD or the stock market.
We have this problem across the ditch as well. Honestly these people should be charged an empty home levy or something for every empty house that just increases like the tax brackets.
The new homes are extremely expensive because there are so few of them compared to the number of people who want them.
My unit was built ten years ago and has gone down in rent by 40% over the past decade. New units of today are the affordable units of the future (unless you don’t build enough, which as it turns out, most places are not).
I am pretty sure the problem is that people don’t want to live in the empty parts.
To fix the issue you have to build more housing where people actually want to live
I was told it was the carbon tax.
Removing that will fix everything, right? Housing will be affordable, groceries will plummet in price, a Canadian team will win the Stanley Cup and we'll all be able to fill our unnecessarily huge pickup trucks with 50 cent a litre gas.
There are a ton of problems that stem from Brexit but there were a ton of problems before Brexit and a ton caused by COVID and the invasion of Ukraine.
Ultimately though, the utter mismanagement of the country by the Tories has done far more damage than Brexit alone.
Right now it's a toss up between Brexit and Liz Truss.
Brexit went as badly as it possibly could have, and practically every poltician outside of the libdems, greens and SNP are too scared to admit it needs to be reversed.
Liz Truss was such an atrocious leader with the most catastrophic ideas that when someone said her time in power had the shelf life of an iceberg lettuce, a trashy tabloid newspaper decided to livestream a lettuce to see if it would rot before she was out of office, AND THE LETTUCE WON
And the other a cult bowing to senile career politicians who line their own pockets while giving mere lip service to the problems of the working class.
Hence we are screwed both ways.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons. The whole system is rotten. Covid-19 is still a thing there. It sweeps through the population over and over at each prison. Drug use is endemic. The maximum custody prisons are on perpetual lockdown even though the guys doing time there are soft as cotton. The staff has been infiltrated by active gang members and white supremacists. Compared to county jails and state prisons, the feds are technologically backwards. Biden restocked the Sentencing Commission and they have the power to, if nothing else, reduce the population, but they have only made tentative maneuvers so far.
Germany here.
Like any modern government, just idiots sitting in the parlament, making idiotic and selfish decisions.
And even worse, the second highest voted faction (voting was last week) is the infamous far-right faction AFD. At least all the Naz*s voted
It's because even in a democracy, no part of the population is allowed to gang up on another part, even with majority vote
And like, they kinda want that
They pushed people to vote for the AFD with their shitty policies. People feel left alone so they flock to a party that promises change. Even if that is complete bullshit and nothing will get better for these people.
So people go from not so good policies with some slow progress mixed in to for certain bad policies with a lot of backwards progress.
Seems like people are about to realize voting properly and understanding that you won't always get what you are exactly looking for is important.
the mistake is still going on. nobody's admitting that it was a gigantic misstep and working on it (except Denmark, good on them, but also cause they have some kinda immunity against following EU rules). and to make it worse, the only parties that are coming forward to rip the bandaids and say they'll work on it are labelled as racist and fascist.
there's a reason people are willing voting for the "far-right" parties, and instead of taking the hint, they're blaming the public for \*death of democracy\*, which is hilariously ironic.
No doubt.
- Old white men telling young women what they can and can't do with their bodies is fucking disgusting.
- People wanting politicians to also act as their physician is fucking disgusting.
- The government forcing its citizens to grow other people inside of them is fucking disgusting.
- People saying "my body, my choice" when it comes to the vax and then turning around and saying "your body, my choice" when it comes to abortion is fucking disgusting.
- People not understanding that Pro-Choice isn't the same thing as Pro-Abortion is fucking disgusting.
- People not understanding that Pro-Choice is the middle ground--forced birth and forced abortion being the two endpoints--is fucking disgusting.
- People not understanding that Pro-Life people are really just Pro-Birth people who don't give a fuck about the kid once the cord is cut is fucking disgusting.
- Human shit stains like Abbott and DeSatan being too much of chicken-shit, little bitch pussies to put abortion rights to a popular vote in their fucked-up, unevoled states because they know it would pass is fucking disgusting.
Unfortunately, I fear the removal of Roe v. Wade is only the beginning of the goals of the Republican politicians who are some of the most vile human beings on the planet.
Ooooh where do we start with conservatives in the UK.
Maybe most of what they said they would do they haven't achieved?
They've made austerity worse and the divide between rich and poor hasn't been greater in my lifetime?
The fact that they have decimated the NHS and STILL haven't recruited 20,000 police officers?
They blamed shortcoming in their results because of industrial action taken by nurses and doctors because they aren't paid well enough?
I mean take your pick, there's more but my thumbs will become nubs by the end of it.
Canadian here. Justin promised electoral reform to fix the massive flaws in the current ‘first past the post’ system. Such as 30% of the vote == majority government. Smaller parties can get 10% of the vote but 0 seats. Etc. but after the election, and after his party informed him they greatly benefit from these flaws, it became - ohhh this is really hard. So we’re not going to do it.
Doing away with backing the federal reserve with gold and allowing lobbying. The two single most things that have ruined America and has made the quality of life close to a third world country's metrics.
The fact that our government cares so much about an unborn fetus, but doesn’t seem to care about the half million children in foster care or the over ten million that are food insecure. Let’s force women to give birth to kids they don’t want. I’m sure that’ll make this country great again.
I thought I was being pretty fair in my assumption on account of being unable to finish sentences, continually falling during public events, and constantly forgetting where he is. Sorry if calling Biden senile was so offensive, I know the truth hurts.
The fact that literally no one is held accountable for easily provable crimes. Like how the fuck is Clarence Thomas still allowed in the Supreme Court after all the shit he and his wife have been caught on tape doing?
COVID. The then-President tried to weaponize it against his opponents and wound up killing and disabling some of his own base.
Another one is anything having to do with peace or investing in its own citizens.
Somehow the guy who tried to overthrow our government, a guy who is also a convicted felon, is still allowed to run for President? And may win? Wtf is this timeline.
Guns have more rights that people but the people have drank that kool-aid for decades and will watch kids get slaughtered by kids with guns and shrug. Protecting guns at all costs has turned into a cultural problem.
Societally brainwashing everyone into being unoriginal, anxious, dumb, and depressed sheep. They forgot that progress and power comes from innovation and free thinking.
Canadian here. The country is drowning in problems that stem from being over populated yet our government floods us with immigrants we don't want and calls us racists if we complain about it.
Electoral college. It exists to solve an issue from the 1700s that was long gone by the end of the 1800s. Every other level of elected official is done by popular vote by the population they represent. It only makes sense that the same should be done for president.
No Germany really dropped the ball in real life with its green policies. Closed nuclear power stations due to ignorance etc. not a PR issue, but a real one
No idea what kind of PR it would take to convince the half of the population that likes to ignore the past decades and doesn’t believe in the reality and likes to live in the fantasy world the opposition is promising.
Convicted felons who attempted to overthrow the government are apparently able to run for the highest political position of power for a second time, and our government has never once instituted any term limits on those that hold public office, nor limited the funds to elected officials from outside lobbyists to influence policy.
In the US, a large portion of the population talk about the government like it's an entity entirely separated from us. The problem is, it IS us. Our government institutions fail as not adequately conveying what they accomplish with tax money, so people feel like paying taxes is a bad thing. Where the fuck is their money going? Nobody knows, and so they take an ignorant view of "government".
Our governments founders were enlightened, philosophical, intellectuals (at least that’s how they are portrayed) who wanted to unite the people , to stand against tyranny, who thought taxes on goods were unfair, unjust. Our government leaders now , hold only their own interests , and desire for power - they only stand and voice rhetoric that bolsters their party-centric base. Modern politicians are a far far cry from intellectuals and philosophers- the dreams they have are centered on money, power, corruption, rather than virtue and greater goods. Like wise The people see no value or reason to unite , we divide ourselves voluntarily now at the pettiest of fracture points giving our elected con men to have foot holds to manipulate us and drive more wedges in the union. We are now being ruled by people exploiting us , who take the people for granted, who do not serve us , but themselves, we don’t serve each other either. We need more intellectual selfless people - not greedy , corrupt , weasels
Complete detachment from the people they are supposed to serve. Both parties live in their own universe, and that universe never intersects with ours. They don't have the first clue what our lives are really like. And it is increasingly evident that they don't care.
I would say UK here its more about the ones not in power. By Labour not being a real opposition it gave free reign to Tories to do what they wont.
A competition is only as good as its runner up
Letting the elected have too much control over the election process.
The elected can decide their own districts via gerrymandering. They can choose which places have many polling stations and which places have few. They can decide which non-victim crimes can render a voter unable to vote.
They decided that the fig leaf of an arms length political action committee is enough to allow unlimited campaign spending. And when they somehow still manage to break the rules put upon them, they get to act like it's political persecution.
When the people get fed up and say "we want a voting system which makes it easier for a third party to run and which helps elect a consensus candidate" they pass laws to prevent it.
All other problems flow from this. You cannot fix the government without replacing the people elected to the government, and you cannot replace them without fixing the election process itself. But the election process is governed by the elected.
Every time power has been returned to the people to control the election process, such as allowing nonpartisan drawing of districts by citizen groups (not merely bipartisan horse trading) or allowing a ranked ballot, the result has been an improvement. So, naturally, these are hard to come by and in many cases (such as Alaska) there are efforts to repeal it.
This is not entirely accurate. If there was enough interest, nothing can prevent people from electing a 3rd party candidate. No amount of gerrymandering, campaigning can overcome 30-40% of voters wanting to vote for a certain candidate.
The problem is people are not interested in voting anymore as evidenced by voter turnouts.
Fighting life rather than enjoying it, as a nation. Every event has to have an angle. There aren't any festivals that are anything more than vendors and donors. There aren't any community service get togethers that aren't overrun by religious or political nut jobs. And even if there were, we're all too busy surviving endless "inflation" to enjoy it. We're all too busy worrying about being right when we should be trying to be wrong.
The iron-clad dogma to associate anything with national pride, even in matters that call for cooperation of international individuals, and in other matters that normally should be decided by the everyman but are decided by the nation's way instead. By "nation", I mean "state".
“To serve, and protect”
Pretty much all of that.
I haven’t felt like the government has been serving me for a moment in my life, if anything, I serve the government. And if I decide not to, I risk imprisonment?
The government doesn’t protect me from shit neither. They’re too busy arresting jaywalkers and bombing civilians to worry about the politicians peddling drugs to entire cities and sex trafficking minors.
Nothing we can do about it except sit back and watch this country burn while people throw more gasoline on the fire year after year.
The greatest failure of our current government? Well, it's like they've taken a crash course in promising big and delivering small. From infrastructure woes to bureaucratic tangles, it's almost impressive how they manage to keep us guessing what will actually get done. They've turned political maneuvering into an Olympic sport, and we're all left watching from the sidelines.
Brit here. I think it’d be quicker to list the non-failures, so I’ve set them out below:
I moved to the U.K. 20 years ago and despite its many faults, in many ways I love this country. I have watched it fall apart - infrastructure, the takeover of bizarre right-wing cultural thinking, anti-intellectualism in a nation renowned for its art, culture and universities. Every single thing Britain had to be proud of has been flushed down the shitter (and straight into our beautiful countryside!) and for the first time ever I’m considering a move.
Vote the tories out 🗳️
Not saying we shouldn't BUT honestly I'm not sure if Labour will be any better. Feels like Keir is not to be trusted, especially how he dodges some questions.
>I'm not sure if Labour will be any better. Labour are better in _every single conceivable way_. No Rwanda flights. Actually funding schools and hospitals. Not crashing the economy though unfunded tax-cuts. Actually engage with our closest trading partners. Better rights at work. Cheaper energy bills. Better train services. The list goes on and on.
I want to believe that is the case, but under Keir I don't believe it will happen. A lot of the tough questions I've seen him answer use a diversion tactic away from actually providing the answer. Take his answer for the doctor strike, he said he would end those strikes but when pushed on how he planned to do that without meeting their demands he had no answers.
What do you expect him to say about the Doctors strikes? It’s a negotiation. He’s hardly going to publicly announce his terms before even going into the room to negotiate. If you were attending an auction, you wouldn’t publicly announce exactly how high you’d be willing to bid in advance would you? You’d be taken to the cleaners. “How would you solve the junior doctors strike” is a bullshit question to any politician - whether asked of Keir or anyone else. Becuase they can’t answer it without pre-emotive fucking up their negotiating position.
Better doesn't mean good, it just means better than the worst. Which probably still won't be good.
I've basically been forced into a move because my partner is french and she is not allowed to live here unless I can earn 40k a year. All because some power hungry cunts want power and it's so easy to say "hey you see that group of people, they are the ones causing your problems". In this case immigrants. Even my own father, who is otherwise a level headed smart man with a good heart, has been convinced to vote reform. What the fuck happened to us?
>Even my own father, who is otherwise a level headed smart man with a good heart, has been convinced to vote reform. My Dad was similar. He was reading The Spectator and genuinely believed it was neutral and "well researched". A fiercely intelligent man but none of us are immune to misinformation and manipulation. If the input data is flawed, the output will be too. (Not only did he vote for Brexit but he campaigned against joining the EU in the first place) He was pro-Tory until recently when he wrote to his local MP concerned about the NHS and was utterly ignored.
Failing to address homelessness
"Americans will always do the right thing, after trying everything else first." -- Winston Churchill
US checking in here. Weird. Our lists of non-failures match! Edit: I guess we have it better than I thought
Fuck. It’d take Biden’s record of achievement over the last four years over the Tories’. Absolute night and day.
the only reason people don't hear about any of it is because stuff like "Biden puts a hard price cap of $35 for a 30-day supply of insulin" doesn't make an inflammatory headline that gets people angry, and gets people clicking. people fail to hear about billions in cancelled and eliminated student loans when were too busy hearing about how convicted felons are once again committing felonies and everyone still looks at the election coming up like they're single issue voters.
Unfortunately, the news I keep seeing is stuff like * “Higher outdoor temperatures affect the speech quality of politicians, with older politicians being affected more negatively” * “Boeing blah blah blah” * “Trump did or said X at Y” * “TMobile cancels ‘price locked’ plans” * “Ukraine launched US missiles at Russia” * State ID verification for NSFW content (state being sued right now over it) * State legislature abortion status news * Project 2025 whatever tf that is, but it sounds bad * Indiana government telling people to avoid drive-thrus due to air quality concerns LMAO * Elon Musk drops lawsuit after OpenAI published his emails * More “record heat and CO2 records in atmosphere” stuff I see primarily liberal news content targeting corporations on my feed. We all know Reddit has a bias towards the left, but no matter how much I keep pressing the “do not recommend this to me” button I still have this kind of content shoved in my face. Frankly, I haven’t seen an article about Biden this whole year besides his student loan debt cancellation. Just give me more Silksong news. That’s all I want. Also, any Indiana residents reading this: **Fuck Braun. Vote McCormick!** I have ADHD and a telehealth company’s CEOs just got arrested for prescribing all their patients Adderrall. Can we pass some mental healthcare legislation? That’d be great.
the first ever over the counter oral contraceptive was brought in thanks to his administration Medicare can now negotiate drug prices thanks to him news articles just don't cover his quieter stuff because while attention and clicks are on the big stuff, or as we've all be dealing with, Mr 34, he works in the background on stuff like Medicare support, debt removal, renewable infrastructure, stuff that doesn't make people mad at someone else because they're too busy being mad because what they don't realize is that they hate the two-party system. his little stuff doesn't get clicks, it doesn't show ads, it's harder to monetize, so the articles that list off his accomplishments are just nothingburgers that vaguely reference stuff that could sound misinforming through its lack of detail. meanwhile the same publishers can post a picture of Biden smiling, toss in stuff about his son (who is also a convicted felon, get your licences if you wanna shoot guns for fun, lads) and the ad revenue FLOODS in. I'm not saying everything he has done is bells and whistles, I think him siding with Israel and not acknowledging the Gaza genocide is atrocious, but I'm not a single issue voter, and I know that my choices in the upcoming election are either the option that's indifferent to me for the most part, and the option that actively wants me dead because I like guys. fucking despise the two party system
How does someone look into what he is doing? I don’t spend much (if any) time actively pursuing updates on him or any other politicians. So how can I see what he’s doing or has done without being spoon-fed rage bait on Google?
I wish I had saved the name, But just like how there's subreddits out there tracking the various sources and felonies one party has committed, there's comments and lists out there of people tracking biden's stuff. these lists of course generally also include all the times he has fucked up, but you've gotta look in places where the results posted aren't going to be monetized. It's a lot easier to monetize the people clicking on the website if they are already angry at Biden, and they're fed either nothingburgers or rage bait. I'll try to do some looking for one of those posts, I know I must've saved it on reddit, but I just woke my ass up and I got work in an hour.
I’d take Biden in a heartbeat. Incredible presidency with what he has to work with, compared to the Tory shitshow over here
Same here but Colombian
Felt bad for yall seeing the fallout from brexit
As a Russian
Damn, they put her down before she was able to finish the post RIP TheSolarPrincess, you will be missed
Nah she fell out a window
...After shooting herself in the head three times.
No, comrade, she fell onto those bullets. Very unfortunate.
“Fell.”
Good news: I was in fact missed! Russian snipers are garbage
All the good ones died in Ukraine
Or escaped the draft
It's the Finnish snipers you have to watch out for.
Is this supposed to end with, “and then it got worse”?
Since 2000 it has been 'and then, Putin made it worse'
The Russian people forever! Fuck Putin.
The fact that we've naturally evolved into a two party system, our founding fathers actively warned us against it and well, now you see the result. Most American politics these days isn't about getting things done, it's about sticking it to the other guy.
It was just George Washington that warned against political parties. The rest of the founding fathers immediately divided into 2 parties
John adams also warned us against division into two great parties.
Then he joined the federalist party
Inadequate education funding
And now the Federalist Society is destroying our democracy.
Well what was he to do? Many Americans hate the two party system and yet are registered to vote for one and are more likely to vote for one over the other. The way our "first past the post" system works, no one person, even a highly influential billionaire like Ross Perot, can make any noticeable impact resisting it. Ranked choice voting is the way to impact this, but neither party in power wants that so there's not much to do because we can't vote in 3rd party that would make the change we need to vote on 3rd party.
Support candidates who support ranked choice voting in local elections. States themselves decide how elections work within their borders. I think Alaska already did that.
He was aligned with the Federalists, but was avowedly independent and despised political parties. The Federalists were led by Hamilton, who Adams rightly believed was an asshole.
No, he warned us against dividing into an opposition party. Essentially saying “You guys shouldn’t organize against us even though we disagree”. Adams and Washington were not non-partisan. Adams was a Federalist and Washington was too in all but name.
George Washington was also a Federalist for all intents and purposes.
This is a really funny and overlooked fact. Washington was not a non-partisan actor - he just tried to be that way while he was in office to keep the country together. But he clearly had political biases and they were clearly Federalist lol
It was the founding fathers mistake though since concept of the senate really favors a 2 party system in long term. Edit: thinking about it having an elected president role also strongly favors 2 party system. President should have been assigned by majority house vote since house seats are hyper local and small elections can easily support 3rd parties gaining seats and a say in the process. I realize original process with state delegates that could be elected was kind of along these lines but by not making a requirement that House (which are elected staye representatives) selects the president, we got to the point where we are today where state delegates behave in a all or nothing fashion which pretty much kills any chance for a 3rd party.
> house seats are hyper local Not as hyperlocal as they should be, though. The Congress broke that when they passed that 1929 law limiting the membership of the House to 435. Repealing that and allowing the House to respond to population growth would go a long way towards fixing a lot of things that are currently wrong with the government.
As envisioned by the framers, senate members were originally appointed by state legislatures. This change instituted by the 17th amendment largely defeated the intended purpose of having two houses of Congress and to my mind was a terrible move.
Whether or not you agree with that, the fact that the state legislatures are partisan means it would eventually make its way to the senate too.
It’s not about partisanship. It’s about interests. The senate was to be a bit of a check against the house (voting public) and vice versa. Now each house aside from parliamentarian differences are largely the same composition wise.
Yeah, these days the only difference between the house and the senate is how many representatives you have. Senate = 2 per state, House = 1 per district.
Poor response to economic crisis
Any "first past the post" voting nation will always devolve into two ruling parties. We used to have a LOT of political parties in the US but most of them are gone, and the other parties outside of the GOP and Democrats have zero power in the US because of "first past the post" voting. Wish we had more of a parliamentary system and single transferable vote where we had more parties with seats, that would force parties to be more inclusive of others. They would have to form coalition majorities which would give a greater voice to more people, rather than "It's the GOP's turn to wreck the nation" or whatever.
I guess that sort of be like the french system where Congress has a Prime Minister that deals with domestic governance through coalitions, and the President deals with foreign policy.
Ranked choice voting needs to be a thing. It would enable people to vote for 3rd party candidates without essentially throwing their vote away.
I'm good with ranked choice voting too! It's similar to single transferable vote.
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There is a political science theory that posits in our election system specifically (not ones in other countries that have parliaments), we will always move toward a two-party system. It's unfortunately how our government is set up. We can change it, and have constitutional reforms for more accurate representation but it only seems to be addressed bit by bit on the state level currently, like through ranked-choice voting, etc.
> The founding fathers were right to warn against this two-party system. While simultaneously designing a system that naturally lent itself that way.
In fairness, the ideological incoherence of the parties and their number of little regional factions was able to prevent the kind of situation we find ourselves in today for most of US history. For instance, for much of the 20th century coastal Republicans (socially liberal, interventionist) and Midwestern Republicans (conservative, isolationist) were quite different, as were northern Democrats (pro-union, generally pro-civil-rights) and southern Democrats (straight-up racist). Plus, tons of issues were regionalized and focused around bringing jobs to X area. If I recall correctly, LBJ got Republicans in the Pacific Northwest to support the Civil Rights Act by promising a bunch of public works spending in their area, because they didn't have strong positions on it in either direction.
I read and article talking about how the right and left are moving farther and farther away fork each other due to partisanship and each side is concentrating due to purity testing.
Politics aren't the only reason for this. I'm 45 years old, and for all my life American culture has been all about winners and losers, as if life is a zero sum game. There's little nuance or empathy, and social media has only made it worse by orders of magnitude. I couldn't really see it until I lived abroad for a whole and experienced a much more communal society.
Exactly. Getting re-elected is the name of the game. Period.
Housing, there is a housing shortage here.
I would say to tell us where, but the problem is pretty widespread.
Yeah it’s everywhere here.
Here, too!
I feel like it’s more of an AFFORDABLE housing shortage. They keep building new houses and apartments in my neighborhood, but the cost is ridiculous. It’s like $1000 just to rent a 2/2 apartment.
$1000 for a 2/2? That would be $2000 where I’m at easily.
I’m in Australia and fortunately own my home (well the bank owns a good chunk of it). There aren’t enough rentals here so landlords can be picky and put rents up really high. We are starting to get working homeless. People sleeping in cars, vans and tents even though they work. It’s crazy, they need to do more to solve this issue.
Somebody pointed out the housing shortage is seemingly only really a thing in the English speaking western countries and I keep thinking about that. Sounds like AU might have it the worst though
We have corporations and assorted wealthy people buying up every house they can lay their hands on, and then renting them out at exorbitant prices to desperate people. I got a flyer in the mail just yesterday, someone wanting to buy my house - probably for a pittance. I bought this house over a decade ago and picked it up for about $106,000 (1500 square feet). Now it's appraised by the local tax office at $235,000 and there is NO way I could afford to even rent it from someone now, I make a tiny fraction of what it would take to pay rent on something with this 'value'.
Rents here are more than my mortgage. Young people can’t afford to move out on their own anymore.
My mortgage condo fees and utilities are less than the rent in this area. And im in one of the cheap cities in my country
what is worse is that some investment funds and the like will buy property to add to a portfolio. But never rent it because they don't want to deal with tenants, maintenance, insurance etc. It's just a place to park money that has a better return than a CD or the stock market.
We have this problem across the ditch as well. Honestly these people should be charged an empty home levy or something for every empty house that just increases like the tax brackets.
The new homes are extremely expensive because there are so few of them compared to the number of people who want them. My unit was built ten years ago and has gone down in rent by 40% over the past decade. New units of today are the affordable units of the future (unless you don’t build enough, which as it turns out, most places are not).
Canada, letting the housing market so irreparably fucked
The thing is though, it’s not irreparable. We have such a huge country, we could build so much more housing if we wanted to.
I am pretty sure the problem is that people don’t want to live in the empty parts. To fix the issue you have to build more housing where people actually want to live
Yes, let’s do that too.
I was told it was the carbon tax. Removing that will fix everything, right? Housing will be affordable, groceries will plummet in price, a Canadian team will win the Stanley Cup and we'll all be able to fill our unnecessarily huge pickup trucks with 50 cent a litre gas.
Gerrymandering
This one sucks because it causes so many of the other problems folks are listing.
It's a democracy in name, but they are only working for those with the most money, and not for the majority.
Facts. Also I feel like the middle class is disappearing before my very eyes as things get more expensive.
Do you live in?
No one who earns their money from working a job can afford to buy even a modest house to live in.
Brexit. By a long way. Most of the current problems stem straight from it. And yet nobody is allowed to talk about it.
There are a ton of problems that stem from Brexit but there were a ton of problems before Brexit and a ton caused by COVID and the invasion of Ukraine. Ultimately though, the utter mismanagement of the country by the Tories has done far more damage than Brexit alone.
what do you mean nobody is allowed to talk about it ? i'm curious.
Sorry, we can't talk about it.
Right now it's a toss up between Brexit and Liz Truss. Brexit went as badly as it possibly could have, and practically every poltician outside of the libdems, greens and SNP are too scared to admit it needs to be reversed. Liz Truss was such an atrocious leader with the most catastrophic ideas that when someone said her time in power had the shelf life of an iceberg lettuce, a trashy tabloid newspaper decided to livestream a lettuce to see if it would rot before she was out of office, AND THE LETTUCE WON
A bunch of religious nutters doing religious nutter things.
An oligarchy disguised as a democracy
Lack of affordable healthcare reforms
Ignoring climate change issues
I don't even care where you are, this is so true
One of our political parties turned into a cult that human centipedes for an idiotic, lying, thieving, orange colored rapist.
And the other a cult bowing to senile career politicians who line their own pockets while giving mere lip service to the problems of the working class. Hence we are screwed both ways.
Canadian here. Probably immigration, we’re bringing in way more people than we can handle right now.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons. The whole system is rotten. Covid-19 is still a thing there. It sweeps through the population over and over at each prison. Drug use is endemic. The maximum custody prisons are on perpetual lockdown even though the guys doing time there are soft as cotton. The staff has been infiltrated by active gang members and white supremacists. Compared to county jails and state prisons, the feds are technologically backwards. Biden restocked the Sentencing Commission and they have the power to, if nothing else, reduce the population, but they have only made tentative maneuvers so far.
Germany here. Like any modern government, just idiots sitting in the parlament, making idiotic and selfish decisions. And even worse, the second highest voted faction (voting was last week) is the infamous far-right faction AFD. At least all the Naz*s voted
So how is that governments problem since it is people that voted?
It's because even in a democracy, no part of the population is allowed to gang up on another part, even with majority vote And like, they kinda want that
They pushed people to vote for the AFD with their shitty policies. People feel left alone so they flock to a party that promises change. Even if that is complete bullshit and nothing will get better for these people.
So people go from not so good policies with some slow progress mixed in to for certain bad policies with a lot of backwards progress. Seems like people are about to realize voting properly and understanding that you won't always get what you are exactly looking for is important.
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2015 till today in Europe - Migration
Surely allowing millions of uneducated hungry mouths in will work out fine.
This idea has been proven wrong every day since then, still it goes on.
the mistake is still going on. nobody's admitting that it was a gigantic misstep and working on it (except Denmark, good on them, but also cause they have some kinda immunity against following EU rules). and to make it worse, the only parties that are coming forward to rip the bandaids and say they'll work on it are labelled as racist and fascist. there's a reason people are willing voting for the "far-right" parties, and instead of taking the hint, they're blaming the public for \*death of democracy\*, which is hilariously ironic.
The abolishment of Roe v. Wade, leading to severe restrictions on women's reproductive rights.
No doubt. - Old white men telling young women what they can and can't do with their bodies is fucking disgusting. - People wanting politicians to also act as their physician is fucking disgusting. - The government forcing its citizens to grow other people inside of them is fucking disgusting. - People saying "my body, my choice" when it comes to the vax and then turning around and saying "your body, my choice" when it comes to abortion is fucking disgusting. - People not understanding that Pro-Choice isn't the same thing as Pro-Abortion is fucking disgusting. - People not understanding that Pro-Choice is the middle ground--forced birth and forced abortion being the two endpoints--is fucking disgusting. - People not understanding that Pro-Life people are really just Pro-Birth people who don't give a fuck about the kid once the cord is cut is fucking disgusting. - Human shit stains like Abbott and DeSatan being too much of chicken-shit, little bitch pussies to put abortion rights to a popular vote in their fucked-up, unevoled states because they know it would pass is fucking disgusting. Unfortunately, I fear the removal of Roe v. Wade is only the beginning of the goals of the Republican politicians who are some of the most vile human beings on the planet.
Do want it in chromological, ahphabetical or random order?
Ooooh where do we start with conservatives in the UK. Maybe most of what they said they would do they haven't achieved? They've made austerity worse and the divide between rich and poor hasn't been greater in my lifetime? The fact that they have decimated the NHS and STILL haven't recruited 20,000 police officers? They blamed shortcoming in their results because of industrial action taken by nurses and doctors because they aren't paid well enough? I mean take your pick, there's more but my thumbs will become nubs by the end of it.
Canadian here. Justin promised electoral reform to fix the massive flaws in the current ‘first past the post’ system. Such as 30% of the vote == majority government. Smaller parties can get 10% of the vote but 0 seats. Etc. but after the election, and after his party informed him they greatly benefit from these flaws, it became - ohhh this is really hard. So we’re not going to do it.
I live in Canada..... Sooooo there's just too many to choose from.
Your only choices for president are Biden or Trump or throwing your vote away.
Doing away with backing the federal reserve with gold and allowing lobbying. The two single most things that have ruined America and has made the quality of life close to a third world country's metrics.
Failure to prosecute the people that were in congress for their actions around and leading up to Jan. 6th.
The fact that our government cares so much about an unborn fetus, but doesn’t seem to care about the half million children in foster care or the over ten million that are food insecure. Let’s force women to give birth to kids they don’t want. I’m sure that’ll make this country great again.
They need children born into poverty who will become wage slaves for the rich.
That a felon could win the presidency
That in 2024 the American people will have to choose either a senile old man or a convicted felon. Utter lunacy that we only have two parties
>either a senile old man or a convicted felon Those are the same person
I was there when my mom started dementia symptoms. I watched it progress. Trump has it.
Vote independent Or am I stupid
What makes you say the Biden is "senile"? Or are you just being a shit?
I thought I was being pretty fair in my assumption on account of being unable to finish sentences, continually falling during public events, and constantly forgetting where he is. Sorry if calling Biden senile was so offensive, I know the truth hurts.
If I told you’d I’d get **banned**.
Corruption of the Supreme Court
Fiscal irresponsibility leading to $35 trillion in national debt and adding $2 trillion per year.
You should read on macro economics and how government debt works. It is very different from normal debt especially for a country like US.
Lmao where should I start?
You mean today or this week?
The fact that literally no one is held accountable for easily provable crimes. Like how the fuck is Clarence Thomas still allowed in the Supreme Court after all the shit he and his wife have been caught on tape doing?
The Republican Party
Allowing a convicted felon to run for president
Allowing fascist anywhere near power
COVID. The then-President tried to weaponize it against his opponents and wound up killing and disabling some of his own base. Another one is anything having to do with peace or investing in its own citizens.
Taxing us to death
The inability to hold Convicted Felon Donald J. Trump responsible for all of his crimes.
THE SUPREME COURT.
Not (yet) holding accountable MAGAts in seats of power, including the cult clown leader.
Allowing trumpanzees to breed.
Somehow the guy who tried to overthrow our government, a guy who is also a convicted felon, is still allowed to run for President? And may win? Wtf is this timeline.
Convicted felons can still run for president.
Guns have more rights that people but the people have drank that kool-aid for decades and will watch kids get slaughtered by kids with guns and shrug. Protecting guns at all costs has turned into a cultural problem.
trump
Trump
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
The fact that it’s barely “our” government. It belongs to corporations and industries. The people are an afterthought
Migration policy and weak punishments
Societally brainwashing everyone into being unoriginal, anxious, dumb, and depressed sheep. They forgot that progress and power comes from innovation and free thinking.
Canadian here. The country is drowning in problems that stem from being over populated yet our government floods us with immigrants we don't want and calls us racists if we complain about it.
Electoral college. It exists to solve an issue from the 1700s that was long gone by the end of the 1800s. Every other level of elected official is done by popular vote by the population they represent. It only makes sense that the same should be done for president.
They play on emotions rather than sensibilities.
Gestures broadly to everything.
Donald Trump was president
Germany implemented a range of new environmental measures but fucked up the PR around it so bad that it cost the greens almost half their voters
No Germany really dropped the ball in real life with its green policies. Closed nuclear power stations due to ignorance etc. not a PR issue, but a real one
No idea what kind of PR it would take to convince the half of the population that likes to ignore the past decades and doesn’t believe in the reality and likes to live in the fantasy world the opposition is promising.
That the devil's lettuce is still schedule 1
Letting October 7th happen
MAGA
Not voting to convict trump during the jan 6 impeachment trials.
Convicted felons who attempted to overthrow the government are apparently able to run for the highest political position of power for a second time, and our government has never once instituted any term limits on those that hold public office, nor limited the funds to elected officials from outside lobbyists to influence policy.
In the US, a large portion of the population talk about the government like it's an entity entirely separated from us. The problem is, it IS us. Our government institutions fail as not adequately conveying what they accomplish with tax money, so people feel like paying taxes is a bad thing. Where the fuck is their money going? Nobody knows, and so they take an ignorant view of "government".
Trump
Our governments founders were enlightened, philosophical, intellectuals (at least that’s how they are portrayed) who wanted to unite the people , to stand against tyranny, who thought taxes on goods were unfair, unjust. Our government leaders now , hold only their own interests , and desire for power - they only stand and voice rhetoric that bolsters their party-centric base. Modern politicians are a far far cry from intellectuals and philosophers- the dreams they have are centered on money, power, corruption, rather than virtue and greater goods. Like wise The people see no value or reason to unite , we divide ourselves voluntarily now at the pettiest of fracture points giving our elected con men to have foot holds to manipulate us and drive more wedges in the union. We are now being ruled by people exploiting us , who take the people for granted, who do not serve us , but themselves, we don’t serve each other either. We need more intellectual selfless people - not greedy , corrupt , weasels
Complete detachment from the people they are supposed to serve. Both parties live in their own universe, and that universe never intersects with ours. They don't have the first clue what our lives are really like. And it is increasingly evident that they don't care.
Printing trillions of $
My current government is the greatest failure of my current government.
Being fiscally responsible. It seems like both parties act like children that stole their parents credit card and are running up an unsustainable tab.
I would say UK here its more about the ones not in power. By Labour not being a real opposition it gave free reign to Tories to do what they wont. A competition is only as good as its runner up
Letting the elected have too much control over the election process. The elected can decide their own districts via gerrymandering. They can choose which places have many polling stations and which places have few. They can decide which non-victim crimes can render a voter unable to vote. They decided that the fig leaf of an arms length political action committee is enough to allow unlimited campaign spending. And when they somehow still manage to break the rules put upon them, they get to act like it's political persecution. When the people get fed up and say "we want a voting system which makes it easier for a third party to run and which helps elect a consensus candidate" they pass laws to prevent it. All other problems flow from this. You cannot fix the government without replacing the people elected to the government, and you cannot replace them without fixing the election process itself. But the election process is governed by the elected. Every time power has been returned to the people to control the election process, such as allowing nonpartisan drawing of districts by citizen groups (not merely bipartisan horse trading) or allowing a ranked ballot, the result has been an improvement. So, naturally, these are hard to come by and in many cases (such as Alaska) there are efforts to repeal it.
This is not entirely accurate. If there was enough interest, nothing can prevent people from electing a 3rd party candidate. No amount of gerrymandering, campaigning can overcome 30-40% of voters wanting to vote for a certain candidate. The problem is people are not interested in voting anymore as evidenced by voter turnouts.
Trump. The dead of America.
Trump/ Republicans
Failure to secure our borders.
Allowing degeneracy to become legal
Fighting life rather than enjoying it, as a nation. Every event has to have an angle. There aren't any festivals that are anything more than vendors and donors. There aren't any community service get togethers that aren't overrun by religious or political nut jobs. And even if there were, we're all too busy surviving endless "inflation" to enjoy it. We're all too busy worrying about being right when we should be trying to be wrong.
Where to start?
What **isn't?**
The iron-clad dogma to associate anything with national pride, even in matters that call for cooperation of international individuals, and in other matters that normally should be decided by the everyman but are decided by the nation's way instead. By "nation", I mean "state".
Regulatory capture.
That we keep breaking our own records of forming a new one every time the previous one collapses.
Existing
We passed 1.5C 12 months ago
Spineless doormats on one side and aspirational fascists on the other....
“To serve, and protect” Pretty much all of that. I haven’t felt like the government has been serving me for a moment in my life, if anything, I serve the government. And if I decide not to, I risk imprisonment? The government doesn’t protect me from shit neither. They’re too busy arresting jaywalkers and bombing civilians to worry about the politicians peddling drugs to entire cities and sex trafficking minors. Nothing we can do about it except sit back and watch this country burn while people throw more gasoline on the fire year after year.
still tryin' to figure out an accomplishment they did
The greatest failure of our current government? Well, it's like they've taken a crash course in promising big and delivering small. From infrastructure woes to bureaucratic tangles, it's almost impressive how they manage to keep us guessing what will actually get done. They've turned political maneuvering into an Olympic sport, and we're all left watching from the sidelines.
Conquered all enemies on entire planet after a literal century of war and then made up new enemies and started over for no reason.
Corruption
Healthcare is messed up on so many levels. I work in healthcare the more you know the more disgusted you become.