2020 US Elections | Biden certified as President | Dems control Congress

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Conor

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Sometimes I really struggle to accept that America is most likely the same as other countries re: population intelligence, it just seems like there are so many complete idiots, ripe for the taking for any snake oil salesman with a modicum of charisma.
 

Libano

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Sometimes I really struggle to accept that America is most likely the same as other countries re: population intelligence, it just seems like there are so many complete idiots, ripe for the taking for any snake oil salesman with a modicum of charisma.
This happens everywhere. The only difference are the stories people choose to believe in.
 

MuFc_1992

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This happens everywhere. The only difference are the stories people choose to believe in.
I think the problem has more to do with ego and less with intelligence. In America everyone seems to think they are the titular character in a movie and that leads to people taking contrarian path which eventually leads to supporting Trump and accepting far right(or far left) positions. People in most other countries don't act in that way.
 

SirAF

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I think the problem has more to do with ego and less with intelligence. In America everyone seems to think they are the titular character in a movie and that leads to people taking contrarian path which eventually leads to supporting Trump and accepting far right(or far left) positions. People in most other countries don't act in that way.
That is probably very accurate. Have you ever seen a regular American being interviewed by local news or something like that? It could be about a cat being saved from a storage room the the local Publix in a remote town in Iowa and the guy they're talking to acts like the most charismatic person of all time!
 

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Sometimes I really struggle to accept that America is most likely the same as other countries re: population intelligence, it just seems like there are so many complete idiots, ripe for the taking for any snake oil salesman with a modicum of charisma.
Probably a perceptual illusion from only watching a curated selection of social media content. In my everyday life, it’s extremely rare to encounter anything remotely resembling the levels of idiocy that get portrayed on Twitter, which are unfortunately the only point of reference to outsiders.
 

Libano

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I think the problem has more to do with ego and less with intelligence. In America everyone seems to think they are the titular character in a movie and that leads to people taking contrarian path which eventually leads to supporting Trump and accepting far right(or far left) positions. People in most other countries don't act in that way.
While each nation has their idiosyncracies, what is the same everywhere is that the masses tend to naively follow someone they trust. That trust is usually undeserved. Independent, critical thinking is rare and publicly discouraged (often even ridiculed).
 

Denis79

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Sometimes I really struggle to accept that America is most likely the same as other countries re: population intelligence, it just seems like there are so many complete idiots, ripe for the taking for any snake oil salesman with a modicum of charisma.
Big problem in the US is that many sources of news, information etc are agenda driven. The information the public recieves is twisted to fit the desired narrative, depending on the source. Add social media to this and you have the perfect place for what we see going on in the US right now.

In most European countries the news is just the news and you don't have panels discussing each event, adding their own opinion, twisting the facts to fit the channels narrative, analysing as if the news was a football match. I truly believe in free speech and the free media, it's fundamental to any democracy but it can also be dangerous when taken to the level we see in the US.
 

GlastonSpur

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Did you ever think for a second that Carolina red and Florida man live in th US while you are shuttling beteen UK and india?
I have lived in the USA (in the past) for 2 years.

More importantly, living in the USA does not by itself make someone an expert on identifying 'capitalism' as the alleged source of fascism - especially not when the underlying pillars of of technocracy are shared by socialism, liberalism, communism and capitalism alike.

It is absurd to argue - as @Florida Man appears to be doing - that if Biden replaces Trump as president it will make little or no difference in stopping the rise of fascism in the States. The sitting president has very considerable powers and cultural influence - and the big difference between Biden and Trump is very, very obvious.
 

Raoul

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I have lived in the USA (in the past) for 2 years.

More importantly, living in the USA does not by itself make someone an expert on identifying 'capitalism' as the alleged source of fascism - especially not when the underlying pillars of of technocracy are shared by socialism, liberalism, communism and capitalism alike.

It is absurd to argue - as @Florida Man appears to be doing - that if Biden replaces Trump as president it will make little or no difference in stopping the rise of fascism in the States. The sitting president has very considerable powers and cultural influence - and the big difference between Biden and Trump is very, very obvious.
You may be onto something with this argument. Getting rid of Trump will do a lot to impair most of the 14 core characteristics of fascism, 12 of which are directly applicable to Trump’s behavior.
 

GlastonSpur

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Big problem in the US is that many sources of news, information etc are agenda driven. The information the public recieves is twisted to fit the desired narrative, depending on the source. Add social media to this and you have the perfect place for what we see going on in the US right now.

In most European countries the news is just the news and you don't have panels discussing each event, adding their own opinion, twisting the facts to fit the channels narrative, analysing as if the news was a football match. I truly believe in free speech and the free media, it's fundamental to any democracy but it can also be dangerous when taken to the level we see in the US.
It doesn't help when almost all the TV news channels in the states are commercially-driven (i.e. rely on advertising), because to attract audiences you need to continually hype things up, play up controversies, stoke tensions and create 'drama'.

This is why the UK, for example, is so blessed to have the BBC - with very probably the most widely respected news reporting service in the world.
 

Denis79

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It doesn't help when almost all the TV news channels in the states are commercially-driven (i.e. rely on advertising), because to attract audiences you need to continually hype things up, play up controversies, stoke tensions and create 'drama'.

This is why the UK, for example, is so blessed to have the BBC - with very probably the most widely respected news reporting service in the world.
State TV is great as long as it's not pressured by political sources. I agree that the BBC has the image of a solid source of news. I live in Serbia, yet watch BBC News daily as a morning routine.
 

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It doesn't help when almost all the TV news channels in the states are commercially-driven (i.e. rely on advertising), because to attract audiences you need to continually hype things up, play up controversies, stoke tensions and create 'drama'.

This is why the UK, for example, is so blessed to have the BBC - with very probably the most widely respected news reporting service in the world.
The US also has PBS, but as you say, it can't compete with the major networks because they draw a lot more money from advertising than PBS gets from the government and private donations.
 

GlastonSpur

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State TV is great as long as it's not pressured by political sources. I agree that the BBC has the image of a solid source of news. I live in Serbia, yet watch BBC News daily as a morning routine.
The BBC is not 'state TV' though. It's editorially independent of the government and acts with similar freedoms to privately owned media.
 

WI_Red

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But what are Kentucky and Bama looking like?
Bama is a lost cause. Lived there for over a decade. Trump will win by 10+ and Jones' Senate seat is gone. It took him having a literally child predator as an opponent to win and he still barely won. Tubberville is a complete moron, but he has Trump's backing and coached Auburn football, so yeah.....
 

Redplane

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Bama is a lost cause. Lived there for over a decade. Trump will win by 10+ and Jones' Senate seat is gone. It took him having a literally child predator as an opponent to win and he still barely won. Tubberville is a complete moron, but he has Trump's backing and coached Auburn football, so yeah.....
I can never not see Alabama be mentioned without thinking back to the infamous Top Gear car decoration episode.
 

Raoul

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Bama is a lost cause. Lived there for over a decade. Trump will win by 10+ and Jones' Senate seat is gone. It took him having a literally child predator as an opponent to win and he still barely won. Tubberville is a complete moron, but he has Trump's backing and coached Auburn football, so yeah.....
Agreed on all counts. Mississippi and Alabama are probably going to be the last states that ever turn blue because they lack large population centers - in contrast to GA, which looks like it may happen this cycle.
 

WI_Red

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Agreed on all counts. Mississippi and Alabama are probably going to be the last states that ever turn blue because they lack large population centers - in contrast to GA, which looks like it may happen this cycle.
Birmingham is a pretty big population center, and is very, very blue. The problem is that voter suppression is alive and well. Hell, the supreme court case that removed the voting rights act protections was filed by Shelby county (south of Alabama). Not only that, but the gerrymandering done by republicans in Alabama makes NC look amateurish. I submit to you the 7th congressional district. The big area is the Black Belt (yes, that's its name. Wanna take a guess why?) The little top arm is there to grab Bessemer and downtown Birmingham and the southeast weirdness is to grab the majority black areas of Montgomery. So basically they were able to swallow up a huge percentage of black Alabamians in a single district.
 

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While each nation has their idiosyncracies, what is the same everywhere is that the masses tend to naively follow someone they trust. That trust is usually undeserved. Independent, critical thinking is rare and publicly discouraged (often even ridiculed).
I would add that the perspective expressed previously about the US is amplified because of how visible we are as a global power. But you don’t have to leave Europe to see similar problems to what we are facing in the US. Not everyone is fixated on daily events in say Hungary, to use one example.
 

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It seems a really odd phrase to use. Was he feeling threatened and just blurted out a call to arms for one of his more aggressive support groups, or is there some reason that could ever have been a useful thing to say?
Trump just blurts things out without thinking. He's not exactly someone who carefully weighs his words. He's a fecking moron, that's why he says these things.

Im just mad the other side somehow managed to find someone so old and daft he cannot even make word salad moron Donny look especially bad. Hell, put me up there, Id feck Trump up.
 

shamans

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Sometimes I really struggle to accept that America is most likely the same as other countries re: population intelligence, it just seems like there are so many complete idiots, ripe for the taking for any snake oil salesman with a modicum of charisma.
The reason is America has a lot of money and resources generated on the coasts. This "trickles down" to the inner states that are ignorant AF. Now for them it's like shit we don't do crap and live like kings and they're given a voice.
 

shamans

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It doesn't help when almost all the TV news channels in the states are commercially-driven (i.e. rely on advertising), because to attract audiences you need to continually hype things up, play up controversies, stoke tensions and create 'drama'.

This is why the UK, for example, is so blessed to have the BBC - with very probably the most widely respected news reporting service in the world.

BBC is a good news outlet, especially for the U.K but let's not pretend they don't also have a heavy, heavy bias. In reporting Iraq invasion and anything related to Russia or even NATO the BBC is ridiculously biased. Of course, it is probably better than any other state run news outlet but do not for a moment take what it reports about anything related to middle east as unbiased.
 
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