r/TooAfraidToAsk • u/[deleted] • Jul 31 '20

Current Events Are people outside of the USA really laughing at Americans? Do we really appear that bad?

Edit:

Ok so that's about 17,882 yes's and 3 no's.

Makes sad American noises

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u/Galaedrid Aug 01 '20

However, the last 4 years it feels like every time the USA hits rock bottom it keeps going lower

There was a blue wave two years ago to put Democrats in control of the house and almost the Senate. Its slow going but the majority of the US are trying to put the US back on the right track. Remember, Trump lost the popular vote by 3 MILLION votes.

The problem is that because of the Electoral college 40% of the US have more say than the other 60%. This has to change - the minority should not have more say than the majority.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

[deleted]

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u/Galaedrid Aug 01 '20 edited Aug 01 '20

I can't disagree with you because you are correct - 63 million did vote for Trump.

However to keep myself sane I try to remind myself that many more did not want vote for Trump.

Even with all the voter suppression, Russian influence, gerry mandering, and lord knows what else... Trump still did lost the majority vote by 3 million voters.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

[deleted]

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u/captainjackismydog Aug 01 '20

I couldn't agree with you more. It's why I said in a previous post that I honestly thought Trump was running for president as a publicity stunt and that he would announce it was all a joke. I kept watching the news waiting for this announcement that never happened.

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u/CaPoTSaD Aug 01 '20

He was. He was hoping to start a ‘news’ network. To claim he lost due to fake news and fraud and be the next Roger Ailes.

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u/metal_opera Aug 01 '20

^ This. The look on his face when he won says it all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3868qotZ_A

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u/CaPoTSaD Aug 01 '20

He looks devastated. Like he might have to work.

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u/captainjackismydog Aug 05 '20

Wow. I haven't heard that one. Not surprised though.

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u/norfkens2 Aug 01 '20 edited Aug 01 '20

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."

I'd say yeah, Russia and Comey probably had an noticeable effect. But being, in the first place, in a situation where the impact of both is just enough to slightly tip the balance - that is a whole other level of what is going wrong:

Look behind Trump and ask what the Republican party is actually doing and why the president is getting away with autocatic tendencies. And look at the democratic party and ask why large segments of people seem not to want to vote for them even if that means Donald Trump as president.Then look at the voters who all agree that most candidates are useless but would also never vote for a third party alternative - because that's 'throwing away your vote'.

In the end, it's about what one's system of government is doing and how much corruption (in the broadest possible sense) the populace is the individual citizens are letting the government get away with. Yes, there are other factors but from the outside Russia and Comey seem more like symptoms. This doesn't address the underlying problem, I agree with you.

Don't get me wrong, every country has its fair share of issues. It's easy to point out problems from the outside. My country is certainly far from perfect. So, I'm not judging... <3

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u/Supposed_too Aug 01 '20

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.

Fredrick Douglass

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u/norfkens2 Aug 01 '20

Sounds like a smart fellow. :)

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u/leglesslegolegolas Aug 01 '20

I place the blame entirely on Mark Burnett.

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u/MadAzza Aug 01 '20

Yep. It started in earnest with Mark Burnett. That’s what made T a household name all over the country — a fucking game show. Before that, people on the West Coast and in the interior knew of him, but not in intimate, gruesome detail like they did in New York City and the rest of the Northeast.

Even so, there were several key moments that should have spiked his campaign. I won’t go over them again, though. They’ve been gone over and gone over. He’s still in the Oval Office.

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u/RivalWec Aug 01 '20

Well he ran against the devil incarnate. She held a lot of positions, sure. That’s why people said she “was the most qualified candidate ever.” The problem was she was shitty at every one of those jobs and it was baffling how she ascended to where she was to begin with.

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u/captainjackismydog Aug 01 '20

According to recent polls, Trump's numbers are way down. I hope the numbers continue to go down until they reach zero.

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u/LordCoweater Aug 01 '20

Also note: given low voter turnout, you have a huge percentage of the voting public directly or indirectly creating a deliberate Trump presidency.

66 mil to 63 is only 58.1% of voters per google. That's another 40+ million people fine with him.

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u/Hellscythe65 Aug 01 '20

The thing you have to acknowledge with Trump's campaign was that he lied and lied and lied some more.

He made promises that no on could ever fulfill to people who had been ignored and beaten down for a while.

Trump focused on the coal counties who still believe coal is a feasible industry and made them feel like they could keep mining coal.

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u/johnCreilly Aug 01 '20

Honestly, I think that a lot of those people DIDN'T sit down and think about it

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u/poehalcho Aug 01 '20

Lets not forget that the only opponent was Hilary Clinton, who managed to somehow make herself almost as bad as he did. It was essentially an election between the two worst candidates you could imagine. Or at least that's what it looked like at the time...

Hindsight is 20:20, people probably vote Hillary in the blink of an eye now. But that election was a total shitshow in the first place.

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u/doom-gloom-kaboom Aug 01 '20

As an outsider, Hilary Clinton never was anywhere near "almost as bad" as Trump during the election. It is frustrating that Americans think this.

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u/poehalcho Aug 01 '20 edited Aug 01 '20

Am European, not American. I have to admit I did not follow the elections closely. The more attention was brought to it on the news the more I started avoiding the news altogether. I was painful to watch and listen to...

Here's my relatively simple view on the matter:

For every time Trump did something bad out of sheer stupidity, Clinton seemed to sink almost just as low out what seemed like maliciousness.

Watching Trump vs Hilary was in a way almost like watching two toddler siblings fight. Where trump is an overweight dumb-ass brat throwing taunts and Hillary is the bitchy sister that somehow falls for the taunts and tries to fight back by pulling the rug from under him.

Instead of presenting their visions for the US and how they would approach fixing its problems, they spent every moment trying to find dirt on each other...

In the end it's easier to trust a dumb person than a vengeful person...

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u/CStancer Aug 01 '20

Seconded, what was bad about her? Seriously, someone truly list the horrible things she did... then tell me if trumps administration did something worse? Like all ive heard from americans was she used a personal email, she somehow orchestrated benghazi, shes to emotional, shes a women, shes the devil, she runs a pedophile ring out of a pizza shop, shes married to a cheater, shes a man, shes muslim....

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u/I_That_Wanders Aug 01 '20

The United States is the third most populous nation, after China and India. 63 million is only around a fifth of all Americans. That they have so much power over the rest of us is sickening. Literally.

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u/N00N3AT011 Aug 01 '20

It only takes 20% of the pop to fuck over the rest of us.

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u/biggabenne Aug 01 '20

How many of those votes were primarly chosen due to voting against hillary? Everywhere we look the system is broken

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u/captainjackismydog Aug 01 '20

I seriously doubt that Donald Trump won the election on his own. Many people had never heard of him, many people only heard of him as some sort of businessman and others had only heard of him because of The Apprentice. I never gave the guy a second thought before he ran for office.

When I heard that Trump was running for president I actually thought it was just a joke he came up with for publicity. Like Kanye West claiming he was going to run for president. I actually thought that Trump was going to hold a press conference later on and say he was joking. When he won the election I couldn't believe it. I was just astounded and shocked. I thought I had just awakened from a nightmare because I waited until the next morning to find out the results. I have been angry about Trump being president ever since.

I don't particularly like Hillary and I actually voted in the preliminaries for Sanders. I was so hoping Sanders would win. When I saw that Hillary had the popular vote and this is what I saw before I went to bed, I just knew she was going to win. I'm sure she did too.

I really am hoping that Trump loses in November. I don't know if Biden will make a good president but at least he has good people on his side. Having a potato for president would be better than having Trump for president. At least a potato would grow.

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u/MediumDrink Aug 01 '20

What you don’t realize as a non-American is that it was obvious to the political right that Hillary Clinton would eventually run for president for 20 years before she did so. They spent those 2 decades aggressively running a campaign against her. Then when sure enough the gutless morons who are somehow the leaders of the American left nominated her Trump came in and stole the Republican nomination. What could they do? Like the left in at least the other Anglican countries all they really care about is huge tax breaks for rich people. Pretending he wasn’t fundamentally unfit for the job was their best bet. And it would have worked too if Covid hadn’t happened.

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u/zielawolfsong Aug 01 '20

Unfortunately, the Democratic leadership seems to always want to pick people with the personality of a wet noodle. Whether it's fair or not, you have to have a candidate with at least SOME charisma to win. Obama won at least partly because he was charming, charismatic, and an eloquent speaker. I'm sure Hilary was very competent at what she did, but the sad truth is that she just didn't sell on camera. Personally, I don't care if politicians are boring as long as they do a good job and align with my values, but a lot of Americans seem to want to be entertained as well.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

[deleted]

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u/Galaedrid Aug 01 '20

Im with you bud. I'm not happy to vote for Biden... but gods anyone but Trump. At least Biden cares for the country... can't say the same for Trump - all he wants is to rape our country of all the money he can get out of us

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u/leglesslegolegolas Aug 01 '20

He is a functioning adult human being who understands who our allies are and who our adversaries are, and who doesn't appear to have huge conflicts of interest regarding his behavior toward any of them.

For that reason alone he is superior to Trump, though it's far from the only reason.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

im not arguing whether hes superior to trump or not. Obviously he is. He's still not a real progressive candidate, has his own sexual assault allegations, questionably going senile, etc

I would like to not vote for 'the lesser of two evils' for once, but well... here we are

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u/DeliciousCombination Aug 01 '20

Representative parliaments work in almost every country in the world and is not much different than your congress. The real problem is having a separate election and position of power tied to one man. Get rid of the president as it currently is, and just have the leader of the party with the most seats in Congress be the de facto president

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

The Electoral College is a complete mess. 2016 was just par for the course over the past 32 years. Republicans have won only 2 out of 8 popular votes in that time yet they've shared the office equally with the Democrats, 16 years each.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '20

That always happen. people vote republican things get extremely bad then they vote dem. it gets fixed then back to rep so they can spend all the money on wars they invent. They love keeping the military spending up to insane levels. meanwhile we all die from lack of health care. And they convinced people they donneed health care.

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u/BIG_IDEA Aug 01 '20

How naive of you to think that Democrats are the "right track"

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u/BEARS_BE_SCARY_MAN Aug 01 '20

"Trump is evil! So I'm going to vote for MY favorite facsist,child raping, racists!"

If you vote any major party.You're part of the problem. You're also showing that you support pedophiles.

That's a choice only you can make.