Right? And sure the debate wasn’t good but it was also better after the first 10 minutes. And now the media is all over Biden and again amplifying trump. The Dems are infighting while Putin and xi put their feet up and laugh.
If you watch through the debate, you can -hear- him shit himself when Biden’s mic is muted, and like…
Look, I’m not going to body shame, and old people deal with problems of that nature sometimes. That’s cool. It happens.
But like… given the options, I’d rather have a president who is -usually- together and with it… than someone so accustomed to shitting themselves they can do so mid-sentence, televised, and think nothing of it. That is not a good look internationally. Literally all the other shit he spews aside.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qqG96G8YdcE&pp
This video, start it at 1:16:00. It happens around 1:16:25, right about when he says “tremendous”, but the context is fun.
In music class, my teacher had an analogy he’d bring up occasionally: the trashy, beat-up truck on the block could be rolled down a hill sans-driver and you’d hardly noticed a difference. On the pristine rolls royce, though, the smallest imperfection would be glaring.
He was using it as an illustration that, even as we got better, it would just be more important to put the effort in, but I feel it applies well here, too. Trump is covered in so much shit, it’s difficult to focus on any particular issue of his. And while Biden’s far from spotless, his errors stand out so much more that he basically needs to be perfect or he gets picked apart by his own side.
The fact that I know more about US politics than my own country’s politics shows what’s wrong with US politics and social media.
It’s not just Lemmy doom-scrolling though.
Here’s an article about the upcoming US election in my native country’s national publication. There are others, I literally just searched for Trump on the front page.
This is not a publication trying to sell you doom and gloom either, they’re the least biased, most factual publication around these parts. Required by law to not hold a bias and also nationalized so there’s no profit motive for ragebait.
The US election is just considered important in many parts of the world. And to be fair, with the US being extremely important to NATO and Trump wanting to be done with NATO, aaaand many eastern-european countries being very much dependent on NATO to continue existing… You can see how Trump being elected could potentially affect tens if not hundreds of millions of people outside the US too.
Honestly I feel like the U.S. being a bit more isolationist is something most Americans (and a lot of other countries) would be ok with.
America doesn’t need to be the world police anymore, it needs to handle its own obvious internal issues and let NATO/UN have bigger teeth for a few decades. Maybe divert some of the the military budget to schools and healthcare or something.
edit: for clarity
The fact that people don’t remember the vast amount of news reports on women accusing Trump shows exactly the limits of democracy.
With all the sources we have these days, information is easy to find and is available from a lot of different perspectives. It’s easy to apply critical thinking by comparing different accounts of the same story. But still, people feel that forming an opinion is not their responsibility, and blame the media.
Democracy only works when a majority of people take the time to think about their vote.
That’s what they’ve been doing to us all for a while; keep us all so busy and focused on other issues we don’t pay attention to democracy.
I just got “reprimanded” today for paying attention. I commented to a friend, when she asked about plans for the holiday, that I didn’t really think there was anything to celebrate at the moment. And when I tried to get her caught up on the news, I got interrupted. “You really do internalize a lot of this stuff. It’s not healthy for you.” Yeah, well, neither is any of the shit that’s been happening. Feel free to celebrate your “personal freedom” to roam the American West in your RV and volunteer at care centers and attend RV rallies. Let me know how that “personal freedom” works out if the Freedom Units in your bank accounts run dry. Forgive me if I notice that those without enough Freedom Units don’t have those same freedoms you enjoy.
I mean you’re not wrong but depending on the working dynamic it might have come off a bit strong perhaps?
It also shows how large and reactive the Russian troll farms are. Look at how busy they’ve been here just today.
And it’s going to get a lot worse.
