greetings americans, it an honest question.
Outside of america i constantly see, especially recently as your elections are coming up that…well, it looks like a clownshow?

Your recent two contenders where a hugely dept orange clown who can barely keep a coherent thought advertising a product in the whitehows, who had to have his name constantly mention when being talked to or he will be disinterested.
The other one was a senile old fossil who couldnt even say a single sentence without his dementia kicking in.

Now you have trump again as a runner up and he seems so openly incompetently corrupt its almost funny, than we have the senile man who (to my extremely limited knowledge) got replaced by this kamala woman because he was too old, said woman seems to be at least present in mind and appears to see trump as what he really is, a manchild (the famous clip of her basically laguhing at him)

Like, are outside views are just so vehemently skewed by news, people and the like? Or am i just grossly misinformed?

  • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
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    2 months ago

    it is as batshit as it appears.

    But for us at least, it is quite sinister as well, since Trump it quite literally attempting to instill himself as a dictator to avoid prison, and this is being facilitated by white nationalists, religious zealots, tech billionaires, and an easily decieved under-educated populace that are acting against their own interests.

    • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      this election is definitely moving “fund public schools” up on my priority list of things I care about. It’s now barely second to Climate Change quite possibly the top thing, because these idiots vote and we need the votes to deal with climate change.

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        20+ years ago, George Carlin discussed public education.

        “Just think of the average american voter. These are some dumb motherfuckers right here. Some dumb motherfuckers. And as dumb as the average one is…HALF OF THEM ARE EVEN DUMBER THAN THAT!!! Some dumb mother fuckers in this country. Some dumb mother fuckers…”

        And in case you were hoping he had a positive ending to that set, he didn’t. His overall point was that our government is not being held back by the voters. There is no secret set of competent politicians who could just fix things if they got voted in. This is what we voted in, because this was whats available. Don’t look for it to get better. This is what our election system produces from the pool of candidates it has available.

        Garbage in, garbage out. It’s just that simple.

        So, while I DO agree that a HARD focus needs to be placed on education, it’s not going to help the voting process. It’s not a issue of dumb voters voting for dumb people. It’s an issue of trash candidates being our only options…and at this point, it’s getting to a point of intentional facism.

        Like I said. Trash in, trash out.

        • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          A better education will, at least partially, solve the problem… in the long run, of course… but the long run is like 20, 30 years from now. Things might get a lot worse by then and beyond fixing.

          Things perpetuate and there is no fixing this. The real issue is capitalism and money. You can’t have an incentive to care about the people and how they are raised and educated if the only true incentive in this system is money. There is money in education, of course, but there is so much more from taking advantage of stupid people, regardless who does it (big tech, politicians, fast food chains…).

        • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
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          2 months ago

          I love Carlin, but he was an awful defeatest, any hope beaten right out of him, which he admits himself.

          Education is, genuinely, the prime issue. Where I agree with Carlin is that better education can’t fix our system, because the system itself is fundamentally broken. It’d be better with smarter people, but ultimately would still be corporate captured and self-serving.

          What a highly educated populace could mean is a rejection of the current system entirely, in favor of building a new one in its shell cooperatively, with horizontal, decentralized power and the wholesale rejection of profit-motive being the prime focus.

          I suspect Carlin would assume humanity is incapable of that, but then again he probably wasn’t super familiar with how that actually happened in the Spanish Civil War.

          If we manage to pull it off, Carlin would’ve been happy for once, begrudgingly :p

        • FuglyDuck@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I disagree.

          It’s not that public education makes people progressive, though.

          It’s that there’s now tons of poorly educated people who completely lack critical thinking skills.

          You can see that in the resurgence of conspiracy theories like Flat Earth, and some of the antivax theories. (Microchips that can’t be found?)

          Conservatives believe the shit people tell them because they’re too stupid to be critical of it. Like when trump tells them immigrants are eating pets, or that a wall is going to solve all the immigration problems; or that the economy some how suffers and it’s all their fault.

          They’re uncritical and unable to reason out how self-evident his lies are.

          We need that back. It won’t solve our problems, no. But if we’re going to solve them, we need people that are capable of discourse beyond macros.

      • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        You should put mental healthcare right up there too. The sheer craziness of it all is only possible because the lunatics have taken over the asylum.

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I don’t know how yu do this when so much school funding is local. I’ve always lived in areas that valued education agiin and we’re willing to pay for it. However no matter how much my taxes increase, it won’t help those kids in places with less money or not willing to invest in it.

        It’s a much bigger ask to turn school funding into a national thing.

          • AA5B@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            I’m not entirely sure how i feel about that: spending the same on educating all students is surely a good thing and I’m sure this benefitted more than it hurt. However, the punishment for deciding to spend even more seems inappropriate. If I disagree that we’re spending enough on education and can get my neighbors to agree, but not the state, why shouldn’t we be able to spend more on our kids, until the rest of the state is persuaded.

            It’s not just about fairly allocating spending per student and fairly shouldering the tax burden, but politics. Some towns want to spend more on education

            • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net
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              2 months ago

              If you and your neighbors have the means, then you could opt for private tutoring if you feel your public school is not adequate.

              • AA5B@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                Sure, but my point is that while all kids deserve a well funded education system, all kids deserve high standards, all kids deserve all the opportunity, politics will still determine that level. We clearly already have a situation where different places have wildly different ideas of the value of a good education, and putting a cap on spending won’t change that

                But it’s different to say a town shouldn’t pay more. I’ll vote for better funding for schools whereever they’re needed to bring all kids’ future up to my standards, even at the expense of my increased taxes to pay for it, but I will not let them limit my kids’ future down to their regressive standards.

        • JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          A teacher once told me “You can fix dumb. You can’t fix stupid.”

          Funny enough, they’re a diehard Trump Supporter.

          • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            There’s a difference between ignorant and stupid.

            Ignorant is the lack of knowledge.

            Stupid is the lack of ability to apply knowledge.

            • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works
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              2 months ago

              Generally speaking, most people are just uneducated. Thus, that is fixable. And you can even get a lot out of mentally challenged people if you work with them a lot.

        • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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          What I find hilarious about that scene is, the writters wanted to give her a drug problem. With actual hard drugs. Which for her acting would have made sense if she had been crashing off the drugs.

          Then the network said it wasn’t ok with that. So the writting stayed the same, the scene stayed the same, except kt was caffene she was crashing from. Which, given the over the top acting, makes no sense.

          So now she just comes off as insane.

  • Aidinthel@reddthat.com
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    2 months ago

    Biden isn’t quite as bad as the soundbites make him seem, but he is slowing down (physically and mentally) in his old age and was just generally an extremely uninspiring candidate. Trump, if anything is worse than you portray. He’s way more senile than Biden, in addition to the blatant corruption, rulebreaking, childishness, and being horrifically and openly racist and sexist. He has literally quoted Hitler! No decent and reasonable person who is paying the slightest attention to what he says and does would think he is remotely qualified for any position of authority. The fact that he is polling roughly evenly with an extremely qualified and intelligent person like Kamala Harris is indeed an absolute clownshow.

  • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    No. You seem to have the jist of it. Clownshow election, manchild orange oompa loompa, dementia riddled president, new woman who’s condescending of bullshit.

    Congrats. You’re now qualified to write for SNL until November 5th. Don’t worry, no pressure. They have 1-2 good sketches per week, and a ton of crap sketches.

    • Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I pretty much gave up on it when the weekly formula was “take the most successful character from the past few months, and make them say all their catch phrases in a slightly different scenario”

  • Tiefling IRL@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    2 months ago

    Yes, it’s a clown show and half the country would rather throw away the whole US than vote for a woman. Please send help, fascists don’t give up power easily.

    • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Please send help, fascists don’t give up power easily.

      Actually, most countries that could actually help are hoping to see you burn… because they’re your biggest contenders in world domination.

    • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
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      2 months ago

      I think the woman part is fine-ish; they don’t wanna vote for a democrat. In fact they’d probably vote for a trans woman if she had an R next to her name.

  • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works
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    The education system in the US is screwed beyond oblivion, that’s why this is happening.

    And it’s not just the US. I live in the Balkans and things are… well, very bad to be honest. We have the lowest average IQ in Europe.

    The problem is, stupid people benefit both sides, left and right. They’re easy to control, as voters. No one wants voters which can think critically.

    Democracy is flawed IMO. There is no fixing this. People do rule, but at what cost. There are alternatives, but, let’s face it, none of that will be implemented, at least not in our lifetimes.

    • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      It didn’t used to be like that… but you had some horrible decisions made (or not paid attention to is more like it) over the years and this is the result.

  • rsuri@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Yeah it’s that terrible, but look at the rest of the world. Putin enjoys a lot of support from the same people he’s sending to die, Modi in India wins elections by a large margin on a platform of basically “Fuck Sikhs and Muslims”. Add China and basically most of humanity lives under someone who is blatantly racist, corrupt, generally horrible, or a combination thereof. And Western Europe doesn’t have a leg to stand on either, the UK ignored dire warnings and voted for Brexit without even understanding what it is.

    Humans don’t believe what’s objectively correct, they believe what they want to believe. This makes feeding people what they want to hear a very successful strategy, and one that psychopaths have an advantage in pursuing.

  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    orange clown who can barely keep a coherent thought

    Just assume the possibility that this is partly a show, in order to make people underestimate him. His way of talking in fuzzy, noncommittal half sentences is a method to distribute only suggestions instead of clear statements.

    • minibyte@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      Just assume the possibility that this is partly a show, in order to make people underestimate him

      This is a man that ran a casino into the ground. A man who has 6 bankruptcies and 34 felonies under his extensive belt.

      He might just be that dumb.

  • AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    90% of Americans are no better informed than you are on how realistic of a portrayal it is. In fact, I’ve met many people who are proud of how willfully ignorant they are of politics.

  • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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    The really interesting thing about Harris is so much of her support comes from people who hate Trump and want to stop him at all costs. There’s this large contingent of voters who have never voted for a candidate they like, they’ve only ever voted strategically to stop the candidate they hate. “Democracy”

  • Paraponera_clavata@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    I wonder if the issue here is you don’t appreciate how stupid your own proletariat is (i.e., as stupid and vulnerable as the American populis, but not exposed to the same intense propaganda). I think humans everywhere are surprisingly gullible and illogical.

  • zbyte64@awful.systems
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    2 months ago

    You summed it up correctly. The thing is the presidential race used to be a horse show, but that format was somehow easily hijacked by a rodeo clown.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Oh, only right-wing. When you want to say something cool-looking, but don’t have the courage to be honest.

      It’s all of propaganda, but even that’s not completely true.

      What’s true is that humans are fucking apes. There’s no victory over that.

      There’s no political good.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Doesn’t have anything to do with what I said.

          I said that all propaganda is problematic, not only that of visible political parties, and not only right-wing one.

          Furthermore I said that the problem is that humans are, I repeat, fucking apes.

          And you writing something irrelevant and some anonymous idiots downvoting me illustrate this very well, because only fucking apes would take this as an attack on their particular crowd of apes, and ignore the actual meaning.