Jeezus you guys are killing me tonight and I’m on the other side of the pond! I guess after looking at that link, seeing the folks carrying on reminded me of my time out there, Drunk as a skunk on some Belgian Fruity Beer - it was something like 18% alcohol. I swear I know where my stamina came from when trying to keep up with those guys! Thanks Grandpa Joseph!
Yes, I know this is an American board, and whilst I have some interest in who wins the next election, I don’t like seeing half the potential topics in GD filled with shit about forks and presidential candidates. Yes, I can not click on them (I don’t click on them), but it’s kind of like discovering that your local video library has stopped carrying “Normal” films and has switched exclusively to Wildlife Documentaries.
Sure, I can not watch them, but I can also be irritated that most of what’s on offer is the same thing and of no interest to me.
The trouble with the American political system is that it takes you guys For Fucking Ever to actually pick your president. We’ve already had months of primaries and the actual election’s not till November. Fatigue does tend to set in…
Mind you, there are obvious problems with the Australian/British system too (Prime Minister gets up in Parliament once in a while and says “hey, we’re having an election in a couple of months - get campaigning guys”) - notably that it gives a big advantage to the incumbent party (not as big as you’d think though). But at least it means the whole shemozzle is over within a few months.
It’s like the difference between soccer, and real football Most of the world wants to see a game where you go out and play for about 45 minutes twice, and go home with a conclusion.
We want a game that is a precissly measured 60 minutes, but takes about 3 hours to finish. We want to stop all motion and appeal to an omniscient authority because we would rather have check-and-balances and oversight and accountability, rather than progress. We also like hundreds of stop points so we can get an in-depth analysis of the events of the last tiny bit of action. We like to measure and cheer over hundreds of seemingly irrelevant statistics. It also gives us a chance to develop a good healthy outrage, which takes time, we wouldn’t want to have to overlook an outrage opportunity just because other things have started to happen. We like to pretend that it’s an equitable and exact process, but constantly complain about unfairness, and swear that we will fix things next time. And we love the fact that each and every person involved can do dozens of different things technically wrong, which allows us to direct that outrage we love so much.
And since we couldn’t manage to force Football down the worlds throat, We just translated it into our political process and and shove it in your face that way
glancing around furtively No, no… friendly English-speaking consumer of US sitcoms here… no reason invade…
(We won’t mention the: practically commie social system by US political standards, political opposition to US nuclear arms, strong secularism, lack of support for US imperial endeavours in the Middle East…)