I know we have many SDMB members from democracies outside the U.S. and that, from reading threads like the ones cited, you have at least a passing knowledge of the types of utter morons holding public office in our nation. A minority, to be sure; unfortunately, these types tend to make the most noise and therefore are the most noticed.
My question is, are there people this narrow-minded, self-righteous and downright bigoted holding court in your Assemblies, Parliaments, etc? Or is this type of sanctimonious claptrap an American thing? I have no doubt that people like this run for office all the time; what I want to know is, are we the only ones who actually elect them?
Probably, but they’re less vocal about it. Very few Swedish politicians come out and say really mindbogglingly stupid things about gays or Muslims or what-have-you. I suspect there are significantly more who would say those things if they didn’t believe (or realize, as the case may be) it would be political suicide. But there are some who do, mainly fringe lunatics who never come close to Parliament.
The only ones I consider to be really bad are actually part of the majority alliance in the Parliament right now and have cabinet members. They are outspokenly anti-gay in the sense that they oppose gay marriage, gay adoption and so forth, while they of course claim to love gay people unconditionally.
I am amazed by the enormous strides Sweden has made over the last few years. We got same-sex civil unions in 1999 (if memory serves), and I can’t even remember any serious debate about it. It just happened. We got gay adoption recently, and the same thing there. No uproar. So while I’m sure we have our share of really stupid politicians, I don’t think they’re quite as numerous, nor quite as stupid, as yours. Sorry.
They’re just idiots in a different way - usually corruption (‘sleaze’) [Jonathan Aitken, Neil Hamilton], sexual shennanigans [David Blunkett, John Prescott, John Major and Edwina Currie together - here add a dose of hypocrisy, and that unfortunate Conservative MP found dead in an auto-eroticism incident involving a pair of ladies’ tights and an orange], large doses of both [Jeffrey Archer], or alcoholism [Charles Kennedy]. The list of “bad” politicians is pretty much endless.
That said, the views expressed by the two cited in the OP, were they to put forward those views in a Britsh political arena, would probably dismissed as extremists or lunatics by all major parties, and ignored.
The governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara (aka Blinky), is a xenophobic ultranationalist in the Yukio Mishima mold. During the war, he was too young to serve but was old enough to understand what was going on. When the war ended in defeat when he was 13, he was left feeling guilty and ashamed for not having the chance to do his part and prove himself, and has been spending the rest of his life making up for it by playing the uber-patriot. The fact that his late brother Yujiro was an actor famous for ultra-masculine yakuza and tough-guy roles may have also been a factor.
In his early campaigns, he had his staffers cover his opponent’s (who was of Korean ancestry) posters with stickers accusing him and his family of being from North Korea. He’s referred to Koreans, Chinese and Taiwanese in his speeches as sankokujin (an equivalent to the ‘n-word’). He’s claimed that if a major earthquake hits, the military will need to come in immediately to crack down on foreigners who will be rampaging through the streets (almost repeating exactly the accusations that led to several thousand Koreans being rounded up and massacred by Japanese mobs and soldiers in the days after the 1923 earthquake). When a bomb was placed outside the home of a deputy foreign minister by an ultra-nationalist group, Ishihara praised the act, saying the Minister deserved it for being soft on North Korea. He has also routinely dismissed all allegations of war atrocities by Japan, claiming they are all communist fabrications. He also has some interesting views on women, claiming in an interview that “old women who live after they have lost their reproductive function are useless and are committing a sin.”
Trust me, if you ever lived in a country governed by Jacques Chirac or Silvio Berlusconi, you’d soon be begging for a chance to bring in relatively ethical American politicians. In a democracy positions of power will go to people willing to seek them out, and usually a certain amount of sleaze is required to rise to the top. Hence the people at the top will always be power-hungry and corrupt. Decent people don’t have the desire to rule others.
(I did not wish to suggest that other systems of government do better than democracy.)
Not for Japan, although there haven’t been any Muslim candidates that I know of (there may be some Christian reps. It’s only 1% of the population, but it seems to be more common among the upper class). The two main religions (Buddhism and Shinto) don’t demand exclusive worship, so people generally take part in both. The general population is pretty secular, though. The Soka Gakkai Buddhist sect was tied to the New Komeito Party for a while, but this seems to have waned somewhat. In any case, I don’t know of any campaigns here where the candidate’s religion has been an issue.
Canadians get maladroit politicians of varying degrees of corruption. However, anyone who tried to make an issue out of a candidate’s religious practices would get strange looks and snickers.
I don’t offhand remember the last big sex scandal, though.
Stockwell Day was widely mocked for his fundamentalist religious views in 2000, which for some reason people are choosing to forget. Stephen Harper’s religious views are constantly brought up by his opponents, with the implication being that “oooh, he’s a conservative Christian, maybe he’ll ban abortion.”
I think Canadian politicians can be almost amazingly incompetent, stupid and bigoted, but they can’t make as big a splash as an American politician because they don’t have the power. MPs in both the Conservative and Liberal parties have made hateful remarks about gays that would have them fit right in to the Republican Party’s southern superconservative wing; Tom Wappel is a particularly evil man, for one. For whatever reason a lot of this is ignored, and people choose to pretend Canada’s free of that sort of thing. We’ve had a lot of people who were astoundingly incompetent (the aforementioned Stockwell Day) almost totally, perfectly corrupt (Alfonso Gagliano, a third of Mulroney’s cabinet) or just plain fucking stupid (Belinda Stronach.)
An overtly-religious politician (any religion or denomination) won’t be a successful one in British politics. As with everyday life, it’s a don’t-ask-don’t-tell topic.
As jjimm says, the nutjobs in the OP wouldn’t get far, nor would anybody coming out with such simplistic views. On the other hand, there’s people such as George Galloway and Ken Livingstone who have forged successful careers, while being very vocal and outspoken on various topics.
We have had many many corruption cases. The most recent was about CJ Haughey who managed to amass a fortune of 45mil (in today’s money) on a public servants salary. He stole begged and borrowed. Fucker is now dead.
We have had a few go to prison etc for corruption. There are religious and far right nuts but they are part of small political groups and lobbying groups like SPUC(Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child).
I gotta say, when the Brits have a political sex scandal (pretty much weekly, it seems) they know how to do it right, and the British press knows what to do with one. Bill and Monica paled in comparison with the Profumo Affair.
Then there was Ron Davies MP who was caught in the woods ‘looking for badgers’, and the other MP who posted a picture of himself in his underwear on a dating site.