• bitteroldcoot@piefed.social
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    9 days ago

    I’m from the USA and I disagree…

    The clown should be naked from the waste down.

    Because he always has his dick out.

    Also, Epstein didn’t commit suicide.
    He was murdered by trump on August 10, 2019. During trumps first term.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
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    9 days ago

    It’s election time in America, which means, of course, time to decide who gets the gun.

    For some reason, in 2016, Americans decided to throw the gun into the monkey enclosure at the zoo. The rest of the world watched in horror, but were still unable to look away. Luckily, a bunch of opportunists jumped into the monkey enclosure too. A few made sure the safety on the gun was on, and others nudged the gun in the direction they thought it should be pointed.

    In 2020, the gun was handed to a career politician who put it in a box and only glanced at it in occasion to make a point.

    Then, in 2024, inexplicably, the gun was thrown back into the monkey enclosure. This time the monkey started throwing shit at anybody who wanted to control his gun, so now the world watches on as the shit-throwing monkey swings the gun around wildly.

    (But don’t worry, America’s system of checks and balances will ensure that … HA! Just kidding. You think that a bunch of 20 year olds in the 1700s knew enough about human psychology and game theory to come up with a system that would rein in a corrupt king, as long as he kept others in line with bribes and threats?)

    • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      TBF, it did work reasonably well back then. You can’t expect people from the 18th century to design a political system that would work in the 21st.

      • timochka@lemmy.zip
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        8 days ago

        I feel like the problem is less the people from the 18th century, and more the lifetime political appointees in the 21st century who re-interpret what the people from the 18th century wanted via the medium of seance.

        Fix that - and Citizens United - and you’d probably make quite a few steps in the direction of “functioning democracy”.

        I’m going to hazard to guess that neither of the parties are campaigning on fixing the Supreme Court or Citizens United though, so we can’t really consider the current clownshow an aberration.

        • Diplomjodler@lemmy.world
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          8 days ago

          My point is that the US political system is in very dire need of a fundamental overhaul. The forces that prevent this are explicitly doing so to prevent the will of the people from being enacted.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
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        8 days ago

        Sure, they copied the British system and relabelled things. The British system worked pretty well.

          • merc@sh.itjust.works
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            8 days ago

            No, they used some of the names from the Roman system so it wouldn’t be as obvious that they were just copying the British system. The roman system was completely different. The roman system didn’t have a “lower house”. Senators served for life. Rome had praetors, consuls and censors. There’s nothing equivalent to any of those roles in the US system. The US doesn’t elect army generals which was a key part of the Roman system. Romans voted on laws directly, not using the representative democracy that the UK and US use.

            The US senate is basically the “house of lords”. The house of representatives is basically the “house of commons”. The king was renamed to a president, but has many of the same powers. The supreme court follows roughly the same model as the British one. They eliminated the role of the prime minister, but then just recreated it as the speaker.

            The main difference is that the US system is more closely based on an earlier British system when the king had more power. In the modern system the monarch is a figurehead who basically only has ceremonial powers and it’s the Prime Minister who’s really in charge. In the US system, the “head of state” has all the earlier kingly powers of the earlier British system, except that it’s an elected position and not hereditary.

    • Etterra@discuss.online
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      9 days ago

      American here, can confirm, except that you forgot that there are some monkeys who are egging on the one with the gun, and pointing out who they would like it to be used on.

  • Enkrod@feddit.org
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    9 days ago

    It’s definitely part of the whole picture, but not all of it.

    I’m missing a Bible, a big truck rolling coal, a boot crushing a Mexican and the Statue Of Liberty in an ICE-prison, a working-class soldier bleeding for oil, a black woman in work-wear getting told she’s a lazy wellfare-queen by a fat Karen in a wheelchair that has a “Millenials just don’t want to work”-Sticker on the back, a blue-haired white girl arguing with a white libertarian in a suit about how poor black people should behave, Elon Musk with cocaine under his nose stuffing money into the face of a fat republican holding up a flag that says “white christian country” while getting a blowjob from a child-slave and Thomas Jefferson holding up the Establishment Clause while Americans worship at an altar dedicated to him and Washington… and so much more.

    And, to be honest, I’m a little… unwilling to lie all the blame at the feet of The Orange One or even just the GOP, when it’s a problem with the entire culture. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all bad, nothing ever is. But there is a kind of shining mythos surrounding the US as the cultural hegemon of the west, created by nearly a century of propaganda, that just contrasts and outlines the differences to reality to an extend that would be laughable, if it weren’t so annoying, sad and frankly terrifying for the rest of the world.

      • asg101@lemmy.ca
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        9 days ago

        The country was founded as an oligarchy (only rich white males had any say) but sold as a “democracy.” So the propaganda was there before the country even existed.

        Also, all points Enkrod makes are spot on.

    • Tolookah@discuss.tchncs.de
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      9 days ago

      The clown needs a tactical vest with a Walmart tag on it or something, maybe some snacks in the pockets.

      Hold on, what if we all had tactical vests with snacks in the pockets? No one goes hangry.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    He literally couldn’t hold the weight of a gun. He’d also shoot himself and others while trying to hold it.

  • BaraCoded@literature.cafe
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    9 days ago

    Indeed, it looks like that to us (France), but way scarier, like Pennywise, and with more dead/raped children around. I can’t conceive how this monster hasn’t been guillotined yet.

    • merc@sh.itjust.works
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      9 days ago

      Really? Like, you find Trump scary?

      I think this meme is perfectly accurate because Trump is a laughable clown. The only scary thing about him is that being the president gives him vast amounts of power. So, it’s like an absolute laughable clown with a gun. He’s completely ridiculous, but you can’t ignore the gun.

      • BaraCoded@literature.cafe
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        8 days ago

        Tell that to all the people he had killed. Tell that to ICE victims who are now in concentration camps when they’re not shot down in the street like dogs, to the Iranian girls of the school he had shot down for no reason, tell that to the women and girls he raped, to the families of the people who died in the Capitol during his coup attempts, tell that to all the people starving under his rule, those who died unnecessarily of covid, etc. Trump is not a clown, he is a monster. He has blood on his hands, his face, and he loves it. Every modern ruler is a goddamn psychopath, but he’s the first western one in ages to just be transparent about his monstrosity. The world will be better when he dies, and I hope it’ll be violent and painful for him.

      • mirshafie@europe.pub
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        9 days ago

        It’s not the monkey enclosure that’s the problem, it’s that you threw a gun into it. Who are the clowns now?

  • dellish@lemmy.world
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    9 days ago

    As a citizen of The Rest Of The World, I would say American right-wing politics looks like this: First, consider what would benefit the most people or the environment in our current situation. Next, enact the exact opposite.

    It’s incredible to me how representatives of the populous who are supposed to be, you know, representing the populous, continuously pass laws that fuck the population over.

    • SparroHawc@lemmy.zip
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      9 days ago

      Well you see, this is because the laws that are passed benefit the rich, and the right-wing citizens are told to vote that way because it’s totally Good For Them (or at least, will make the Libruls mad).

      And, of course, the neoliberal problem of money in politics warping incentives. Courting corporations for campaign donations has utterly destroyed any semblance of actual representation of the populace.

    • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      There is 60% turnout among eligible voting population. Half of those voted for Trump. That means only 30% of Americans vehemently supported him. It correlates to what I’ve observed that between 20-30% of population are extremists. The Nazis also won that much vote shares.

      • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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        9 days ago

        It may be 30% that support him, but that still works out to be 70% that are ok with him, otherwise the ones that didn’t would have voted.

        It may not represent every individual, but it represents the country.

          • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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            9 days ago

            Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of the American political system would understand that not voting is effectively the same as having voted for the eventual winner. 70% of the US voting public were satisfied if Trump won, and a subset of those people actively wanted him to win.

            Any reason for not voting has a “…and they were happy if Trump won” attached to the end of it.

            • TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
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              8 days ago

              I have to disagree with this. I’m gonna be frank, this is the elitist view that cost liberals and progressives the presidential election. I’m a pretty cynical person and while I think voters can be dumb, they’re not that dumb. There are always compounding and complex reasons for Trump having been elected, or totally sitting out the previous election. Progressives didn’t want to vote between two genociders and turn it to tally on who will kill less. Meanwhile, working class voters are frustrated with the cost of living not being able to be met voted for Trump. You might be surprised to hear that the working class constituents who voted for Trump are from the base of The Squad of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’ and Rashida T’laib. AOC asked her constituents as to why they voted for Trump and all of them expressed discontent with Democratic establishment’s lack of urgency and broken promises, especially with the cost of living. They did not vote Trump because they tolerate or like him, they voted him in protest against the establishment Democrats.

              At the very least, many populist progressives are getting elected and primarying establishment Dems. In that way, the Democratic Party is being morphed to become more progressive and return to working class roots.

              • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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                8 days ago

                I think it’s a lot simpler than that.

                Americans already knew what Trump was like. He was being charged with felonies prior to voting.

                If you didn’t want Trump there was only one action to take: vote for the other party. 70% of people didn’t do that, so whether through apathy or desire that 70% were fine if Trump won.

                Trump represents what the US wants, and it’s disturbing.

              • adjectivenoun@lemmy.world
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                8 days ago

                In every general election, there are exactly three options:

                1. Viable party #1.

                2. Viable party #2.

                3. Nonparticipation.

                Many Americans think there are more options. There aren’t. Third parties, write-ins, etc. are all permutations of #3. I love seeing establishment Dems losing their primaries to DSA candidates, but if they don’t I’d rather vote strategically than sit out the election and watch fascist kid fuckers take over my country.

      • adjectivenoun@lemmy.world
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        8 days ago

        I think it’s worse than that. The central limit theorum tells us that a sample of the population, when large enough, will closely resemble the entire population. 60% if people voted, and of those, more than half chose Trump. If the remaining 40% voted, it’s likely they also would have chosen Trump. His popularity is definitely lower now, but I think it’s safe to say more than 50% if Americans would have elected the fascist if voting were compulsory.

  • Jo Miran@lemmy.ml
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    9 days ago

    Not at all. Ronald McDonald is a good clown who helps children rather than kill or fuck them (see Ronald McDonald House). Pennywise or Leto’s Joker? Sure…just not Ronald McDonald.