Dear America, we need to talk about your election.
Just so you guys know, NO ONE outside of your own country understands for a SECOND how 85% of current Republican rhetoric doesn’t result in your country becoming a one party system.
Major republican issues of the last 4 years, from my vantage point: vilifying homosexuality and denying LGBT citizens the same rights as everyone else, allowing religious dogma to outrank a woman’s right to making her own health and reproductive decisions, stopping any move to making healthcare universal, dismantling the social safety net (during the worst recession in recent history), and generally literally believing that anyone who doesn’t want those things is trying to destroy your country.
Every one of these stances is the POLAR OPPOSITE of the rest of the developed world, give or take.
Add that to the fact that the non-laughable republican ideals (smaller government, individual liberty, strong support of the free market, etc) are currently not supported by an ACTUAL PLAN in the platforms of the candidates currently representing the Republican party, and the rest of the world is BAFFLED.
The major arguments the GOP seems to have made in the last four years against Democrats? That President Obama is muslim, or was secretly born in Kenya, or wants to destroy the country for some unknown reason. Most of these attacks seem to center on the fact that Obama is black. The rest of the attacks made seem based on a complete denial of the facts, statistics, and observable change since his election.
It’s not that everyone thinks Obama is perfect - many of his decisions and actions unnerve me, frankly. Especially those relating to the wrap up of the War on Terror.
But anyone else who seems to have a chance of winning seems like a terrifying mixture of racist, misogynist, anti-gay, small minded, self interested, loathing of the poor, sick, young and elderly, and basically a cartoonish depiction of what everyone agrees is wrong with politics.
Oh, I forgot the part where your government legalized individuals and corporations donating unlimited sums of money to ‘SuperPAC’ organizations that have essentially made it possible for individual billionaires to buy out available media for the candidate of their choice.
I have a massive amount of respect for the American people. I refuse to believe that this is what comes of a country that is built on a rugged individualism and a belief that things can be made better with an entrepreneurial spirit, hard work, and good ideas.
But you are scaring the SHIT out of the rest of the world, guys. From what we see, it makes no sense that Mitt Romney has a decent chance of being your next president. And that fact that it seems like a reasonable possibility kinda terrifies us.
Jon Crowley
Speaking (without permission) on behalf of everyone who watches US politics from abroad.
#america #politics #fear #republican #terror.
