2022: HOLD MY TEA! đŸ”

I hope that people living in democracies will learn to not vote dictators into power, but I fear that people won’t learn that.

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You mean every hundred years or less?

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Not sure what you mean exactly, but most countries never had a real democracy. Only roughly ~25% of the countries in the world today are functioning democracies. That makes it only the more painful if a (fairly) democratic country votes a dictator into power. In most countries that won’t have a global effect, but in some countries it will.

And I’m not even sure if it won’t happen in my own country in the coming decade or so, even while ranking high on democracy indices for many decades. Even here, authoritarian politicians can count on about ~20% of the votes.

Isn’t the problem that most dictators are highly charismatic and don’t reveal their end goal until after they have secured power?

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I mean an election famously happened in 1933.

History tends to fall back to familiar patterns.

It’s not that people vote dictators, it’s that people need to be better first, so they can vote better.
We’re not a world of angels governed by dictators. Those sprout from somewhere among us.

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I don’t know who dis, but wow, just wow.

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We haven’t even learned to not vote celebrities, former athletes, actors, children of older politicians and whoever “promises to do us some favours”, so we are, unfortunately, a looooong way from that yet,

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I have to choose, I prefer (former actor) politicians like Schwarzenegger and Reagan over politicians like Putin and Erdogan. At least the former were not megalomaniacs.

I don’t know. I suppose our potential/wannabe future dictator Thierry Baudet is charismatic to his voters, but I found him a creep years before he went into politics (from the misogynic and xenophobic content of the articles he wrote for various media).

Let me guess: they disagree about who is the actual aggressor? Which is more delusional in your opinion?

So besides commenting on media coverage differences, you have no opinion on who is the aggressor here?

People living in a democracy voted in Trump. They’ll vote in anyone with the skills to manipulate them


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During the pandemic, I sort of stopped considering social media as a somewhat reliable news source. So much hoaxes, fake news and conspiracy theories. It’s even worse than tabloids.

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Weirdly enough, during war time social media may be in some points more capable of showing the truth than the mainstream media, and simultaneously be one of the more powerful tools a country can have to influence the outcome. Propaganda wins wars: having morale depleted loses them. Fake news is nothing more than a (pretty powerful) weapon.

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There are no whole locations that are totally reliable. Find a few individuals you find historically consistent and follow them. Regardless of whether the platform is social media, MSM, blogs, tabloids, whatever
 all of them have people with integrity and people with none. Trust the person, not the platform.

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And then also don’t trust that person, just in case.

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I don’t doubt it. However, the 2019 data is too old to show the true situation today. There is actually a great deal of government and media hypocrisy going on. Due to the massive self-imposed reduction in the U.S. oil and gas production and the endorsement of the Russian pipeline, the U.S. has bought in the past year, and continues to buy, a large amount of Russian energy, so we can hardly blame any European country for doing the same. The whole situation is bizarre, and I don’t pretend to know the meaning of it.

I see a great many posts have intervened. Oh well, it is impossible to keep up with this thread.

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Saw this just now, felt relevant hehe

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Can’t say I get this feeling from the news here (France). We don’t know how long it will last but there seem to be a clear consensus that Ukraine will fall.

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