The fun thing about not only not using US media, but moving to another language

French media is talking about this in a disinterested manner.

And pointing out how much the Democrats have blown it with continuing their witch hunt on Trump while ignoring their own problems, which I'm not going to bother mentioning if you aren't aware of them by now.

This story is only "à la un" on the broadcast media. The print media are like the Private Eye "Heir of Sorrows" series where it listed off headlines from the British dailies. In this case, the French are concerning themselves with issues of French interest.

That is pretty much the strike relating to the change in retirement regulations making people have to wait longer to retire.

And you wonder why I prefer Europe to the US. Especially when the US has become a banana republic having to resort to political prosecutions instead of addressing the issues it needs to. The partisanism is totally disgusting to me.
 

As I said, I have no illusions about the reforms I wish the US would adopt

On the other hand, we can keep going with two parties which don't represent most people and are out of touch with the electorate.

Also, Italy uses first past the post (winner take all) instead of the ranked choice voting/instant run-off which is another reform I like. I am in favour of proportional representation and run off elections/ranked choice voting.

As the mans says: "democracy needs policies. And it needs effective policies."

Not the "partisan" bullshit that is going on the the US.

Dissent editor Michael Walzer on "the crisis of liberalism"

It interesting what he is saying.  It's not exactly what my last two posts have been about, but very similar.

Liberalism in Europe, today, is something like “libertarianism”—it is a right-wing ideology. There used to be a left libertarianism, which is probably better called anarchism, and that persists in various sectarian versions, but it isn’t much in the public eye. And then in the United States, liberalism generally means “New Deal liberalism.” It’s our very modest version of social democracy, and it isn’t a very strong doctrine, since many of its practitioners became neoliberals much too easily. So, the -ism is not a strong or coherent doctrine. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t liberals. But liberals are people who are best defined morally or psychologically; they’re what Lauren Bacall, my favorite actress, called “people who don’t have small minds.” A liberal is someone who’s tolerant of ambiguity, who can join arguments that he doesn’t have to win, who can live with people who disagree, who have different religions or different ideologies. That’s a liberal. But those liberal qualities don’t imply any social or economic doctrine. So, there are liberals in the world, and I can recognize them, but liberalism does not describe their actual political commitment. The word is better used to qualify the kinds of commitments that I write about: democracy, socialism, nationalism, et cetera.

He's making a good point since "liberal arts" is a field of study "based on rational thinking, and it includes the areas of humanities, social and physical sciences, and mathematics. A liberal arts education emphasizes the development of critical thinking and analytical skills, the ability to solve complex problems, and an understanding of ethics and morality, as well as a desire to continue to learn." That means the division is between closed mindedness and open mindedness: not whether one is on the left or the right.

The problem with US politics is that it is based upon fallacious thinking. "The Democrats are progressives/socialists/liberals/etcetera" and "The Republican Trump supporters, etc." Is the divide that clear cut? Fox news calls the democratic party "socialist", yet that party has a long track record of destroying the moderate "socialist" policies of the new deal. What Sanders was proposing wasn't too far out from where FDR was going, and what is pretty much expected in the rest of the world as far as social policy goes.

As I said, not exactly what I have been saying in the past few posts, but definitely something I agree with:

Liberal Commitments An interview with Michael Walzer on The Struggle for a Decent Politics. in Dissent Magazine

I'm not sure how true this is, but...

I was told the French government subsidises newspapers, which is an interesting concept if it is
true. Although, I was under the impression I was reading a wider variety of viewpoints then just centrist. I read the following: Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération, L'Express, and L'Obs. The first three being dailies and the last two are weeklies. This list puts me at being left of centre in French/European politics.

On the other hand, I am extreme fringe left in the United States being aligned with Bernie Sanders. I find my home in the US with the Green Party and Democratic Socialists. I'm trying to figure out which party comes closest when I start looking at European politics, which gets interesting since some things which are called "Socialist" in the US are taken for granted in European politics. In fact, trying to take them away would make one an incredibly unpopular candidate.

But the US doesn't talk about how overworked it is until someone mentions that Europeans usually start a job with 3 weeks of vacation and work up. They also don't work more than 40 hours a week.

It's things like that that make me question the 2020 election where people were prevented from working, yet a candidate who talked about not living in fear during a period of enforced unemployment lost the election. Things like Universal Basic Income make sense when someone is told they cannot work. Likewise, so does having housing and medical care paid for.

On the other hand, it is easier to play the ad hominem card of "that candidate/party/person is a progressive..." when it's obvious that the term doesn't really apply when one properly looks at the issues.

As I like to say, if the Democratic Party were as socialist or progressive as the right/Fox news likes to claim: wouldn't it have made sense to run Bernie Sanders instead of the candidates who they did run????  Of course, Fox news would be even more embarassed since it seems that Sanders was popular on a town hall they ran.

Anyway, despite this I have to admit that I am blissfully ignorant of US politics, which was made apparent since I had no idea who Ketanji Brown Jackson was or what made up the US Supreme Court. For good reason, the institution is blatantly political. It makes decisions which are not really based in law.

And it fucking well doesn't need to.

I'm not sure if being a US Supreme Court Justice is something worthy of being: especially since it it is a purely political position. The reason I go by Laci is that someone joked that my dog had been in more courtrooms than Harriet Miers, which was probably true.

It doesn't make a lot of sense to pretend reverence for a document most people don't understand and is horrible out of touch with modern society. And they forget can be amended. Even though they say they like certain of the Amendments.

Yes, diversity is a good thing, especially if it is properly applied. 

Unfortunately, there isn't too much diversity in the marketplace of US ideas, despite the First Amendment. Which is why it is amusing to me that French Newspapers could be government subsidised.

How the bloodless revolution will happen in the United States

The United State is locked in partisan nonsense and needs to get parties which actually represent the people. The only way that will happen is on a local basis, where the duopoly have less control. The non-duopoly parties begin to "infect" the legislature, which is where the real change comes. 

 I was pleasantly surprised when Doggone told me that Antonin Scalia agreed with me about the parliamentary system. 

I don't like it because of Westminster. I like it because the power is where it belongs: in the lesiglature. Additionally, because of that, there is an absolute necessity for political cooperation. One needs to come up with a consensus for a parliamentary system to work. The government literally falls if there can't be a consensus, which is why it is necessary. A lower house of parliament with an ability to dismiss a government by "withholding (or blocking) supply" (rejecting a budget), passing a motion of no confidence, or defeating a confidence motion.

Loss of supply occurs where a government in a parliamentary democracy using the Westminster System or a system derived from it is denied a supply of treasury or exchequer funds, by whichever house or houses of parliament or head of state is constitutionally entitled to grant and deny supply. A defeat on a budgetary vote is one way by which supply can be denied. Loss of supply is typically interpreted as indicating a loss of confidence in the government. Not all "money bills" are necessarily supply bills. For instance, in Australia, supply bills are defined as "bills which are required by the Government to carry on its day-to-day business".^[1]

When a loss of supply occurs, a prime minister is generally required either by constitutional convention or by explicit constitutional instruction to either resign immediately or seek a parliamentary dissolution.

Some constitutions, however, do not allow the option of parliamentary dissolution but rather require the government to be dissolved or to resign.

Given how many budget crises happen in the US, it would probably go through governments like Italy or Belgium until the teething period was over. On the other hand, digging in on the budget would make it clear where the real power lies in government.

The presence of third parties would ensure that there was a way to gain consensus, or withhold it to bring the government more in line with the will of the people. There's a reason why the duopoly do everything they can to keep the power to themselves.

I don't have any illusions about some of the reforms which would be nice to see in US politics since Europe has them and people like Marine Le Pen are prominent in politics. On the other hand, there is a far better representation of political viewpoints in Europe than the One Party-Duopoly United States.

There's a reason I don't like discussing politics with Americans: they are worse than people who lived behind the Iron Curtain in how badly they are propagandised.

There needs to be a real free market of ideas, which isn't happening in the US.