Questions of mass surveillance aside, I always wonder how useful these things (motion detection when you're not home) actually are given how many American households have dogs and cats.
I liked Biden because he's a genuinely good statesman, with decades of experience building bipartisan relationships (some admittedly bad, most good) both domestically and internationally. I didn't vote against Trump in 2020, I voted for Biden. And you can bet your sweet bippy that I'd do it again.
You linked to a site about press freedom, which is a subset of free speech and not generally what Americans are talking about when they talk about freedom of speech.
"Congress shall make no law...prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press."
that does not imply one being the subset of the other to me, if anything they are clearly defined and therefore clearly separate.
Trump refuses to answer simple questions and attacks and mocks reporters, that's if they're lucky and he doesn't directly sue them for millions/billions. Hell, the white house banned Associated Press. Is that free speech or freedom of the press?
The EU governance system is vastly different than the US, and not nearly as fragile. Even if AfD gets sway in one country, it doesn't mean that suddenly they can do anything they want like you saw in the last US election.
My understanding of the EU system is that it's far more proportional in representation, and a simple 51% isn't enough to have 100% control. Parties still need to work together and compromise.
> My understanding of the EU system is that it's far more proportional in representation, and a simple 51% isn't enough to have 100% control. Parties still need to work together and compromise.
We've already seen with Brexit that 100% control is not needed in a parliamentary system to destroy a country's livelihood. But my point was that AfD doesn't need something like "presidential control" of the EU, it would just need to start working with other far-right parties in the EU such as Hungary and France's RN to sow chaos from within. Is that very far-fetched? You can't tell me that most of Europe doesn't hold its collective breath at every French election, crossing their fingers that Le Pen's party doesn't win this go around.
AfD is a far right populist party in the EU's biggest economic powerhouse country, whose explicit goals are to leave the EU (they probably can't due to the German constitution), exit the eurozone, withdraw from the Paris climate deal, leave NATO, and cozy up with Russia.
It's not hard to imagine what kind of damage they could do to the EU if they took power in Germany and started working with Hungary to block EU legislation, veto sanctions, defund programs, etc.
> the complete 180 in direction the US is taking and descending in to authoritarianism while moving against the world order
The EU is just one AfD win away from doing the same thing. It's not immune to this issue either, you have the same problem happening right under your noses.
Most European countries have parliamentary democracies.
It's not a winner-takes-all system ala presidential and semi-presidential republics where effectively individuals:
1. rule without opposition. There's no opposition it's not represented in that branch.
2. rule without even needing support of their own parties. The Italian prime minister or the German chancellor have to fight every day in parliament to have support of their parties and the other parties coalitions.
3. a single individual can claim popular mandate. In parliamentary systems you vote for parties/coalitions, not individuals
There's a reason why this authoritarian trend goes from the Philippines, Nicaragua, to Belarus, to Turkey, to Russia, to most African countries and now US. They are all presidential republics.
The last parliamentary democracy to turn authoritarian has been...Sri Lanka. Almost 50 years ago. Presidential ones? It's basically every year.
Systems with winner-takes-all mechanics do not represent voters, and power is too concentrated.
Parliamentary democracies might be labeled as less efficient, that I can agree, but they have strong antibodies to such people.
See Austria or the Netherlands as examples where strong far right authoritarian-wannabes individuals became prime ministers...and then nothing happened and their governments didn't last.
I agree that presidential systems in particular are problematic, and the EU is lucky that Germany and France use parliamentary systems. But the nasty thing about populism is that it happens in waves and it does overtake parliaments. We need only look at what happened to the UK with Brexit for a recent example. It's not hard to imagine that a wave of far-right populism could one day overtake Germany, or send France's RN, Austria's FPO or Poland's PIS to a majority position.
We can cross our fingers and hope that nobody would work with them (I know that Germany's parties all have a pinky promise not to work with AfD), but it was only 10 years ago that everyone in the US was laughing at the prospect of a Donald Trump presidency – and now here we are, much sobered. These things happen, and AfD, or RN, or whoever, could wreak havoc to the EU from within the EU if they took power and started working with Hungary to block EU legislation, veto sanctions, defund programs and more.
Not every European country, but unfortunately many countries are at risk. Someone like Orban is so deeply and openly corrupt, you have to wonder why anyone besides his cronies vote for him. But as an autocrat, you apparently only have to chase lgbti people and immigrants to cheer people up. Going to CPAC with all your kinky friends doing the Sieg Heils on stage (yes, that happened, even if someone doesn't want to hear that). Conservatism is a depressing view of the world.
And then you have all kinds of charlatans that are basically Orban doubles. You hear the same stupid talking points and bullshit, the same cozying up with Putin. And to top it off, the USA has openly vowed to fuel and fund that fire of self destruction, so the billionaires can eat the corpse. Because that is where the term conservatism came from, to conserve the power of the king and the ruling elites, as a god given construct (the only original moral aspect of conservatism).
Most European countries have functioning legal and electoral systems, and more than two parties. On top of that, constitutional courts aren't political appointments.
So it would be incredibly hard for a political entity like AfD or RN to gain full and absolute power like the orange has achieved. Even in the worst cases, those parties usually only have ~30% popular support at most, which usually translates to at most ~30-40% of seats in parliament. Which means they cannot even get parliamentary majority, and probably can't get head of state either.
Americans just like to pretend things aren't that bad and they aren't the only ones falling into the abyss.
Could you explain to me (non-US and non-EU resident), how people in EU are okay with mandatory photo scanning on your devices(aka CSAM protection)?
Who does this weird proposals like Chat Control?
AFAIK, it is not "alt-right" parties - so it really does not clicking for me, why AfD and others constantly brought in during online privacy discussions?
I am not saying passing, but seems there is a large group of politicians(supposedly backed by voters?) who lobby such initiatives who are not some alt-right fascist outliers?
I'm not pretending things aren't bad, I'm pointing out that things could be bad for you as well. America had functioning legal and electoral systems too, and we only need to look at Brexit for a shining example of how parliamentary systems can also fail to resist a populist wave. By refusing to acknowledge that, you look no wiser than the Americans who were laughing at the idea of a Donald Trump presidency just ten years ago.
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