OK but seriously though, how is everyone doing? #fediverse #checkin

@Gina Worried about the future for america, but otherwise good. You?

@freemo exactly the same, I'm so.. worried about how close this race is.

@Gina Yea agreed. Neither of the candidates should have been able to get a single vote. Any of the others on the ballot should have won by a landslide. The fact that it is close AND two extremely evil people are tie is worrisome to say the least, no matter how it ends.

@freemo it should have been Bernie 😭

@Gina I have mixed feelings about that. Dont get me wrong he is far less evil than these two, so would have been better. But holy hell bernie would be a disaster following covid, I dont think our economy, especially the poor, could survive a bernie right now.

@freemo that's ironic since Bernie would probably do a lot more for the poor than these two guys.

Crazy to think that here in the Netherlands Bernie would be considered moderate leftie, whereas in the US they paint him as a radical commie.

@Gina I dunno, I live in holland and the vast majority of people I met think bernie is a radical left. Never really looked at any dutch polls though to really figure out the overall sentiment.

I think bernie would think he is helping the poor, and a lot of people would think so too. But in reality he would make things far far worse than they already are sadly.

The problem is the public sentiment on what helps the poor is usually out of touch with what actually helps. So you wind up with the politicians who talk the most about helping the poor being the ones who do the most harm.

In many ways america is more radicalized to the left than europe will ever be. As someone who also has one foot in america I moved to the netherlands because they were more centrist (read: less radical left) than america.

@freemo @Gina I'm sorry, but that is just not true. The US has almost no left politicians, perhaps only the subgroup in the Democratic party that call themselves "progressives" is on the left.

Democrats are centre-right neo-conservatives, and Republicans are extreme-right conservatives. Neither is on the left, most of their differences are in identity politics to be honest...

@Matter

Again, I find that to be more an opinion out of ignorance than out of understanding. Though its hard to say if thats the case with you as we would have to dig pretty deep into the details.

But generally, no, that isnt correct.. Our left leaning politicians tend to be pretty firmly on the left supporting virtually all the things european left tend to support. The only exception is that they tend to talk more tongue in cheek and that can often be very misleading. They wont come right out and say they want to ban all guns, for example, yet most vote in such a way to suggest they do. There is a higher ratio in taxes between highest and lowest in the USA too, making them generally fairly financially left

@Gina