Comments by "" (@SusCalvin) on "The Declining Quality of American Leaders" video.

Dan Carlin tried to describe it as two roles. Americans want both the figurehead representative "monarch" who inspires and motivates and the boring "prime minister/beancounter" who isn't very flashy but can sift through boring minutiae.
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In theory, you should be able to change out congress though? Here in Europe we tend to focus on the presidential election because that will be the outward face of the USA who will Iran-Contra or drone strike.
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A lot of European governments are strongly parliamentarian. The European heads of state are typically a figurehead constitutional monarch or a just slightly more empowered president. Parliament can usually instantly sack the government. Government and parliament are often the same.
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@somethingelse9228 In our nation we had a Lutheran state church. The main job of the church was to give legitimacy to the crown and beat people who were the wrong sort of Christians. When the crown wants something, the church popped in to explain how this was just and true. They were part of the balance of power, along with land-owning peasants, city councils, low and high aristocracy etc. Patriarch Kirill of Russia is currently living out all my fears of what happens when the church enters that sort of client and patron relation. They roll out Kirill from his golden cage so he can speak how great Putin is while trying to hide his rolex. He promises that trust in the state is the only barrier to liberal degeneracy. Then he and the rest of their elite go back to smuggling in a bit of "liberal degeneracy" for themselves and their kids.
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@fifthcolumn388 I think the nuclear family itself is a relatively new thing. A traditional medieval household would include your kids, your unmarried brother, your parents, two chumps who work for you and a random guest under one roof.
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@Hwje1111 One of my friends think Belgian Congo went as far because it was a completely personal holding of the Belgian sovereign deep in the interior. It took a while before news filtered out. A lot of these colonial ventures are taking place in a Europe that's just barely democratic or in transition to democracy. It depends on which bit we talk about. European conservatives in 1930 still had a living memory of life under the kaiser or tsar.
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@Hwje1111 There is a lot of Europe and a lot of different constitutions. Its what I mean with transitioning to democracy. The ancien regime in France was an absolute monarchy, but a lot weren't. Sometimes the crown has a parliament, but it was stuck in an advisory role like the Duma. Or parliament has started to assert itself against the crown. Sometimes they have funky provisions like voting weighted by income brackets. The crown could be moving towards the sideline with a few remaining powers. The kaiser is pretty much sidelined by the German military government. Like democracy is coming but it does so in bumps and jolts. During the Scramble for Africa, colonial presence could be a corps of professional troops that goes on expeditions but doesn't disrupt civ life back in Europe. Colonial goods become common, sugar was a luxury before plantations. They can have local colonial troops, like a corps of local gendarmerie or garrisons with European officers. Even as a lower class bloke in Europe you definitely had some benefits. I think the opinion in France was a bit different when they had French conscripts sent to Algeria. Then it's suddenly an increasing cost, coupled with the cost of the world wars. And earlier than that, before effective treatment of tropical disease, it was highly impopular to be stationen in Haiti.
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@spicyempanadas2738 One of my non-american friends described it as a constant barrage of democracy. There is always some school board, comptroler election, state congress seat, internal party process going on. All spread out on different levels.
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 @travcollier From the outside in Europe it is really hard to grasp the levels of government. Its hard to understand what a school board does.
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@the-craig I think that is also a holdover from England. Normal blokes were not supposed to run in parliament, that was for leisured gentry who already had an income. Local politicians here are mostly unpaid blokes who get compensation for a few hours a week, but even the municipality has full time salaries for some key staff of the town.
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@whatthehell932 The EU parliament is there, sort of. There are regular elections. Every nation gets seats according to population slanted in favor of smaller ones. The majority of real power sits in the commission, made up of national governments.
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In the tabletop RPG Delta Green, riding on the X-files zeitgeist, there is no effective masquerade. Alien stars shine on America and the things from the void barely hide sometimes.
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Presidents always looks decades older after one term.
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@realryanchapman I think even the most heavily editorialized media, with some sort of diversity and professionality, is far more preferable than when a party creates an unfiltered channel directly to people.
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@omegablackzero I think it's this sort of apathy Putin banks on. A fully depoliticized population that knows Putin lies, steals and cheats and even feels clever knowing he does. But can no longer imagine that anything better exists. If you would like to have an abortion in certain parts of the country its definitely a change. Then it probably feels even more cynical to hear some hustler try to explain this is the new normal.
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@KonglomeratYT Trump would start ranting about the election fraud any time he was here in the EU to talk about anything. And now it's some sort of truth in elements that anything but a Trump victory must be fraud. I'm starting to think large bits of the party supporters do not talk with people of the same party. Its a dang festival, not active democracy.
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@chickenfishhybrid44 There is little reverance of some mythic founders in my nation. Mostly because the crown was a pack of gangsters and the church beat you if you were the wrong sort of Christian. There was greater faith in a path to the future because our past was such muck.
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 @Ariverfish Autocrats run their countries like clown shows.
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@evanrutledge-sz4yo The history of state churches here is about giving one sect of Christians a privilege over others in exchange for helping the crown. My Lutheran state church would have flogged every mormon and baptist they found. That's suddenly an option to settle theological debate when you got crown backing.
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 @Ariverfish I think of Ferdinand and Isabella as the twats who were in on purging the Jews.
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@Hwje1111 The UAE and Saudi are raw material dictatorships. Their states does not even need the subjects for taxes. The state is a weird free-floating entity above people who largely does what it wants. The only two sources of instability I can envision are sudden crashes on the oil market large enough to disrupt their budgets and palace coups within the royal family. Sometimes a whole bunch are in house arrest for undisclosed reasons. They are dang clown shows.
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 @stuartcarter4139 Making your useless but loyal cousin Pope is tradition.
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 @Ariverfish You can smuggle salt, poach, beat up the bailiff and other peasant shenanigans.
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@Hwje1111 During the early centuries in Haiti, without understanding tropical disease, it was a gnarly station. They keep feeding slaves and troops and administrators into the fever. At least as a soldier, or better as an officer, you could get rotated out. France has a whole thing about spreading enlightenment. They make a show of setting up schools and academies. Where brit colonies seem to let any missionary who cares do it if they feel like.
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This sounds like a holdover from old Britain. Parliamentarians are not expected to be regular chumps or middle class oafs. They are supposed to be landed gentry or at least leisured folks with a guaranteed income. A lot of army and government positions were sold by commission, where you put up your own money as guarantee. It's a feature that a working class chump can't afford officer kit. I don't know what to compare with. Like a golf club where everyone can theoretically join but they need both time, a bunch of kit and a big annual fee.
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@jimk8520 Britain is a much more rigid class society than the USA, with ideas that an upper class crop of people from the right families or the right school debate club should naturally fill government. They don't need large gobs of campaign money but leisure time and being chums helps. Just having time to participate helps. They are a multi-party parliamentarian system but every MP is elected in many little local winner takes all elections. So if the largest local 30% minority is a tory or labour they take that seat. Northern Ireland and Scotland where local parties are concentrated are the exceptions.
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@jimk8520 Upper class crop in Britain means Boris Johnson and similar chums who have studied rhetoric, the classics and little else and expect things to just sort themselves out.
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Some statistics seems to indicate that a lot more of you aren't hardcore party folks.
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@Onyx0920 I think at least a large minority of Americans aren't party loyalists. The video touched a bit on people who aren't voting for a candidate but against the other candidate. One of the most important numbers to me in a democracy is voter turnout. To me it's partly an indicator of how many have opted out. I'm not sure how to interpret US turnout.
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