And then treats them like trash. He constantly misgenders one of them and is actively supporting a government that is making them have to flee the country. What a wonderful dad…

Understandable, it’s all a matter of perspective. There’s no ideal way of democracy and any way has it’s pros and cons. I’d say that overall my gripe is a somewhat minor one but it does lead to big issues sometimes, especially during election times because the biggest party gets first dibs on creating the government. More fragmentation on your side of the political spectrum (left vs. right) can therefore lead to splintering of the votes and losing out on being the biggest.

This is more or less what happened last time. The leftist parties tried to prevent it by joining forces shortly before the election but the amount of leftist parties we have still meant that votes were somewhat splintered; that is (among other factors) how we ended up with another right-wing government after people clearly seemed to be done with over 10 years of right-wing Rutte politics.

I’d love to be able to vote for some fringe leftist party knowing I’ll not waste my vote

But in a way it will. Many of these fringe parties never have a chance to make it into the government and will forever be in the opposition, meaning their impact isn’t very big. The PVV started off like this as well and their leader, Geert Wilders, has only ever wanted to be the person shouting at stuff from the opposition side of the fence. Even now, when he has the biggest party, they had to come up with some wicked solution where he’s not the PM and not in the government itself. Instead, it’s a neutral PM with some ministers and everyone else is in the opposition and constantly criticising their own “government”. It’s ridiculous and so far they haven’t gotten much done.

In my opinion, a cutoff of 5% is a bit high but I also think that parties should have more than 1 seat to even make it into the chamber, otherwise it’ll turn into a mess real quick.

People who voted for Trump lack the ability of foresight and can’t be concerned until it directly affects them. Otherwise they don’t care and will probably cheer as their neighbors get deported.

Just make sure not to take it too far if you do proportional voting. We have a system in the Netherlands that works like that but the result is that we now also have about 30 parties running for government, most of them being fairly pointless. Don’t get me wrong, it’s better than the US shenanigans but you can also go too far.

The difference is that Europe should be more capable of resisting America. We’ll see if that actually happens but given how things have gone before when the EU went after American companies I don’t think they’ll budge easily.

Man, nothing’s allowed anymore these days, better vote Trump to get muh freedom back /s

As a Dutch person we’d happily welcome the more sensible Americans over here 🙂. I can’t guarantee our government wouldn’t try to stop a mass migration wave given their anti-immigrant policies though.

It’s funny, my partner and I were actually talking about moving to the US for a while to spend more time with my American in-laws but I think that’ll be out of the window for the next four years.

Lol. “Be happy we’re killing people damnit!”

Until she discovers a problem and tries to become a whistleblower.

I think I saw a movie about that, they ended up shooting down the Eiffel tower or something /s

It’s kinda crazy that the descendants of people that potentially lived through the holocaust are now calling the shots and basically committing their own genocide. It’s only been about 80 years since WW2, how are we here again?

It’s ridiculous and the worst part is that they’ll probably get away with it too, same as Netflix. My family consists of 3 households sharing the same account, with these changes that would mean €6 a month extra on the first account + having to create a second account which will also be like €10 a month or something.

They also very much had the advantage of knowing their terrain and both Hitler and Napoleon got cocky and kept going during winter time without being prepared for it. Hitler especially was actually making good progress until winter hit so you could almost even say that Russia took a calculated risk (even though I think it’s more of a “got lucky” situation).

I can see the benefits of AI in certain fields of work but why would you want it to take over in the creative industry? Isn’t tapping into your own creativity the fun part?

I have the same, always need to double gesture to exit an image…

There’s nothing left to blast in ol’ Mitch, he’s already been running on fumes for way too long.

My GF asked me to come to it ends with us with her. I didn’t see any trailer or read anything about it so I assumed it was a romcom or something, boy was I wrong…

The plot was quite gripping though and Blake Lively and the cast were really good in it. I’d definitely recommend watching it but keep in mind that it’s a pretty intense movie with lots of dark content in it.

He’s been giving his watch recommendations about some pretty terrible stuff. He told people to watch that under Paris movie and also the latest Indiana Jones film for example. That’s probably what they’re talking about.

As an outsider I honestly just don’t get what people see in this idiot. How can you take someone that talk like that seriously? He sounds like a nutter that is promising crazy stuff that would literally mean the end of the USA as we know it.

If he’d get his way with this and the other project 2025 stuff it’d honestly be the end of America I think.