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Anthony May's avatar

It's depressing, but not surprising, to see the same political malaise now playing out here in Portugal, as it's been doing increasingly in many other western democracies for two decades.

The UK, several EU countries, and most infamously of course the USA which is now at the precipice of both an authoritarian coup and the end-stage of crony capitalism lurching into privatised kleptocracy powered by AI and a figurehead King (happy to provide many links to support this statement, which should not come as a surprise to anyone keeping their eye on US politics); and even in my own home country of Australia the two-party duopoly has been clambering for, even bribing (via electoral favouritism for government funding), an ever-slimming wedge of marginal/swing voters to cling delicately to power, resulting in a flourishing of single-issue House MPs & particularly Senators as far back as 2010's "hung parliament", and most recently (2022) a slew of "teal independents", former right-wing (blue) party acolytes but at least have a conscience when it comes to the need for action on global warming (ridiculously considered a left/red issue; this is how stupid voters can be, to think an issue like that has any political underpinning), when mixed become teal lol. (Yes, unlike the USA, red still means communist/far-left in Australia)

Simultaneously, graft and corruption have gone up, and I assure you it's not only because of heightened scrutiny; that "revolving door between government and private enterprise" has been a deliberate breeding ground for corruption for many decades; it's just become such an accepted part of the political landscape that hardly anyone even bothers to question it any more. Its most blatant face was Trump's inauguration where the front row weren't his most ardent loyalist Congresscritters, no, they took the back row behind him, with a trillion dollars worth of Big Money in the front row.

And more recently, we have yonger voters who appear to have a sorely lacking education of the consequences and lessons of the 20th Century and its two world wars and cold war, rightly frustrated and contemptuous of their economic marginalisation and the blatant hypocrisy they see in their leaders, but now supporting far-right parties basically as a protest vote, most of them without real any idea what they're inviting in...

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