How is the tone of politics in your country?

13 comments

1. I think the political discourse is quite good and quite civil. Of course we have people who are only interested in drama like tabloids and populists, but you can engage in politics and just ignore that.

2. Pretty damn passionate but at the same time very intriguing.

   I’m not gonna go into my personal opinions but I think the arguments for independence vs staying in the union for example are both equally as convincing, and I honestly don’t blame either side for thinking the way that they do. They both deserve respect.

   But we’ve been asking the same question since the start of the British Empire so it has a *lot* of history that runs very deep, and as a result some people are just incapable of hearing others out, so more often than not I’m walking on eggshells when it comes to discussing Scottish politics.

3. It is pretty bad. At this point I hope for federalism so our government, the opposition, and pretty much 90% of politicians can be replaced by Germans or something. Our president is not THAT bad but in general the level of the politicians is low.

4. It is healthy. I disagree with your following statements though, it seems like you mean having a civil *and* lively discourse isn’t possible? It is absolutely the case here, and I presume in many countries.

   Our population is mostly politically engaged, and debates are a big deal, that doesn’t equal sensationalism or harshness. On the flipside, being civil about it doesn’t mean it happens in the background. Our debates are very much front-side news and draw large audiences on TV – while being civil.

   Obviously there’s fringe groups who act up, and the occasional populist politician. At the moment neither are getting much attention though, and it’s been like that for a minute now.

5. Politicians are not a big deal here. Definitely not as big as in the USA. Nobody is flying party flags here, even during election time. You would be seen as a bit crazy or at least annoying probably if you were actively promoting one party in your free time.

   Debates on tv can be very polite, but can also devolve into bickering about who said what.

   We had some recent sensationalist media outlets who had investor ties in Hungary, that were very in favor of our, now former since last month, government and against anything progressive. These are now expected to die out, buy may devolve into more extreme narrative when the smart people leave for better wages. Who knows, who cares.

   The situation in the USA seems crazier everyday tho. Too much religion, too much freedom for big corp, too little support for common folk who then become desperate and do what they do. Looks rough.

6. It’s actually pretty bad right now.

   One far-right party managed to crawl their way into Parlament because they appealed to the antivaxers. So they lie and scream all the time agitating and confusing everyone.

   We have a coalition between left, right and centric parties, that bicker quite often. Some are brand new to politics, so they definitely need a learning curve.

   We also have the opposition, that was in power for 12 years, is crazy corrupt and does everything in their power to destabilise the coalition.

   And to finish the complete chaos, we have the president that is very opposed to sending any military help to Ukraine and fights over it with everyone else, except the crazy antivaxxers that is.

   But if it was up to the people, we would love a softer tone and a stable government.

7. Over here it’s as bad as in the US, if not worse – it’s the “us versus them” narrative, the ruling party calling anyone on the other side “traitors” and the people on the other side denying that the ruling party could do *anything* right. For the last month it wasn’t so bad because the war in Ukraine united them somewhat but it’s slowly going back to the hatred. It’s dangerous to talk anything political in the company where you don’t know somebody’s political views because people have tendency to use harsh or mocking language and tempers could flare up – society is more divided than it has ever been and the ruling party has been fanning the flames.

8. It’s a harsh tone, but one where both sides of the discourse are going “for God’s sake, DO SOMETHING”. Basically everything feels like it’s a setup for “the next election”, with the “actual governing” part communicated only when it gets views or would trigger riots to talk about in the evening news, and otherwise ignored in favour of treating it all like a football game, where you cheer for your party, and everything is seen as functional to score points. All because parties are basically just “whatever the party head wants it to be”.

   Thankfully we might be doing away with talk shows soon, maybe this will quiet down the personalist politics and the tone with it.

9. A competition of who will promise more money, more hirings in the public sector etc. to the voters.

   It all comes down that: in Greece, ideological and culture wars are forgotten after a few days/weeks of trending. It’s always financial matters that win/lose elections.

   The tone has become less and less civilized after 2010. It’s in line with the general rise of populism, because with social media, the relatively apolitical masses + the lower edcuated voters + all the weirdos (who are more than you think) have the ability to connect with each other, thus they’re not so easily boxed in the politically correct boxes as they used to be.

10. It’s like the US with a smaller budget.
    There are many, *MANY* reasons to criticize the government, so it’d be cool to have an opposition that wasn’t just a bunch of barely camouflaged fascists living in their own parallel reality of conspiracy theories. All you hear is like “commie muslim Russians want to turn your children gay!! Catalan feminists want to impose sharia law!!1!”.

11. Your two options don’t make any sense. You’re assuming that if there is no ridiculous overblown sensationalism, nobody can possibly care about politics at all.

    That’s probably projecting your own feelings about it, maybe you only love drama.

    In reality, our politics are both “softer tone”, as you put it, so no big show and sensationalism but generally fact based, fairly polite and civilized, but interesting and closely followed by the general population. That’s pretty much a requirement for a functional democracy, isn’t it?

12. Yeah, some people just don’t get that we DON’T have a two party system, you’re either with us or with them. I feel like both of these parties don’t really care for Poland or people’s wellbeing, they just want to fight with each other and antagonize their electorates. Fortunately, two of their leaders are getting old

13. This is probably the first generation of politicians that don’t have really obvious connections to paramilitary groups (not counting the North, that’s not going away)

    And yet, despite having had guys who led an armed rebellion in power, and then their kids and grandkids etc somehow Irish politics has pretty much always been boring as fuck