Comments on: It’s America’s Question Time

By: Mental Democracy » It’s America’s Question Time

Mental Democracy » It’s America’s Question Time — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:09:23 +0000

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By: pdxbob

pdxbob — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:19:48 +0000

Odd, I had a similar experience upon first watching British Parliament in action, only it involved sloshing beer on the dog rather than porridge on the cat.

By: Chris Keene

Chris Keene — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:52:42 +0000

good post. I’ve always had a bit if a fascination as to how Europeans and Americans perceive each other and themselves. One of the things i note is that so many never quite understand the complaints of the other “you’re loud” / “you’re a bunch of commies”, it all gets so heated that no one sits back and thinks if the other has a point.

On this note, I think Slashdot is the worst example of this. Somehow the conversation often ends up as simple insults aimed at a country: Americans are stupid/fat/loud, Europeans are commies(!)/backward/a back water/ love a nanny state. It’s depressing.

I think the ‘gun rights’ argument can bring out the worst, the two sides simply can’t see/hear the other sides argument/reason, (Europeans: ‘lite’ gun laws lead to lots of guns lead to more killings. Americans: gun restrictions lead to the bad guys having guns and the good guys not, which is madness).

On a different note completely (but still something linked to this post!), I have seen long queues when American’s vote, sometimes waiting hours. This is somewhat alien to me, as I’ve only lived in the UK. I’ve voted in three different counties, yet I’ve never queued or waited more than 1 minute. I’m also confused by the whole hanging-chad and voting machine problems in the states. When the ‘hanging-chad’ thing happened in Florida back in 2000, it seemed from the comments of the state officials that there was nothing more they can do without making the whole process very slow. Yet in the UK we count by hand, and normally have the result by the end of the day of voting. Now of course the UK is far smaller, but I don’t think this matters, the process operates on a county by county level (well, actually local government areas) no matter how many counties there are.

Any ideas why the queues and problems in this area in the US, are the voting areas larger and perhaps with less voting booths per person?

By: Wil

Wil — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 09:48:44 +0000

The whole 08 elections fiasco makes me mad, the way I see it is that you’ve got a polar pair placating a polar audience. I think it’s sad that so many lives outside of America will be affected by the votes of people like this, the kind of people who chant ‘USA! USA! USA!’ over sensible political debate.

By: Alex

Alex — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 19:13:55 +0000

Interesting reading… well I didn’t see that programme but I am living here and with the elections looming have felt that kind of ‘crowd whooping’ mentality. I have found that if I present a neutral perspective, such as:

“If I had a vote, I would not vote for either Obama or McCain because they both promise to keep some of Bush’s tax cuts (McCain more than Obama) in the face of spiraling debt and a compound interest problem.”

I find that generally people do not quite know how to react to a neutral perspective, perhaps because they are used to fighting stronger political allegiances. I continue learning…