Question: (I wonder)... What do people in other countries think of American politics?

[izquierdista]

6. Unfortunately, they emulate the American model

I've lived in both Mexico and Poland at the time of national Presidential elections. Do they do any better discussing issues? Keep it from getting dumbed down to stupid slogans? Wake up and look at what is in their own best interests? Laugh nut-cases off the political stage? No, no, no, and no.

The 1% have discovered that advertising is all they need to bend the public (or enough of it to win an election) to their will, and so the majority of people keep voting against their own interests and electing rich cocksuckers who don't care about them (to quote George Carlin).

Democracy is dreadfully easy to hijack into the camp of the status quo. It might be different in small countries with not too many people, where you can really know what kind of person the candidate is, say like in Iceland. But in any country with a population large enough that mass media is how the politicians communicate with the public, they are what their advertising says they are.