Off My Chest
RULES:
I am looking for mods!
1. The "good" part of our community means we are pro-empathy and anti-harassment. However, we don't intend to make this a "safe space" where everyone has to be a saint. Sh*t happens, and life is messy. That's why we get things off our chests.
2. Bigotry is not allowed. That includes racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and religiophobia. (If you want to vent about religion, that's fine; but religion is not inherently evil.)
3. Frustrated, venting, or angry posts are still welcome.
4. Posts and comments that bait, threaten, or incite harassment are not allowed.
5. If anyone offers mental, medical, or professional advice here, please remember to take it with a grain of salt. Seek out real professionals if needed.
6. Please put NSFW behind NSFW tags.
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That’s splitting hairs. Notice I said “vote” rather than “elect”. I’m well aware of how the electoral college functions and that you can lose the “popular vote” but still become president (e.g. Bush Jnr and Trump).
The fact remains that on ballot you directly cast a vote for the president.
Hey, you got any openings there in the New Zealand? Heck - Old Zealand, whatever, something with less heavily armed, grossly unhealthy authoritarian fetishists? Looking to start, say, in about five months?
Unfortunately we’re no socialist utopia and we recently swung to the right in the election last year. The deputy prime minister is a noted xenophobe, pay-to-play corruption is on the rise, and most of the social policies of the last 6 years are being rolled back and then some.
These changes aren’t necessarily popular, lots of people voted against the incumbents rather than for the new government, but the next election is 2 years away and the electorate has a short memory.
It’s also worth knowing that much of our international reputation is a smokescreen. We’re not clean and green despite what our tourism marketing says. Almost every party in our parliament subscribes to neoliberalism to varying degrees and thinks deregulation will solve our productivity problems. We have one of the worst housing markets on the planet which is more like a Ponzi scheme thanks to a lack of capital gains tax and incentives for speculators. Finally the cost of living is extreme due to a lack of competition in the food, banking, petrol, electricity and water markets.
We have been falling in the OECD rankings on most metrics since the late 80s when we embraced Thatcherism/Reaganomics.
And yet.