If you are referring to South Africa you are a moron.
Because South Africa was very much an authoritarian leadership, and ruled by a white minority by force.
WTF is that reference supposed to show that does anything but support democracy?

No that all the problem you mention are worse in totalitarian countries.

Why do you first support my point, and then call me a moron?

Again with USA as the example, no other democracy had slaves like USA did.
On the other hand comparable stories to Stalin can be found in multiple autocratic systems.
Where USA is the exception as in exceptionally bad among democracies, what Stain did is commonplace among autocracies.

Please read my edited post.
And no I’m not anything remotely like a tankie, I am one who favor ACTAUL democracy, where among the best models we have running currently is the Scandinavian model.
A 2 party system can never be accepted as a functional democracy, also the level of corruption in elections is undemocratic. preventing people from voting and gerrymandering.
All those things detract from USA as a democracy.

You are delusional and create strawmen and then you think you have a superior view based on your delusions and false equivalences that have no basis in reality.

Compared to genocide by Stalin, ICE is peanuts.
But no it’s not justified, that still doesn’t make it an equal atrocity to what Stalin did.
Also USA is not a democracy, it is a deeply dysfunctional democracy. And In USA it can go 2 ways now, they either go full dictator, or if they go the other, these things will be softened.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet_Union_under_Joseph_Stalin

official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953),[8][9][10][11][12] around 1.5 to 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag,[13][14][15] some 390,000[16] deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,[17] with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.

So kindly piss off with your false equivalences.

My issue is the claim that such atrocities don’t happen in democratic institutions.

But that’s the point, they don’t. Atrocities can happen, but not as bad as such.
Just give one example of a democracy where an atrocity remotely close to that happened.

if it wasn’t desperately needed elsewhere.

That’s kind of the point no?

Absolutely moronic headline, it’s a gigantic straw man argument, as you say nobody wants to pay higher taxes just for fun.
Also it’s an absolutely shit article with near zero content for several full-screen page scrolls on a 32 inch monitor!!

You are dead wrong, Estonia is represented in many fora that has China’s acute attention.
Estonia is a small country, but they are a country with an independent voice, that is participating in decisions in for instance EU and NATO.

Estonia has been absolutely killing it the past few years on foreign affairs, and has the attention of many countries that are way bigger than them, especially in Europe.
Also they work directly together with Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania, on foreign policies related to the Ukraine war.

Your knee jerk reaction that a big country can just ignore a small country, is naive and wrong. Especially regarding Estonia which is very respected and influential. There’s a reason they are so often in the news on their political announcements.

You are right, I somehow confused six digit and six zeroes.
I was thinking of someone making a million.

Still keeping within your means, you should be able to buy a car without taking a loan.

I suppose this is the reason Republicans are no longer peddling freedom for the masses, but has switched to fascism.
Fascism is better to control the masses for a while longer, while the rich continue to bleed the country.

If you make 6 figures, you should be able to buy a pickup truck without taking a loan.

The top 10% of earners drive more than 49% of all consumer spending

This is insane, this is like apartheid South Africa, an upper class minority owns and gets and decides everything, while the rest are slaves to a system that only supports the upper class while oppressing the poor and working class, to maintain the status quo.

No what you are describing isn’t even really a politician, but just a demagogue.
A demagogue makes promises to win an election, a politician work to deliver on the promises, and help make things better.

A politician is a person who participates in policy-making processes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician

Winning an election is only a means to become a politician, not the end.

Politicians make decisions, and influence the formulation of public policy.

Exactly the parts I described as determining whether a politician is good or bad.

A more formal definition:

Politician: 1: a person experienced in the art or science of government especially: one actively engaged in conducting the business of a government. 2a : a person engaged in party politics as a profession.[1]

So contrary to what you claim, not at all about campaigning or election by any definition, but the actual work that is done AFTER an election.

Thanks, that’s an amazing TLDR, and that sounds like a good fit to how it was IMO.
I think her plan to make it easier to buy a house, may have been part of how people thought she just doesn’t get it.

Thanks,

I only briefly skimmed the article - it is pretty long

Exactly, I ended up reading the first third or so, but thanks for the Paragraph, that seems like the author’s own TLDR.
The only one she would have been better than is of course Trump, but here we are…

I disagree, he is a terrible politician but an excellent demagogue.
People seem to confuse the idea of getting people to vote for you as the only requirement for being a good politician, but that is definitely not true.
To be a good politician, you need to also be able to improve conditions in the country,and create acceptance of the policies, and as president to be able to cooperate with congress for the good of the country, and to not be corrupt is pretty high up there in requirements too.

I have no idea how anyone can call Trump a good politician???

Oh, so you don’t like my summary of the article you didn’t read

I actually read quite a bit of the article before responding.

For instance her idea that having a gay running mate might be a problem, was in my opinion naive.
It’s like she thinks democratic voters will only vote for the status quo, when they are screaming for change.
But that so typical for many people, they are so obsessed with appearances, that they end up always seeming superficial and shallow and without substance.
Stupid when there was no way she could beat Trump on that aspect.

That does not ring true as the reason why she lost the election.
Trump is absolutely an even worse politician and way more out of touch with reality. But it didn’t matter because so are the people that vote for him.
I think it’s more that she is out of touch with the voters, and they absolutely were on Gaza. Not because they didn’t know, but because Democrats didn’t want to change their policy on Israel.

The above sounds more like your personal opinion than a result of reading the article.