That’s true, but whataboutism doesn’t help much in a thread about the US election. Besides, in hardly any other democratic country in the world is the far-right or fascist candidate so obviously completely unsuitable: Trump has already been president and has previously made policies contrary to the interests of the idiots who voted for him; he has a criminal record for fraud and has been found guilty in various proceedings for many other crimes, such as sexual harassment, defamation and fraud amounting to millions. It doesn’t get any more obvious than that.

Yes, Einstein had to flee Nazi Germany. And yes, I’m not too sure about the last part of the quote either. Dark times are to come I guess - and probably not just for the US but for the whole democratic world.

The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency.

Albert Einstein

The PACs. I think this practice should be considered blatant corruption in any democratic system as it enables large corporations and wealthy individuals to predetermine which candidate or party has even the slightest chance in elections. In my home country, of course, there are private political funds as well but those are not nearly as important in our system as there is solid public funding for political parties based on past election results. I might be wrong but I always thought that the insane amount of private money that fuels US elections boils down to the US being a plutocracy rather than a democracy.

I’m sorry to say that, but I think that moronic statement is pretty much the US in a nutshell. I mean Trump is one of just two presidential candidates…and it seems to be a close election.

If the Conservatives had their way, women would not be allowed to vote at all. Unfortunately, that still seems to be one of their goals. I mean, Trump and his henchmen have already made sure that women are no longer allowed to control their own bodies, which I have to admit I thought was impossible in a Western country. What makes you think they’re going to leave it at taking away women’s right to a secret ballot? These people want to reverse advances in civilization like women’s right to vote all together. That’s what conservative means to them: back to the Middle Ages. In this sense, they are little different from other religious extremists such as the Taliban. Their goals might be a little different but their means are pretty much the same.

What do you mean by religion? Halloween is a pagan festival according to Christian standards. Of course, I’d be right there with you when it comes to the fun festivals of pagans, but is that what you mean?

I realize that Halloween is a commercial event, but I think there are other outlets for criticism of capitalism. Things where you can make a difference and at the same time let the children have fun. I don’t think you can change much if you dwell on trivialities that bring people together despite all the commerce. That doesn’t seem to me to be the right approach.

That sounds fun, I imagine it like this:

Dentist in tooth disguise and surrounded by tooth fairies: Please open your mouth.

Patient Jack Sparrow: Arr!

Aha, this must be the “cabal” that these weird MAGA people are always rambling on about.

Yes, it’s quite depressing that there is no referee who would have the authority or rather the will to prevent this degenerate behavior, to stay with a sports metaphor - there is unfortunately no fair play in most societies because there is no one to enforce it.

I can’t understand how super-rich people like Favre are so disgustingly greedy. The man has a private fortune of more than $100 million already.

Well, people like this Girdusky are a joke. At least that much is certain.

Zionism is inherently racist. This movement has nothing to do with Judaism. One of the greatest misdeeds of the Netanyahu regime - tho it pales in comparison to their other misdeeds - is to present their inhumane actions as the Jews’ point of view. Israel’s strategy in the last couple of year was to portray all completely justified criticism of Zionism, and especially of the state of Israel’s inhumane approach to its realization, as anti-Semitism. There is no truth in this whatsoever. Zionism is not Judaism and the state of Israel does not stand for the Jews as a religious group - these days Israel only stands for a criminal regime that murders helpless people and breaks international law. This is not about religion, but about crimes against humanity committed by a sovereign state, by Israel, their criminal regime and all their henchmen.

This reminds me of a story a friend who is a teacher recently told me: One of his students was so nervous during an oral exam that he could barely form a complete sentence. So the friend of mine, in consultation with the exam board, gave the poor guy a second chance on the same day - that didn’t go particularly well either, but was enough to pass. The parents of the nervous student sued because this procedure did not comply with the examination regulations. They won and managed to get the exam repeated a third time - the examination board stayed unchanged. You can perhaps imagine how this went for the student, who was understandably all the more nervous the third time around. In the end, he didn’t graduate, not because the examiners were vindictive, but because they had to grade the student purely based on his performance which wasn’t good enough because the poor guy couldn’t get a coherent sentence together again. If his parents hadn’t sued, he would have graduated.

I know. I did not downvote and I really don’t get why people feel the need to. Your comment is completely accurate - it makes no sense to impute any intentions to these people in disguise. My only point was that the people in the photo should not appear like that for the election in any case.

Be that as it may, people wearing masks or costumes have no place in a polling station.

Absolutely right. But the thing is that many so-called leaders will no longer have a raison d’être if there are no more unnecessary meetings and all that fuss. Many of them do nothing all day but sit in meetings, achieve nothing and still feel very important. That’s the misery of the world of work: it’s not usually the best who get into management positions, it’s not the most qualified and certainly not the ones who work the hardest. It’s the most unscrupulous, those who pass off the work of others as their own, people who would never achieve anything on their own or in a small company that can’t afford to waste salaries on froth-mongers. LinkedIn makes it clear how this all works, I think: there, too, it is not the competent people who really understand their work who have the most success, it is the busybodies, the networkers and narcissists. If the competent people set the tone, there would be no discussion about office duties in an IT company. It’s only held on to so that managers can live out their fantasies of omnipotence and post nonsense on LinkedIn.

Don’t clog the toilets. It’s not the c-suites who have to clean that up.

Yes, years before he became president.