Being from Belgium, following American politics started for me together with the rise of YouTube and I could watch episodes of The Daily Show on it and where things have gone from topics like ‘Dick Cheney shot someone in the face’ to news like this.
It really made me stop watching talkshows that I really enjoyed like The Daily Show, The Late Show with SC, … . It’s so much politics, every day again, on so many television shows. Is it also perceived as such in the USA itself?
In Belgium, for many reasons, politics isn’t 24/7 discussed everywhere, everytime.
My guess is, the reason why politics are not an outsized portion of your life over there has something to do with your country not having an angry, empowered, and vocal minority disproportionately overrepresented in government making regressive laws to strip away human rights and sell off ever more of your life to rent seeking corporations.
It’s everyday with these people here. If they got everything they wanted today they would come up with a new list of horrible shit to demand tomorrow. We are a police state and a third of us seem to think the boot isn’t stepping on us hard enough.
I didn’t want to go into it too much but in Belgium there isn’t a political with more than 25% representation. So each government has to be a coalition of several political parties.
There isn’t a system where the winner takes it all.
A voter in Belgium doesn’t identify itself with one party for life. So we often switch between political parties. Here’s no ‘us against them’ culture.
And because the outrage against other political parties isn’t a thing, it also isn’t a daily thing in the media.
Absurd news stories get more clicks, so the news is getting more absurd. Recently, things have legitimately seemed a bit more fucked up. I think some politicians, like MTG, recognize the more outlandish they are, the more coverage they get.
While politics is everywhere and hard to miss, I dont have many conversations in real life about it. People seem to never really talk about it directly. You’ll get side comments or people alluding to the most recent thing, but thats about it.
Being from Belgium, following American politics started for me together with the rise of YouTube and I could watch episodes of The Daily Show on it and where things have gone from topics like ‘Dick Cheney shot someone in the face’ to news like this. It really made me stop watching talkshows that I really enjoyed like The Daily Show, The Late Show with SC, … . It’s so much politics, every day again, on so many television shows. Is it also perceived as such in the USA itself? In Belgium, for many reasons, politics isn’t 24/7 discussed everywhere, everytime.
My guess is, the reason why politics are not an outsized portion of your life over there has something to do with your country not having an angry, empowered, and vocal minority disproportionately overrepresented in government making regressive laws to strip away human rights and sell off ever more of your life to rent seeking corporations.
It’s everyday with these people here. If they got everything they wanted today they would come up with a new list of horrible shit to demand tomorrow. We are a police state and a third of us seem to think the boot isn’t stepping on us hard enough.
I didn’t want to go into it too much but in Belgium there isn’t a political with more than 25% representation. So each government has to be a coalition of several political parties. There isn’t a system where the winner takes it all. A voter in Belgium doesn’t identify itself with one party for life. So we often switch between political parties. Here’s no ‘us against them’ culture. And because the outrage against other political parties isn’t a thing, it also isn’t a daily thing in the media.
Sounds utopian compared to what we have in the US.
Absurd news stories get more clicks, so the news is getting more absurd. Recently, things have legitimately seemed a bit more fucked up. I think some politicians, like MTG, recognize the more outlandish they are, the more coverage they get.
While politics is everywhere and hard to miss, I dont have many conversations in real life about it. People seem to never really talk about it directly. You’ll get side comments or people alluding to the most recent thing, but thats about it.
I’ve had to consciously change my media habits, so yes, by some of us anyway.
Last Week Tonight, on the other hand, I still find and satire and informative.