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One of the funniest coronation memes I saw was someone juxtaposing Penny Mordaunt presenting King Prince Charles with the Jewelled Sword of Offering (she was tipped to be the next PM based on this, by the way) with her 2014 appearance on the celebrity diving show Splash!
I recall seeing people complain that republicans and anti-monarchists were ruining Chuck Windsor’s big day and the only coronation they were going to see in their life time, and just thinking it might not be the only coronation we see this decade.
Considering how long her dad lived, of which I think the stress of unexpectedly getting the crown and WW2 took its toll, you would get a balance somewhere in between. I do wonder what it would have been like if he had lived longer.
Charles will be like GR IV, WR IV and ER VII; a short reign after a long lived monarch. Mind you ER II’s father died youngish of smoking related causes, her uncle abdicated and her grandfather was murdered by his doctor so anything is possible.
Clarification on the ‘murder’: His doctor basically decided that The Country would be better served by reading of his death in the morning paper, rather than the evening journals, so when he determined that George V had very, VERY little time left, he sent the nurse out of the room and gave the king a cocktail of cocaine and morphine to ensure as painless a death as possible.
Also, just in case you couldn’t guess, the man was of the opinion that euthanasia was a matter for doctors to decide, not lawmakers…
I’m swinging the other direction, TBH. All my hopes for Charles being shit enough for people to ditch the whole thing now rest on Prince Pegsalot trying to ascend the throne too soon for the economy to have even begun to recover.
Given Truss met with her a few days prior, COVID still being a thing, and she developed major respiratory issues prior to general physical collapse, there are some half-decently believable serious theories going around, too.
well, he’s got about as much background with U.S. Politics as many members of the U.S. Congress, most of the American Media, and a huge portion of American Bloggers, Influencers, online creators, and celebrities. but as a former Math tutor, he can do something most Congressmen can’t: He can do math, knows what percentiles are and negative numbers and multiplication by fractions.
That’s more than many people whose JOB is supposed to be informed by that.
He might be a better congressman than deSanto, if he would just get naturalized…
Honestly, many foreigners probably have a better idea of how the American government is intended to run (and how it runs in practice) than your average ‘Murican student…
Listin, roight? Me stepdad Reg, ‘e ain’t ‘alf barmy but damn it if ‘e don’t make me Mum ‘appy. This new lawr is gunna put ol’ Reg in ‘arm’s way, ‘ow it’s worded, so if ye’d koindly consider rewordin’ it, Oi promise rioight, that our entoire estate’ll be out votin’ for ye in force, come next election, innit.
Honestly, he might bring some interesting perspective. UK politics are deeply fucked, more than usual, and he also has to be inundated with US stuff, both before he came and while he’s here, so…
It’s because of Brexit. It was such an insane exercise in the nation shooting its collective foot that the only way to actually “get Brexit done” was by having the craziest, most incompetent people in charge. Anyone sane or reasonable would never have gotten Brexit done because they’d instantly realize it just shouldn’t be done.
It also brought out a ton of hypocrisy since a ton of people who were/are into the idea of Brexit also chided Scotland to remain part of the UK by saying they had no backup plan for if they were their own country, right before leaving the EU with no goddamn plan. They also got them to remain with the idea that they’d be part of the EU.
So, it was an across the board shit-show on even just that ONE point, and has shown it was just nationalism all the way down for them.
She never hinted, she never said it, she never brought it up, and she knows exactly whom Robin is talking about even though she did not actually identify him.
I went back and looked at the strips and she never mentioned Jason by name or country of origin even in the slightest, she didn’t even provide a gender. The number of assumptions Robin would have needed to make to land on Jason are fairly extreme.
There hasn’t been a Labour party PM there for some thirteen years. In that time they’ve had David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak all conservative prime ministers.
And since Labour is mostly in favour of Brexit too, and is now run by another privileged son just like the Tories, there’s no real change expected even if they get elected.
Did Jason draw the picture of the sword in the stone, questioning if that’s how leaders are chosen and decided? Because if so that’s hilarious.
Or was Jason like “idk about politics” and Robin drew those pictures as visual guides to help him while she bailed to try and fish for praise from Leslie lol
I prefer to assume Robin did it, because it perfectly fits my perception of her that she was a congresswoman whose entire knowledge of the workings of one of our closest allies comes from vaguely remembering a Disney movie she saw when she was six.
Well, it’s a better way than some strange woman lyin’ in a pond distributin’ swords. That’s no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
I wonder if this better or worse than every 4-8 years the guy in charge tries to repair and/or undue the work of the guy before him, while our ever increasing team of evil, immortal, vampire judges try to reset our countries laws back to 1920.
What I find interesting is that UK has a House of Lords which is basically their version of the senate. And on a surface it sounds worse since they don’t even pretend it’s a democratic institution and is basically the remnants of aristocratic class, yet it is still better than the US senate because they only have an advisor role instead of a stranglehold over government.
The only legitimate governing power derives from a mandate of those governed, as it were. Royalty, nobility, oligarchs and supreme court wizards are all right out, and the US electoral system built on controlling who can vote and how much their votes count isn’t a lot better either.
I think Ireland, Spain and Finland take turns leading the democracy index ratings so we can probably look at how they do things and start improving from there.
I don’t think it matters that he’s british for like, political science 101 or whatever this specifically is; it’s not like it’s intro to american politics or whatever. different political systems are still political science.
that said I’ve barely done any polisci, and it was part of social studies, civics, law class, etc, and it wasn’t in america, so I could be wrong
Oh no, jokes that I’m going to understand and agree with or be offended by and maybe have to explain. This is going to be horrible, but fun.
Fun side joke re: the chalkboard messages, I don’t know how many Americans have heard of a guy called Michael Fabricant, but I *highly* recommend looking him up if you want to see hair that defies logic. Obviously, he is also the kind of Tory that gets me banned from places if I describe it accurately.
Dude looks like he had his 2-year-old niece safety-scissor some hair out of one of those generic kids’ books with the weird gradient art style and glue it to his head.
Honestly learning about another countries politics isn’t the worst idea for someone trying to get into politics, its absolutely not what Robin intended though
Its especially useful when comparing and contrasting different political systems.
Like, there’s no third parties of import in the USA, not because Americans only have two potential views on politics, but because the laws governing how elections work (and what positions get elected) massively suppress third parties, whereas in the UK those parties can exist and win seats, and them winning seats is very important.
All because the USA elects the nation’s leader directly, and the UK only lets you vote for your representative, and its parliament as a whole that selects their leader. And because parliament can change the nation’s leader pretty freely, prime ministers can come and go at the drop of the hat.
In the US, we do not in fact elect the President directly. Each state is assigned a number of elevators aligned to one party or the other. This is based on 2+(population based #). The states are won by party district. The winning party for the state gets the electors for the state. Then at the actual election the elevators vote. There hasn’t yet been an instance of an elector voting against the party that chose them but it could happen and there’s no check on it aside from nuking one’s political career. Nearly happened during the 2020 election.
On top of that, there have been many elections… probably most GOP victories since 2000 wehre the popular vote and the electoral college have resulted in different results.
This process also why 3rd parties are a waste of time because of the electoral college.
We also have big issues with gerrymandering where districts are drawn in asinine ways, encouraging polarization because the politicians want security as opposed to honest political dialogue.
Every election I vote Democrat. But in my heart I don’t vote Democrat, I vote ‘Please God not another Republican. Amen.’
Aye, a fair point about how the electoral college adds a bit of wiggle room for the presidential elections. That has its own heavy effects, changing how elections are run and what states are focused on (the GOP is extremely weak in California, for example, because it has no chance of winning state-wide races).
That said, because people still vote for President specifically, the effect that has on downballot races is immense, pushing third parties into irrelevance, with only a scant handful of congressmen and senators not belonging to either of the two main parties.
To nitpick a little, there have been faithless electors. So far it hasn’t changed the results of any election. The closest was when all the electors from Virginia abstained from voting for Vice President once, but the Senate elected the guy who would have won if the Virginia electors had voted as pledged.
Look, British political structure is easy to understand. It’s just your basic country featuring a constitutional monarchy egalitarian democracy with aristocratic governance and the constitution only exists in everyone’s heads. Oh, and I think it’s actually 4 countries, but I’m not sure if that’s the right number either.
I mean, it kinda is pretty simple all-told. The monarchy and House of Lords are largely ineffectual, symbolic features these days. They can basically be ignored outright when it comes to looking at political news in the UK.
everything’s fucked everywhere but i’d hope one president making a mistake doesn’t screw over an average citizen’s daily life like how ppl are basically trying to make america uninhabitable to some ppl
The only thing I remember about American politics in my Australian pol course was when my lecturer went on a rant and ended it saying the only redeemable quality was that America has a clearer separation of powers between parliament and government
I think he means between the legislature and executive. In most parliamentary systems the legislature (Parliament) and executive (“government”) are entwined because the prime minister and cabinet are also members of parliament.
This. Legislature (parliament), executive (government) and judiciary (courts) ideally should be separate in democracies to maintain accountability. Australia’s government is formed in parliament cos we have a blend of the Westminster (UK) and US systems.
Little off-topic for the current strip, but I follow this really funny guy called Caddicarus on YouTube and yesterday he put up a community post explaining that he got an official diagnosis for ADHD. A lot of the comments are solidarity from viewers with the same, and one person said basically “I don’t have ADHD but I’m autistic. Can I sit at y’all’s table?”, and that led me to a question.
Does anyone else feel weirdly pressured to disclose things like ADHD/autism/depression, in spaces that are welcoming to the braindifferent folks? Or even if you’re queer, do you feel like you have to declare it down to the specific subtype, so people don’t verbally pour bees down your throat during conversations? I don’t have any specific examples from personal experience, I’m mostly curious if others do.
I got this at a non-profit I worked at, especially when it came to discussions of social justice/equity. I felt a lot of pressure to overshare past my comfort levels re: mental health, particularly with my second manager, who didn’t know enough about the topic of ADHD to be able to support me and just kind of made me feel like shit every time we talked about it because it was clear that the topic was totally foreign to him so trying to explain it was exhausting (I’m okay now; I’ve been through a lot of therapy and have had the opportunity to move on) (I also don’t begrudge him his ignorance; mental health education is awful, even for a lot of people who fancy themselves psychologists).
It’s really unfortunate (and kinda pathetic) that people have an expectation of how a queer is “supposed to look”. I don’t have dyed hair in a semi-wild cut, I don’t wear makeup, I’m doughy and hairy, rarely bother to shave, and I look and dress like a 22-year old stock stoner character from any TV show ever, complete with beanie and permanent sunglasses. So if I walk into some very LGBT+ friendly group, I instinctively know I’m gonna get side-eyed, dirty looks, and likely even rude comments for not performing queerness “right”.
Or that might be the anxiety and low self-esteem talking. Either way.
Not queer but I can say I feel a similar level of imposter syndrome with the black community. Less so my appearance (I am very) but moreso the…cultural community stuff. I’m a decade behind on slang at any time, I speak in a high pitched whine, I grew up in the suburbs, I listen to pop punk. And I’m not always aligned with the beliefs I feel like people expect of me. I always feel like at any point I’m gonna be “found out” when I’m with a group of other black people. I usually just stay really shy and quiet until I can feel out the group.
I’m undiagnosed but people keep telling me I’m probably on the spectrum. But since I don’t know I don’t really “declare” that. So much as I might pepper it in if I make some sorta social error that that would explain away. Of course I wanna not use it as a crutch since I’m…just sorta guessing
But, it’s not really pressure in the bad sense? It’s just that, it’s real neat to be around fellow ND folks who GET IT, who share and affirm your experiences. Which is why I really love the DoA community, but I’ve also met autistics in the game dev community (a lot of whom channel their autism in to games they wanna make that I help code), so yeah a lot of good can come from what I guess earthlings call a sense of community?
Never declare yourself anything in any environment you don’t feel safe or comfortable doing so. Not unless you have like, a *cause* or something. You’re always the one in control of who you choose to tell. Don’t feel pressured to do so by anyone or anything else.
But you should find that comfortable space somewhere. Just be careful.
Eh, these days a disturbingly large number of USians seem to believe that their country is a constitutional monarchy, to the point that I sometimes refer to the more extreme members of the Republican party as “monarchists.”
My (I use the possessive loosely) is shagged but we can always chuckle over how the conservatives nearly sent the whole shooting match into the midden of history
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nah, lettuce lasts longer than that
La laitue est morte
Vive la laitue
Treasure the salad days.
Rarely have I wished harder for an upvote button.
Jason could teach them of the unfair expectations on immigrants.
It’s not like Robin got her career by understanding things. OR knowing how to tie bow-ties.
So Jason is 50% more qualified than her, right there.
Lady of the Lake, return the sword! XD
Farcical aquatic ceremonies are no basis for a system of government!
Quite right. Bring me a lettuce.
Bloody peasant!
Come and see the violence inherent in the system!
“don’t make cheese sandwiches if you can’t afford the ingredients”
One of the funniest coronation memes I saw was someone juxtaposing Penny Mordaunt presenting King Prince Charles with the Jewelled Sword of Offering (she was tipped to be the next PM based on this, by the way) with her 2014 appearance on the celebrity diving show Splash!
This was a mistake.
Honestly, more of a lateral move.
At least Jason has British politics down correctly.
Is it really a mistake if Robin’s goal is to just cause as much chaos as she can?
Hehe what ya think she is, some kinda Newgrounds edgelord game character XD
It meshes with her goal of doing as little work as possible.
Hey, that’s *my* goal! Thief!
there’s a new monarch a hell of a lot more often than that most of the time, Jason
At the rate time moves in this comic, Liz 2’s reign lasted longer than the last ice age.
I recall seeing people complain that republicans and anti-monarchists were ruining Chuck Windsor’s big day and the only coronation they were going to see in their life time, and just thinking it might not be the only coronation we see this decade.
god willing
The man is 74 and have you seen those sausage fingers? i like my odds a lot better than his, and my health isn’t even that great.
Like, generalizing from how long the reign was of someone who was crowned at 25 is *weird*.
Crowned at 25 *and* lived to near enough 100….
Considering how long her dad lived, of which I think the stress of unexpectedly getting the crown and WW2 took its toll, you would get a balance somewhere in between. I do wonder what it would have been like if he had lived longer.
Charles will be like GR IV, WR IV and ER VII; a short reign after a long lived monarch. Mind you ER II’s father died youngish of smoking related causes, her uncle abdicated and her grandfather was murdered by his doctor so anything is possible.
Clarification on the ‘murder’: His doctor basically decided that The Country would be better served by reading of his death in the morning paper, rather than the evening journals, so when he determined that George V had very, VERY little time left, he sent the nurse out of the room and gave the king a cocktail of cocaine and morphine to ensure as painless a death as possible.
Also, just in case you couldn’t guess, the man was of the opinion that euthanasia was a matter for doctors to decide, not lawmakers…
Also lung cancer. Can’t overstate the role smoking a whole bunch of cigarettes had in that.
I’m swinging the other direction, TBH. All my hopes for Charles being shit enough for people to ditch the whole thing now rest on Prince Pegsalot trying to ascend the throne too soon for the economy to have even begun to recover.
Yeah there’s no way Chuckie boy is going to last another 20 years.
Just wondering if this strip was in the buffer before Lizzie kicked the bucket.
Mrs. Windsor has been dead since Sept. 8 of last year, and while the buffer is long it’s not that long
I mean, she only died like the day after Liz Truss resigned, which is what the head of lettuce joke is about, right?
She died the day after Truss took office. There were lots of Highlander and crypto-republican jokes about it.
Given Truss met with her a few days prior, COVID still being a thing, and she developed major respiratory issues prior to general physical collapse, there are some half-decently believable serious theories going around, too.
(Much like COVID-19 still is)
And about the fact for a (very) brief period, the UK was officially lead by two people named Elizabeth.
For those not in the know, here’s the relevant Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liz_Truss_lettuce
I’d’ve said you had to be there, but like… you really didn’t.
Literal lol from me today, well-played.
(He was a math TA. Bold of Leslie to assume he understands BRITISH politics in meaningful enough detail to teach it.)
well, he’s got about as much background with U.S. Politics as many members of the U.S. Congress, most of the American Media, and a huge portion of American Bloggers, Influencers, online creators, and celebrities. but as a former Math tutor, he can do something most Congressmen can’t: He can do math, knows what percentiles are and negative numbers and multiplication by fractions.
That’s more than many people whose JOB is supposed to be informed by that.
He might be a better congressman than deSanto, if he would just get naturalized…
Actually, if he taught them a quick primer on statistics… That might not be the worst idea.
Teaching statistics might be a worthwhile contribution to their political education in and of itself.
+1
Well food can go a long way pedagogically, especially in politics to such a frightening degree.
“Laws are like sausages; it’s best if people don’t see them being made.”
Anyone who works for Galasso quickly gets to be an expert in Machiavellian theory.
Honestly, many foreigners probably have a better idea of how the American government is intended to run (and how it runs in practice) than your average ‘Murican student…
Barry, save us!
If Barry starts talking about the pros and con of regicide, he can instantly be a top 5 character.
Pros: Many.
Cons: You have to explain what you mean, or you’ll unnecessarily alarm people named Reggie.
Listin, roight? Me stepdad Reg, ‘e ain’t ‘alf barmy but damn it if ‘e don’t make me Mum ‘appy. This new lawr is gunna put ol’ Reg in ‘arm’s way, ‘ow it’s worded, so if ye’d koindly consider rewordin’ it, Oi promise rioight, that our entoire estate’ll be out votin’ for ye in force, come next election, innit.
Con: Tabloids get put out of business.
Pro: Tabloids get put out of business.
Honestly, he might bring some interesting perspective. UK politics are deeply fucked, more than usual, and he also has to be inundated with US stuff, both before he came and while he’s here, so…
Honestly any sort of United Kingdom political statements are going to age really badly in terms of sliding timescale stuff
You have to admit that going from world-spanning empire to third world country in just under a century is a pretty impressive trajectory.
It’s because of Brexit. It was such an insane exercise in the nation shooting its collective foot that the only way to actually “get Brexit done” was by having the craziest, most incompetent people in charge. Anyone sane or reasonable would never have gotten Brexit done because they’d instantly realize it just shouldn’t be done.
It also brought out a ton of hypocrisy since a ton of people who were/are into the idea of Brexit also chided Scotland to remain part of the UK by saying they had no backup plan for if they were their own country, right before leaving the EU with no goddamn plan. They also got them to remain with the idea that they’d be part of the EU.
So, it was an across the board shit-show on even just that ONE point, and has shown it was just nationalism all the way down for them.
Leslie, for once, you ABSOLUTELY DID hint at this.
She didn’t hint, she flat out said it.
A reminder that Jason is, in fact, also terrible at teaching.
Dude should stick to bartending, he’s actually decent at that. Probably mixes decent drinks
As far as I can tell he is keeping his job at Galasso’s.
She never hinted, she never said it, she never brought it up, and she knows exactly whom Robin is talking about even though she did not actually identify him.
I went back and looked at the strips and she never mentioned Jason by name or country of origin even in the slightest, she didn’t even provide a gender. The number of assumptions Robin would have needed to make to land on Jason are fairly extreme.
“The number of assumptions Robin would have needed to make to land on Jason are fairly extreme.”
Alternatively, Robin could have just looked up the college records of recent harassment charges. Doesn’t seem that implausible to me.
Jason and Penny, and Penny’s spaceship blew up on the way back to England.
Would’ve been funny if she’d taken those hints and hired Penny back instead of Jason.
Or, hell, she could have heard it through the grapevine. Someone being forced to resign for sleeping with a student kind of is hot goss.
So the new prime ministers have different policies and are from different parties?
There hasn’t been a Labour party PM there for some thirteen years. In that time they’ve had David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak all conservative prime ministers.
Labour is too busy eating itself alive to bother actually winning elections
Corbyn had ideas and he lost, so clearly all they have to do is to have no ideas whatsoever. How could that possibly go wrong.
Labour sabotaged Corbyn because they couldn’t stand the idea of having a prime minister who has some good ideas
And since Labour is mostly in favour of Brexit too, and is now run by another privileged son just like the Tories, there’s no real change expected even if they get elected.
PM should be elected at large, not indirectly by members of Parliament.
Did uh
Did Jason draw the picture of the sword in the stone, questioning if that’s how leaders are chosen and decided? Because if so that’s hilarious.
Or was Jason like “idk about politics” and Robin drew those pictures as visual guides to help him while she bailed to try and fish for praise from Leslie lol
Either option’s great honestly.
I prefer to assume Robin did it, because it perfectly fits my perception of her that she was a congresswoman whose entire knowledge of the workings of one of our closest allies comes from vaguely remembering a Disney movie she saw when she was six.
The Sword in the Stone, or The Black Cauldron?
Well, it’s a better way than some strange woman lyin’ in a pond distributin’ swords. That’s no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
I mean, if I were to go around claiming to be an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away.
I choose to believe despite no evidence that Barry drew it while Jason talked in order to support his new colleague.
Wait, is THAT why the British government keeps subsidizing GMOs? I thought for sure it would be improved crop yeilds.
Farcical Aquatic Ceremonies Are No Basis For A System Of Government – Denis
I didn’t know his name was Denis.
I wonder if this better or worse than every 4-8 years the guy in charge tries to repair and/or undue the work of the guy before him, while our ever increasing team of evil, immortal, vampire judges try to reset our countries laws back to 1920.
What I find interesting is that UK has a House of Lords which is basically their version of the senate. And on a surface it sounds worse since they don’t even pretend it’s a democratic institution and is basically the remnants of aristocratic class, yet it is still better than the US senate because they only have an advisor role instead of a stranglehold over government.
Pretty sure they are aiming for 1820
My instinct is the kingdom is worse, but neither get a passing grade
The only legitimate governing power derives from a mandate of those governed, as it were. Royalty, nobility, oligarchs and supreme court wizards are all right out, and the US electoral system built on controlling who can vote and how much their votes count isn’t a lot better either.
I think Ireland, Spain and Finland take turns leading the democracy index ratings so we can probably look at how they do things and start improving from there.
The Socialist Kingdom of Spain.
How do they control who can vote in those three nations?
Generally, your birthday is tracked and if you’re over 18 you’re good.
Oh no. This is going to be a disaster
The blood to remake shall flow for all time! XD
Unicorn: Warriors Eternal?
Ding ding ding!
Good ol’ Charlie Windsor, yes sir…
How I hate him.
Nope, seems about right to me, Jaybird!
I don’t think it matters that he’s british for like, political science 101 or whatever this specifically is; it’s not like it’s intro to american politics or whatever. different political systems are still political science.
that said I’ve barely done any polisci, and it was part of social studies, civics, law class, etc, and it wasn’t in america, so I could be wrong
The reverse Boris is underway in PoliSci
Habemus… caput?
I love the Liz Truss joke
That wasn’t a good week for British women named Elizabeth.
Every time I think of Robin as a member of Congress, I think, wow, if Lauren Boebert had a few working brain cells, she’d be just that dangerous.
Does Jason actually think King Charles is going to live for 100 more years? Dude has maybe 30 tops and that feels like pushing it.
Liz is Spiders Georg-ing it
Oh no, jokes that I’m going to understand and agree with or be offended by and maybe have to explain. This is going to be horrible, but fun.
Fun side joke re: the chalkboard messages, I don’t know how many Americans have heard of a guy called Michael Fabricant, but I *highly* recommend looking him up if you want to see hair that defies logic. Obviously, he is also the kind of Tory that gets me banned from places if I describe it accurately.
His hair looks photoshopped.
RIGHT!? That shit looks so fake! It doesn’t just look photoshopped, it looks very poorly photoshopped.
Dude looks like he had his 2-year-old niece safety-scissor some hair out of one of those generic kids’ books with the weird gradient art style and glue it to his head.
Interesting that there are multiple examples, although I have to imagine that the comment was made with Boris Johnson in mind.
Lol, I think his hair is fabricant
Honestly learning about another countries politics isn’t the worst idea for someone trying to get into politics, its absolutely not what Robin intended though
Its especially useful when comparing and contrasting different political systems.
Like, there’s no third parties of import in the USA, not because Americans only have two potential views on politics, but because the laws governing how elections work (and what positions get elected) massively suppress third parties, whereas in the UK those parties can exist and win seats, and them winning seats is very important.
All because the USA elects the nation’s leader directly, and the UK only lets you vote for your representative, and its parliament as a whole that selects their leader. And because parliament can change the nation’s leader pretty freely, prime ministers can come and go at the drop of the hat.
Or a head of lettuce.
In the US, we do not in fact elect the President directly. Each state is assigned a number of elevators aligned to one party or the other. This is based on 2+(population based #). The states are won by party district. The winning party for the state gets the electors for the state. Then at the actual election the elevators vote. There hasn’t yet been an instance of an elector voting against the party that chose them but it could happen and there’s no check on it aside from nuking one’s political career. Nearly happened during the 2020 election.
On top of that, there have been many elections… probably most GOP victories since 2000 wehre the popular vote and the electoral college have resulted in different results.
This process also why 3rd parties are a waste of time because of the electoral college.
We also have big issues with gerrymandering where districts are drawn in asinine ways, encouraging polarization because the politicians want security as opposed to honest political dialogue.
Every election I vote Democrat. But in my heart I don’t vote Democrat, I vote ‘Please God not another Republican. Amen.’
Electors, not elevators. But maybe elevators would be healthier for American democracy.
Aye, a fair point about how the electoral college adds a bit of wiggle room for the presidential elections. That has its own heavy effects, changing how elections are run and what states are focused on (the GOP is extremely weak in California, for example, because it has no chance of winning state-wide races).
That said, because people still vote for President specifically, the effect that has on downballot races is immense, pushing third parties into irrelevance, with only a scant handful of congressmen and senators not belonging to either of the two main parties.
Electoral College is better than how chief executives are selected everywhere else.
To nitpick a little, there have been faithless electors. So far it hasn’t changed the results of any election. The closest was when all the electors from Virginia abstained from voting for Vice President once, but the Senate elected the guy who would have won if the Virginia electors had voted as pledged.
comparing to other countries’ politics is always fun (for various definitions of fun)
Look, British political structure is easy to understand. It’s just your basic country featuring a constitutional monarchy egalitarian democracy with aristocratic governance and the constitution only exists in everyone’s heads. Oh, and I think it’s actually 4 countries, but I’m not sure if that’s the right number either.
The Channel Islands are technically three additional countries, but are also technically not part of the UK.
Sorry, the Channel Islands are only two additional countries, the third one is the Isle of Man.
What about Sodor?
Yeah, but I think “Britain” includes all the British isles, including all of Ireland and the smaller ones? Not just the UK?
The British Isles is a little controversial as a name, especially in Ireland
no, absolutely not.
Calling the Republic of Ireland part of Britain is like calling the Philippines part of the US.
I mean, it kinda is pretty simple all-told. The monarchy and House of Lords are largely ineffectual, symbolic features these days. They can basically be ignored outright when it comes to looking at political news in the UK.
never ignore billionaires who don’t pay their share of taxes and get massive subsidies, when it comes to political news.
To be fair, it’s nice to know about politics of other nations. I don’t know shit about fuck about america, let alone the other countries.
everything’s fucked everywhere but i’d hope one president making a mistake doesn’t screw over an average citizen’s daily life like how ppl are basically trying to make america uninhabitable to some ppl
The only thing I remember about American politics in my Australian pol course was when my lecturer went on a rant and ended it saying the only redeemable quality was that America has a clearer separation of powers between parliament and government
wat
I think he means between the legislature and executive. In most parliamentary systems the legislature (Parliament) and executive (“government”) are entwined because the prime minister and cabinet are also members of parliament.
This. Legislature (parliament), executive (government) and judiciary (courts) ideally should be separate in democracies to maintain accountability. Australia’s government is formed in parliament cos we have a blend of the Westminster (UK) and US systems.
lol at this point might as well bring a a tv screen projector and turn it on to cnn for an hour or so
MSNBC, maybe. CNN’s new benefactors seem to be steering it into a “FOX Lite” position…
Just set up a playlist of videos from The Onion.
The magic of this strip is it simultaneously oversells and undersells the oddness of our politics.
Little off-topic for the current strip, but I follow this really funny guy called Caddicarus on YouTube and yesterday he put up a community post explaining that he got an official diagnosis for ADHD. A lot of the comments are solidarity from viewers with the same, and one person said basically “I don’t have ADHD but I’m autistic. Can I sit at y’all’s table?”, and that led me to a question.
Does anyone else feel weirdly pressured to disclose things like ADHD/autism/depression, in spaces that are welcoming to the braindifferent folks? Or even if you’re queer, do you feel like you have to declare it down to the specific subtype, so people don’t verbally pour bees down your throat during conversations? I don’t have any specific examples from personal experience, I’m mostly curious if others do.
I got this at a non-profit I worked at, especially when it came to discussions of social justice/equity. I felt a lot of pressure to overshare past my comfort levels re: mental health, particularly with my second manager, who didn’t know enough about the topic of ADHD to be able to support me and just kind of made me feel like shit every time we talked about it because it was clear that the topic was totally foreign to him so trying to explain it was exhausting (I’m okay now; I’ve been through a lot of therapy and have had the opportunity to move on) (I also don’t begrudge him his ignorance; mental health education is awful, even for a lot of people who fancy themselves psychologists).
Yes. Especially the queer thing because holy shit I do not “look queer” and I am scared to death to join offline spaces because of it.
It’s really unfortunate (and kinda pathetic) that people have an expectation of how a queer is “supposed to look”. I don’t have dyed hair in a semi-wild cut, I don’t wear makeup, I’m doughy and hairy, rarely bother to shave, and I look and dress like a 22-year old stock stoner character from any TV show ever, complete with beanie and permanent sunglasses. So if I walk into some very LGBT+ friendly group, I instinctively know I’m gonna get side-eyed, dirty looks, and likely even rude comments for not performing queerness “right”.
Or that might be the anxiety and low self-esteem talking. Either way.
Not queer but I can say I feel a similar level of imposter syndrome with the black community. Less so my appearance (I am very) but moreso the…cultural community stuff. I’m a decade behind on slang at any time, I speak in a high pitched whine, I grew up in the suburbs, I listen to pop punk. And I’m not always aligned with the beliefs I feel like people expect of me. I always feel like at any point I’m gonna be “found out” when I’m with a group of other black people. I usually just stay really shy and quiet until I can feel out the group.
I’m undiagnosed but people keep telling me I’m probably on the spectrum. But since I don’t know I don’t really “declare” that. So much as I might pepper it in if I make some sorta social error that that would explain away. Of course I wanna not use it as a crutch since I’m…just sorta guessing
Ever since I came out as autistic, yes.
But, it’s not really pressure in the bad sense? It’s just that, it’s real neat to be around fellow ND folks who GET IT, who share and affirm your experiences. Which is why I really love the DoA community, but I’ve also met autistics in the game dev community (a lot of whom channel their autism in to games they wanna make that I help code), so yeah a lot of good can come from what I guess earthlings call a sense of community?
Yes. It’s funny how much identity is bound up in labels.
Never declare yourself anything in any environment you don’t feel safe or comfortable doing so. Not unless you have like, a *cause* or something. You’re always the one in control of who you choose to tell. Don’t feel pressured to do so by anyone or anything else.
But you should find that comfortable space somewhere. Just be careful.
Is a monarchist parliamentary democracy so difficult for Americans to understand when Canada is right next door?
Then again I imagine many Canadians don’t understand either and just assume it must be like America until it isn’t.
A constitutional monarchy is relatively easy to understand, but a prime minister without fixed term limits is utterly alien to me.
Eh, these days a disturbingly large number of USians seem to believe that their country is a constitutional monarchy, to the point that I sometimes refer to the more extreme members of the Republican party as “monarchists.”
I think a lot of Americans would struggle to name the current Canadian prime minister, they just don’t care about what’s happening up here politically
Second Treaudeauo
Now, Leslie, be fair; there’s been no evidence that Robin knows anything about American politics either
*nods sagely at the head of lettuce*
My (I use the possessive loosely) is shagged but we can always chuckle over how the conservatives nearly sent the whole shooting match into the midden of history
Brava!
Technically Jason, she left office *before* the lettuce died
Not sure if anyone has a lettuce on the go for Sunak
The Lettuce is Dead. Long Live the Lettuce!
When the smoke is green and smells like plant a new PM has been chosen
Honestly, these days that applies to politics in every country.
Do Americans even know American politics?
For the most part I don’t think they do. Just Bread and Circuses for the privileged. -_-