this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2024
178 points (79.7% liked)

News

23305 readers
3700 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

The first presidential debate is done and the aftermath has not been good for the incumbent, Joe Biden.

Some Democrat politicians and operatives reportedly texted CNN commentators with hopes that Mr Biden, 81, would step aside. Some floated the possibility of going to the White House and publicly stating concerns about him remaining as candidate.

But if Mr Biden were to drop out, it would be a free-for-all. There is no official mechanism for him or anyone else in the party to choose his successor, meaning Democrats would be left with an open (Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Chicago from August 19-22.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (7 children)

Stewart (and Colbert) are literally a clown (TV Comedian) who is refusing to ever make a serious political moves. Neither of them have any legislative experience or executive experience either.

The fact that modern people always choose TV Personalities (like Trump, Stewart and Colbert) is part of the same problem of ignorance of our Political system and what this job even freaken entails.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Stewart (and Colbert) are literally a clown

what this job even freaken entails.

You know Volodymyr Zelenskyy, current president of Ukraine?

He's a comedian who did a political satire TV series about being president of Ukraine.

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

Born to a Ukrainian Jewish family, Zelenskyy grew up as a native Russian speaker in Kryvyi Rih, a major city of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in central Ukraine. Before his acting career, he obtained a degree in law from the Kyiv National Economic University. He then pursued a comedy career and created the production company Kvartal 95, which produced films, cartoons, and TV shows including the TV series Servant of the People, in which Zelenskyy played a fictional Ukrainian president. The series aired from 2015 to 2019 and was immensely popular. A political party with the same name as the TV show was created in March 2018 by employees of Kvartal 95.

EDIT: Darn, someone else apparently mentioned it as well, checking their link. I'm still gonna leave this text up, though.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

Ah, but Robbin Williams didn't go on a year later to actually BECOME president.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Modern? where do you think Reagan came from? At least Stewart and Colbert are versed in the political and policy stuff from having been immersed in it for decades.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Strange that an ailing old man has his administration behind him to do all the gruntwork but an actually popular candidate wouldn't

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Why wouldn't they have an administration? Any president will hire a cabinet and advisors.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yes, indeed. So really what you need from a president is a trustworthy image and a baseline moral character, because all the actual governance minutiae is handled by the staff.

So why is it that all these people come out of the woodwork to insist the president NEEDS to be mired in one of the most corrupt political systems in the developed world?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Because a leader does need to be present. They aren't just a face in front of their staff.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Didn't stop Donald Trump or Ronald Regan.

My point is that there's more bad examples of Hollywood Actors or Reality TV stars becoming President for the worse of America, than the reverse.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

You have two counter examples, and one of them was incredibly successful, just for the side where success is bad for the country. Reagan wasn't ineffective, he was effective for evil purposes.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Al Franken graduated cum laude with a poli sci degree from Harvard. I'll let Jon Stewart himself tell you about his education.

"My college career was waking up late, memorizing someone else's notes, doing bong hits, and going to soccer practice"

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

George Washington wasn't able to attend school after the age of 11, because his father died and he had to take over running the family farm.

https://www.georgewashington.org/education.jsp

Despite being the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, the President of the Constitutional Convention, and the first President of the United States, George Washington's level of education was far lower than any of the other Founding Fathers of the United States. In fact, he was often scorned by some of the other Founding Fathers for this inadequacy. However, this lack of education was not George Washington's fault. Upon the death of George Washington's father in 1743, George's formal schooling ended. He is thought to have attended the nearby grammar school run by Reverend James Marye, the rector of St. George's Parish, up until this time. Therefore, the extent of young George's formal educational training was in basic mathematics, reading, and writing.

Although his older half-brothers had the opportunity to gain a formal education over in England at the Appleby School, George was required to take on the responsibility of running the family farm after his father's death.

On this list, every ranking places him as the highest-ranked President to ever serve other than one that places him at #2 and one that places him at #3:

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

That was 200 years ago. I'm comparing Jon Stewart to one of his contemporaries, in the modern era.

This wasn't about Stewart anyway. My point was that Al Franken is a bad example of an entertainer breaking I to politics, because with his background it was entertainment that was the abberation.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

If wielding power in our “democracy” is so complicated that we must exclude non-experts isn’t that an indictment of our democracy? What is it about the legislative and executive process that people are ignorant of?

While I am skeptical of the celebrity as politician trend which has been prominent over the last few decades; especially on the right. I don’t think lack of experience is the problem with the trend.

Put aside what you think about Trump’s political project for a moment. He was effective at giving conservatives what they wanted. Tax cuts and Supreme Court seats. Despite having zero legislative and executive experience. You could say the same thing about Reagan and perhaps Schwarzenegger.

I agree, expecting a strongman to come in and save us from all our political issues is problematic. We shouldn’t recreate feudalism. We need to learn to organize ourselves into a base of democratic power that we can wield towards our broad economic interests.

But at the same time our media apparatus runs on spectacle, it takes someone with the charisma of John Stewart to be taken seriously by mainstream power brokers. Perhaps he could breakthrough the spectacle and kickstart a new progressive era that could enable those democratic ends.

Because the alternative to charisma for gaining political legitimacy is going through the political system. And the longer you’re in that system the more time that system has to influence you towards ends that want to stop progress. Just look at Jamal Bowman and John Fetterman.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Hey, it worked for Ukraine.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Perhaps, but even with these alleged shortcomings, either would be so much better equipped for the job than the 2 senile geezers.