American Politics are Dumb

I am finding the republican party these days to be a bad comedy show.

They have never gained 20%. More like 10%, but your point still stands of course.
HOWEVER! France does not equal Europe. Luckily there are quite a few countries over here. Furthermore, the only reason parties like that has no traction in the US is because of you don't have proportional representation. Small parties who would otherwise gain 5-20% have no chance to grow/get elected, dispite the fact that they represent some voters better than the party the voters are actually voting for, merely because the voters would never have a chance to gain representation if they did vote for that party. Their vote would, in a sense, be wasted, because the "winner" takes it all, and their political opponents would benefit.
I feel the system in the US is antiquated and unfair, and that democracy all over the world suffers because of the example the US is setting for other countries.

Thank you. I'm terrible at taking notes/summing up myself, so it'll be of some help.

It only equals the lame part of Europe.

Those frog-eating surrender monkeys give Europeans their bad reputation!!

Jean-Marie Le Pen won almost 17 percent of the votes in the first round of the French presidential election of 2002. And because he was the one with second largest amount of votes, he and incumbent president Chirac became the only candidates in the second round. Left-wing France had to vote for Chirac in order to prevent Le Pen from becoming president.

They could have abstained(if that is possible) and Chirac would still have won.(he won by 82.2%) The fact that someone with 16.86% backing can enter the second round shows how fractured the left was in 2002.(not that bad anymore) The socialist party got 16.18%, so there really weren't much difference. Furthermore in the 2007 election the National Front "only" got 10.44% while the Socialist party got 25.87%.

The National Front are downright scary. Just north in the Netherlands, maybe one of the most politically progressive nations in Europe, you still find scary right-wing parties, like the Party for Freedom. They're arguably are not as extreme as the National Front in France, but still will do anything to keep Muslims out and protect Dutch Judeo-Christian culture.

Over here in Germany, there's political morons too. We have the NPD, who are virtually neo-Nazis, and sadly have seats in some state legislatures in the eastern states. The NPD are routinely anti-Jewish, anti-Slavic, anti-foreigner, and still believe Rudolf Hess is a martyr for their cause. They're even best friends forever with David Duke, the old grand wizard of the KKK. On the other side of the spectrum, there's Die Linke, who are the new incarnation of the SED--the former East German communist party. Some of their party members have openly claimed that the Berlin Wall was a really nice and great thing, and last year, several Die Linke members refused to honor those that were murdered because of the Wall during the 50th anniversary of its construction.

In short, there's morons in politics everywhere, even here in nice "civilized" Europe. Poland has Kaczynski and PiS. Italy had Berlusconi. Portugal had Lopes (the guy made public mistakes that rival Bush!). Russia has Zhirinovsky. In all honesty, you can find stupidity in politics just about everywhere. America's no exception. It's the most powerful nation in the world, so we just hear the moronic politics louder than others.

How is Rene Stadtkewitz's Party for Freedom based Die Freiheit doing? Haven't heard anything about him or his party in months.

Heheh, you're not the only one who hasn't heard anything from them in a while I completely forgot about them too. Stadtkewitz is pretty much incognito at the moment. Die Freiheit is virtually a non-entity in German politics, at least for now. They couldn't get past the 5% threshold in any local election recently, so they have no representatives. I guess if nothing dramatically changes in the political climate here in the next few years, they'll go the way of Die Republikaner...slowly fade into oblivion.

I feel that I have to apologize about my foolish generalization about American politics. I forgot that all countries have their stupid political moments, and needless to say, I feel pretty stupid.

FUCK YOU'RE LUXEMBOURG I RAISE TO THE DUTCH!!! anways, yes american politics is very dumb. our political system is full of corporate corruption. big ass business paying politicians to pass bills to criminalize harmless things and throwing average joes into jail for shits and giggles. i hate this country and feel i get dumber every second i am forced to live here and go through the shitty public schools

YEAH! THAT CORRUPT CONGRESS BANNED HEROIN, AN OBVIOUSLY HARMLESS SUBSTANCE. And COCAINE! What's wrong with that!

Seriously dude, get over yourself. There are some problems with the US, but not much more then elsewhere, and in many cases it's better.

Marijuana is harmless.

Portugal had one of the highest levels of hard drug use of any European nation. they decriminalized and illegal drug use for teens fell. HIV also fell. people going to rehab went up, but i consider that a good thing since people are going to get help.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html link to an article about it
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkai...lization-drug-abuse-down-by-half-in-portugal/ and another, more recent article.

Illegal drug use for teens fell because using those drugs was no longer illegal. While your other two points stand, this one is not proof of anything.

it's still a pretty good argument for decriminalizing drugs, but hey, I'm only 16, what do i know?

It really isn't. (I'm 18 by the way.) All it shows is that less arrests are made for something that you cannot arrest people for.