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Comment by Gigachad | Hacker News Reader

This kind of stuff would not fly in Australia. Not to say that there is no corruption, but that it isn’t absolutely blatant and ignored.

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Yeah. Same in Canada. Nowhere is free from corruption, but the magnitude and danger of this problem is uniquely American.

I have lived in Alberta my entire life and that used to be true here. It's different now. There's blatant corruption from our provincial government in the news every few months, but it seems like that's just accepted now. Things are not trending in a good direction in Canada.

The far right pretty much across the world is learning just how fragile and consensus-based the institutions of democracy are all at once. They're watching and learning from each other. Hence you have people like Bannon involved in similar tricks in multiple countries.

Oddly enough Albertans poll Carney as favourably as Poilievre. So I see what you see but in general I do not believe it’s actually that bad.

Plus Alberta has always on again off again thrown middle-child tantrums.

Are you really so sure? I think the vast majority of Americans would have expressed the same sentiment less than 10 years ago.

Obviously I can’t tell you what will happen in 10 years, but if the Prime Minister of Australia did even one days worth of Trumps actions he would be removed within a month or two.

Australia also doesn’t have an almost religious worship of politicians. Australians don’t identify as members of a particular party unless they literally are part of it.

There’s a huge difference between the US and Australia here that you slightly touch on - in Australia, the Prime Minister can be removed by the ruling party at any time vs the US where removing the sitting President can only be done via a handful of items from the Constitution

Don't play coy. If a small number of Republican representatives decided they would impeach Trump they would have absolutely no problem getting the votes they need and you know it. They don't do it because that's not what they want.

Republican representatives are lobbyists to the public for the 1%. It was clear that they hated Trump and wanted him out in his first run and what they want matters as much as what a car salesman wants for Ford.

Republicans have said clearly that they will only act when core support for trump drops. And that has not dropped no matter what.

I'm not sure America had that sort of cult thing pre Trump. JFK was pretty popular as was Regan but even they weren't the same. You guys do have a vote of no confidence which theoretically is easier to pull off then impeachment (majority vote)

Only with a lot of effort. I'm old enough to remember the ICAC in NSW and the CCC in Queensland (Joh Bjelke-Petersen was a bit before my time)... the widespread "travel expenses" fraud that permeated for YEARS.

Your government recently mandated technical capabilities for breaking encryption. Australians let that fly. There is nothing special about Australians, just as there is also nothing special about the British people who also did nothing when the UK mandated technical capabilities to break encryption.

One could even make the argument that the people of these two countries are even more pliant than Americans when they enable a key capability for totalitarian surveillance states without a blink.

There was nothing blatantly corrupt or illegal going on there, it went through the normal process and was unfortunately supported by both major parties. I’m not saying objectionable laws never get implemented. I’m saying the Prime Minister is not a dictator with limitless power.

The corruption in state government, especially WA for example is pretty blatant but I get your point.

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