Values Dissonance around the World.

We just wear socks here in finland We also have pretty good insulation.

Edited by SpookyMask on Oct 24th 2020 at 8:34:42 PM

Dayum.

One of the cases of values dissonance I notice most often is the very different approaches that people in the Anglosphere have to elections and politics in general, compared to mainland Europe.

And this is a multi-tiered thing.

The most obvious, to me, is the very different views that Anglos have of 'Liberals', compared to the rest of the world. I used to think that 'Liberal' just meant something different to North Americans, specifically, compared to everyone else... But with the recent resurgence of social democrats and socialists in American politics, it's obvious that's not the case. Liberals in the Netherlands have pretty much the exact same policies and views that Liberals in the US do.

The main difference is that in the US and Canada, people on the right wing view Liberals as the champions of the left wing, while in the rest of the world, people on the left wing view Liberals as the 'least worst' of the right wing.

And while that is partially due to the difference in where the Overton window is locally, there's another factor to it and that brings us to the next tier of dissonance.

In the Anglosphere, whenever there's talk of elections, that always goes hand in hand with the concept of 'winning' said election. In mainland Europe, though, that's not the case.

And that's because most mainland European countries have multi-party parliaments that form coalition governments and any party that gets enough votes gets a seat at the table and even if they're not part of the ruling coalition, they still get a voice in debate and legislation. So, unlike in the Anglosphere, voting for a party that's never going to actually make it into the ruling coalition is not a loss.

In the Netherlands, for instance, these days the Liberals, the Christian Democrats and/or the Labour Party pretty much always make up the majority of the ruling coalition, but voting for the Socialists or the Greens (both on the left, obviously) isn't throwing your vote away even if they and the Labour party don't make it into the ruling coalition, because while both the Liberals and Christian Democrats are slightly right of centre, the Liberals are socially progressive and economically conservative, while the Christian Democrats lean more socially conservative and economically progressive, meaning that the Socialists and Greens can always find some common ground with both when it's time to vote for legislation.

Conversely having your party 'win' (i.e. get the most votes) isn't really a big advantage if the second and third largest parties are politically opposed to you and you don't have enough support among the minor parties to actually form a coalition.

Which brings us to the third tier of dissonance. The notion among Anglos (primarily in the US, but only slightly less so in the UK, Canada and Australia) that elections are where you mostly vote for the people you disagree with least (the lesser of two, maybe three, evils), rather than the people who actually represent your views. While I get that it works that way, particularly in the US, with the First Past the Post system, it still always feels very counter-intuitive when people talk of voting for a less than ideal party in order to prevent an even worse party from taking the reigns as if that's normal and not the weirdest fucking thing ever.

I have never felt this dissonance more than during the last Dutch national election, when the Liberals stayed the largest party and the Party for Freedom (far right xenophobes literally funded by American fascists) became the second largest party and all my American friends actually congratulated me because the far right party didn't 'win'.

That's like congratulating someone in Weimar Germany in 1930 because the NSDAP only became the second largest party and didn't 'win'. (So much like it, in fact, that some of the left wing parties specifically referred to it when calling for the Liberals to honour their pre-election promise never to form a coalition with the PVV again... Which they luckily did.)

Edited by Robrecht on Oct 24th 2020 at 8:37:56 PM

Thing is, when I'm voting in Australia, often it is just a question of "Okay, who is pissing me off the least this time?"

I'd vote for someone who I completely agree with on every point...if they existed. But they don't. So here we are.

Also, the sheer turnover rate of Aussie PM's lately makes it kinda hard to trust any politician at all, so...

Edited by Murataku on Oct 25th 2020 at 9:30:38 PM

If we are taking about voting values dissonance, there is one that create a fight and is about bolivia, term limits and political culture.

One of the most taking point during the whole bolivlian electoral debacle was that near close the election the bolivia supreme court decide to abolish terms limits and them rehabilitied evo, the later can be talk in another thread but is intersting that people talked about the elimination of term limits as good thing, and while it did bring some arguments(like the idea it stop good and capable people for doing more,etc) it feel it miss a huge chunk of what voting can be here in latin america.

In general with voting here is very personalist and presidencialist, meaning the focus if often to the guy runing around and he is charmin enough to win the masses, since we have a healthy dislike of the goverment and the whole voting process in general, this can create a chain of personaliti cult, unicorn seekers and authoritarism aura around some politicians, therefore many see term limits a good thing because it cut some of that to a huge degree, case in point is venezuela were we get rid of term limits and that only help maduro, in fact it also create a problem in the oposition because it allow the old fart in the party to continue long after they have fade to irrelevance and deny new blood the time tim shine(and in case you are wondering it was young people who participate in the defeat of chavez back in 2007/8, is only defeat in fact).

But it was in US were this show the must with donald trump, probably the most latino president in US: uncut, brash, unpolite, populist from head to toes, making grandilocuent promises with not chance in hell of being fulliled(make the wall) and in general reallign in his personal carisma to carry it ahead of time is pretty much the hallmark of the LA populist and so far rather than become a super authoritarian or a neo nazi, trump indeed have fallen into the typical patterns of latino president: cronnism, general corruption, disdain from the job, in love with is own hype,etc, Trump was and is beyond all things a latin american strongman with a racist pain coat around him.

Of this I have noticed at least two things here: a)that US was never prepared for this style of populism and it seen it reject the idea it could happen which it contributed A LOT with his victory in 2016 as the entire establishment were confused by is antics and the feverish suport it gather around it, B) That regarless of everything the political culture and mechancism have in fact stop donald for doing a lot of harm to the country, something you barely see in LA.

And don't forget that in Australia we have compulsory voting. So yes sometimes it is a case of voting for the least bad option (though strictly speaking you are allowed to turn in a blank ballot)

Same deal in Brasil.

Same in Peru. And the whole blank vote thing went through a serious case of Honor Before Reason during the presidential elections of 2016.

At that time, people were feed up with the political establishment in general and so for the first round of elections a good deal of people -especially young one- decided to vote in blank as a sign of protest against the politicians of our country, not being willing to choose the lesser evil.

The end result is that we entered into a nightmarish scenario in which Keiko Fujimoru, daughter of ex-dictator Alberto Fujimori, was in the lead of the rest of candidates. The thing is that said blank votes reduced the total population from which percentages of votes are calculated (if you have 30 votes and 3 are blank, you only make calculations with the remaining 27) and gave Keiko a boost since she had also went all in with illegal and populist moves to gain votes.

By the time of the second round, everyone from all corners of the political spectrum, from the left to the right and in between, rallied to support PPK to prevent Keiko from reaching the presidency and screwing up the country.

It worked, thankfully, but the scare was strong enough to remind us that acting in outrage without thinking things through can make a situation even worse.

Edited by raziel365 on Oct 26th 2020 at 9:26:08 AM

This sounds a lot like our 2002 presidential election.

The degree to which Canadians vote for the "lesser of the evils" really varies from election to election and province to province. Federally, everyone voted strategically in 2019, rallying around the Liberals to stop the Conservatives from gaining power. (I'd say our Liberals are very slightly to the left of other countries', but they're still pretty close to the centre.) Provincially, though, it's a different story. The New Democratic Party (further left) may be losing ground federally, but it's still going strong in many of our provinces, and the Green party (even further left) won seats in Ontario for the first time in 2018.

Our Prime Minister is also notorious for not following through on his promise to change the First Past the Post system.

Regarding the Election Values Dissonance, I think there is more to it in addition to the factors Robrecht mentions.

For one, Media Coverage of Election season in America seems far more excessive than elsewhere, which Wisecrack goes in depth on on how that happened.

the second thing is that (mostly right-wing) Americans (and possibly Brits) seem to had brought the sports fan mentality to politics, tying their value, worth and identity to one of the major parties, and thus see the existence of opposition as a personal attack. I kinda think that it in itself a byproduct of such a binary system, which itself is unique among democracies.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Nov 3rd 2020 at 4:51:46 AM

I still think that at some point the USA must go for a multiparty system, if only to allow greater diversity of opinions to be heard and not being drowned in the Democrat/Republican divide.

Another values dissonance thing, something that's always been there, but I've hear a lot more in the last eight or so years is the following phrase:

"The country is divided."

As a Dutch person I find that so freaking weird. Not, you know, that the country is divided, but that this is remarked upon as if it is unusual or bad.

Like... Where does this surprise and dismay that people aren't staying quiet about differences of opinion come from?

I think I know where that dissonance comes from: one of the major sources of culture shock for people visiting the Netherlands is that people here are very direct and honest.

Which is to say that we, as a culture, will occasionally soften our opinion in order to not come off hostile, but we don't consider it impolite or uncivil to say someone's talking shit when they're obviously talking shit and we consider it more disrespectful and uncivil to avoid a topic or pretend to agree with something to 'keep the peace' than to argue about it.

After all, or so the thinking here goes, not saying what you think is just lying by omission and allowing someone to continue to be wrong by not telling them they are is doing them a great disservice. (What if they say this wrong thing to someone else? That would be so embarrassing for them.)

For us 'the country is divided' is the sign of a normal, healthy democracy and people who insist that the people should be united either a. had better have a really good specific example what they think the country should be united about (Gay marriage, you say? Alright, we can all agree we should be united in support of that.) or b. is probably a fascist trying to get all völkisch on us.

At least recently, in the USA, "The country is divided" has definitely been used to refer to the divisions that are to the point of violence, often along the type of lines you mentioned such as gay marriage that definitely should be universally agreed upon.

I mean, I think that's mostly what this is about. LGBT+ rights, abortion, etc are things that the right is refusing to budge on as the world around them is changing.

Yeah, even when there are disagreements, there are at least some basic principles that societies agree to uphold, unity in diversity if you want to call it that.

In the usonian context, saying "the country is divided" is roughly on the lines of dangerous polarization, the kind that used to devolve into civil strife and could unfortunately lead to some unpleasantness after Trump is out.

Yeah that is values dissonance because as far the US right see it, they are the one who lie truth to their belief and demand the whole work to move around because they wont back down, a sentiment that can almost look comendable os respectfull if what those belief are.

Here's a hot take: The country isn't divided, people are just pissed off and don't know where to direct their anger. So they choose political parties without knowing what exactly they're supporting or opposing.

This should go into the US politics thread, but if being unable to even agree on the existence of climate change, racial injustice, social inequality, Trump's criminality and many basic facts is not an indicator of entrenched divisions, I don't know what is.

I don't think the idea of 'a divided country = bad' is unique to the US. In my country, this is just a convenient label people who like the current status quo attach to politicians and activists who are willing to rock the boat.

Edited by minseok42 on Nov 7th 2020 at 10:27:54 PM

Me folks (Filipinos, but ethnic Chinese) discuss how they can't understand North American families (not sure on European) let their kids go on their own when they're 18 (or older, depending on circumstance). They believe in the strong concept of family, as in living together, unless you got married or are permanently moving and living somewhere else.

My dad lived in America to do his Masters though just FYI. And I have relatives in the US, born and raised there.

Does the American confusion about driving a stick shift car count as Values Dissonance?

Stick shift cars are extremely common here in Sweden. so, when I first heard of the "I can't drive a stick shift" joke, I was so confused. Like "What, seriously? It's not hard."

Apparently, automatic has been standard in America for longer. I didn't know that.

I think stick used to be more common in the U.S. but quickly fell out of favor when automatics came onto the scene.

Stick For Life.

About kids going out the moment they are 18, I'm not sure how much Spain would have to do with that.

I'm not sure how common it is for Spaniard people to remain with their parents well over adulthood, but it certainly seems common for many of their former colonies.

So on media from the US you always see the stereotype that anyone over 20 still living with their parents is a loser, when no one would bat an eye in over that in many Latin American countries.