I feel it’s probably something that happens everywhere but would be nice to know where it happens more often, not sure if anyone knows if there’s a statistic about it or something.
In Spain it’s very common, the political landscape has been a two-party system for a very long time and only recently there has been some movement, first with Podemos (far-left to left) and now with Vox (far-right) however it’s still very common to hear someone say things like “same dog, different collar”, what’s your experience?
Comments
I knew it was Spain before even opening the question ðŸ˜
It happens a lot. Constantly. Obsessively.
It has started to make democracy pointless, on the grounds that few people turn up to vote.
No, they say: “Nothing will change anyway.”
Or in the form of an expression: “They raised the glass, took a piss, and everything stayed as it was. ”
Often shortened in Dutch as: Glas, plas, was. (glass, piss, was).
It happens, but is usually associated with low education (not understanding nuance) and bad morals (pointing at others is often used to diminish or even justify your own shortcomings)
I was gonna say yes, but I see we come from the same country lol
Anyways, anti-politics is always the gateway to totalitarism. If all politicians are the same, why have elections at all?
Yeah they do. And I tell them the same thing every time. It’s a democracy, if you think you can do a better job try to get elected.
Yep. Frequent thought terminating cliché in Belgium too.
In the U.K yeah. They are grossly underpaid for a position that they could hold in the private sector. Yet the people cry about competence…
[removed]
I think “whenever” is an over-exaggeration. But from my own experience I think this opinion is held more than in the past.
Partly I think it’s due to the fact that people just want change no matter what and the German governance system is based on consensus, which is very unattractive nowadays. This again leading to grand promises and against-them-rhetoric, which people nowadays expect I think, which then results in them (logically) not being able to be kept due to the nature of a) coalition government and b) the Bundesrat (representing state governments) being a de facto-veto player for the benefit of the opposition (which results in even more compromise).
I personally (and I want to be clear, that I am not a CDU/EPP supporter) find Merz’s statement, as an example, just before the close of the election season a perfect result of this; he said: “‘Left’ is over. There is no left majority, and there will be no left policy in Germany anymore.” That’s only consequential if you think the CDU is going to have 50% of seats in parliament and govern alone, which Merz though knew was impossible.
I have no idea how he expected this to go; the only thing it did was give his statement significant media attention: if that’s what he wanted, well done. Everybody well-informed knew that the reasonable scenario would be a government with the SPD, a left party. In the Bundesrat the state governments in which the Greens and Left party controlled around 45% of votes (and are in a substantial number of state governments). In the European Parliament his EPP is once again working with the PES.
But those who are not so well-informed and take his statement at face value would probably just feel left with a broken promise. It’s of course not this statement or Merz as a person that is responsible for these developments, that’s just one of many examples where people I think got promised change and then didn’t get it.
I personally think this multi-level, consensus based approach is a very good one, as it necessitates compromise everywhere: nobody gets their full packet, most people have to give in somewhere.
Though, sadly, compromise, slow turning gears, slowly seems to be fading out of order. I think I am talking in a circle now, and I should stop as it’s not like I can get to the root of this anyway or have any solutions… people smarter than me certainly thought about this and continue to do so.
Yeah but in Denmark when the government makes new big policy announcements it’s often done with many parties outside of the government.
My grandfather was born in 1920. His favourite joke about politicians was ‘how do you know when a politician is lying?’ ‘Their lips are moving’.
Since in most countries the majority of politicians are self serving a-holes I’d say yes, it’s common
They are indeed all the same corrupt shit though, no one in the current political landscape should be trusted.
Yes. Because it’s always son of, daughter of, brother of, sister of … The faces change but the names stay the same.
From left to right they only care about grabbing as much money and have as much benefits for themselves. There is never a hard savings on behalf of the government or the people in power. It’s always for the working class to pay up and never for the big 1%(that includes our people in power)
And i’ve seen this just happening over and over for 30 years but yet the deficit only keeps growing. According to my boomermom it’s the same shit different era since the 50’s.
And we all know it. People are just to dumb to remember longer than 4 years and keep voting for those who scream the loudest.
Yes… most people say exactly that, and then they go voting and elect the even worse shit yet, among all the available choices! Profecy, that fulfills itself!
Yes… most people say exactly that, and then they go voting and elect the even worse shit yet, among all the available choices! Profecy, that fulfills itself!
FF and FG are cheeks on the same arse yes
Yes, but it’s all the same people that usually say it: don’t know a lot about what’s happening, usually only concerned about one topic and nothing else & usually not well educated in the way politics work. I noticed that it’s the same crowd that says thinks like “why don’t they just…”. It’s very sad to see
It happens quite a lot. Exists in two variants:
“They are all the same” – expressed by your typical voter bitter over seeing MPs that they elected pull the very same stunts that they promised to prosecute the previous government for.
“PiS, PO, jedno zÅ‚o” (“one evil” / “the same evil”) – used by voters of smaller parties to say that neither PiS nor PO (the two largest political parties) can be trusted and they don’t deserve the vote.
The shtick in Brazil is to say “they are all the same…… but X stole more money, so I am voting for Y”
In reality, probably Y stole more
Yes, but there are also a looot of Polish people who disagree with this like “yeah maybe both party X and Y steal but our party Y steals much less and in much more sophisticated way than party x” 😂
Simple people do say that, yes. Rural voters, populist voters say “Hey, this guy is different, he will make everything right once and for all!”
Then the populist wins the election, within months journalists discover that he’s involved in lots of shady deals, tax evasion and such, and then the rural voters say “Ahh, they are all the same, I knew it, I knew it from the start.”
Yes, and it’s dumb. Just gives an excuse for actual shit politicians to keep being shit. “They’re all the same” anyway, so why pay attention to who is actually corrupt and a piece of shit.
Maybe none of them are saints, but there’s worse and better politicians everywhere.
Yes and no.
Yes, because a lot of people passively say it.
No, because it doesn’t really seem like it, because people who choose one party or the other are generally quite vocal. Not necessarily nastily vocal, maybe, but not always.
Yes many people say this and I disagree. They are all bad, but some of them are fascists and want to get rid of the rule of law so there are different levels of bad.
Yes, i hear that a lot from people who show no interest in politics in general. And then they vote for the far right…because they find it funny or think that those populists will make their life better
I don’t even think people in Poland consider their elections to have any meaning. Members of the opposite political sides were seen drinking beer together after “heated debate”.
Though in my region there is saying that old more corrupt politicians are better because they already stole enough and could maybe do some work.
Yes, and this attitude is deliberately cultivated to ensure the parliament doesn’t matter and can’t work as a staging ground for new politicians.
In Hungary that was a thing maybe a decade ago. Not anymore. I think living in a dictatorship makes you appreciate the tiny differences – whomever you support.
Yes, it is fairly common and universal I think, although I disagree with it: Sure some are terrible, but the others are way worst!
I would say it changed quite dramatically in Poland (but I feel like also globally?) in the last 15 years.
When I was growing up politics were for sure seen as a very boring subject without any real impact on people’s lives and impossible to change.
But I think when we got a really right wing government with authoritarian tendencies things started to change quite quickly and I would say that today Poland is super polarised and politics are an extremely sensitive subject for a lot of people. And talking about the evil things the other side of the barricade did is always a big topic in the media.
Also, Poles love an anti-establishment, not in the government, different than before, new character kind of candidate in elections and those get elected regularly and get a lot of support (which then dwindles quite rapidly once it’s clear it’s not so easy to change everything overnight).
But I would say that the question of politics (maybe not politicians, though for sure people now also have politicians they actually admire) is a very important one that also defines your identity in a significant way. So we are past the era of apathy and not caring who you vote on or who gets elected.
I live in Finland and I often meet young people who don’t vote here. This is now a really controversial stance in Poland, at least among people I know, even in anarchist circles, that will get you ridiculed and make people actually angry. I think the Finnish apathy is a result of many years of very mild, uneventful politics here.
Yes, very common, especially from people that don’t like to dabble in politics. And there is truth to it of course. Though I personally believe there are degrees of “bad”.
It is indeed becoming “more of the same” lately. Or you can say “two wings of the same bird-of-prey”. Rejecting reason / common sense / rules of nature, on both sides of the spectrum.
Yes they do. They’ll mention how all of them are rotten to the core and corrupt, regardless of political preference.
It is absolutely not my opinion, but I do hear it a lot.
Not often but some people like to repeat that claim ostensibly, but when you dive in a topic turns out they are dumb and use this claimn as a scapegoat / blame others.
Its an excuse to give up caring, when their minds can’t follow anymore and frustration wins.
Clearly. Some of them said that about the elections in May. Though, despite that, we had the most amount of people present at an election in a LONG TIME.
There are apathetic people in every country. Much easier to dismiss the whole thing than having to spend time to learn and follow politics
Shows how powerless the people are rn. On one hand yes ppl should try to make changes and on the other it just seems like the system is so bad that it wouldn’t work(already doesn’t work). Imo/e anyway.