Thanks for sharing that. Interesting and sad to see people in Iran and Kenya identifying similarities between this year's U.S. election and the troubled elections they've experienced in their countries. It's not good to be giving such opportunities for propaganda to the Iranian government.Voronwë the Faithful wrote:Here is an interesting article with descriptions about how what is going on in the United States is seen around the world.
What The U.S. Election Meltdown Looks Like to Other Countries
One commentator I often read said four years ago, and is saying again now, that it's ridiculous how the U.S. after each election pats itself on the back for accomplishing a "peaceful transfer of power." He points out that this has been a regular function of the world's many democracies for half a century or more now, and in most of them, such peaceful transfers are simply taken for granted and get much less fanfare. And those are the comparisons we should be making: to our fellow democratic republics. So from the piece you link to:
"A growing number of South Koreans see the United States as a country past its glory days due to Donald Trump’s presidency. It’s evident in how the voting in the U.S. primaries was portrayed in Korea: Broadcasters delivered shocking images of long lines wrapped around polling stations where masks and sanitizer were scant. The contrast was particularly striking to South Koreans who had just voted in their April national election, including me. Lines moved quickly. The government checked temperatures at the entrance, then handed out hand sanitizer and plastic gloves. No sparks in cases could be detected afterward in a country that has been hailed throughout the pandemic for its contact-tracing efforts."
Although I chuckled reading the next paragraph:
"And the election itself has made some South Koreans question whether the United States is truly a democracy. Koreans themselves use a popular vote. It’s simply unfathomable for many of them to think that some people’s votes outweigh others or that a candidate can win the popular vote and still lose."
I suspect that if I looked through the older threads in this very forum, I'd find some people who would agree with the Koreans' point of view, but would add: That's because the U.S. has always been a republic not a democracy. It's a position conservatives have emphasized repeatedly at least since 2000.
(Edited to add: I had no idea that O. Henry coined the term "banana republic.")