> Shane Mage wrote:
>
>> D Redmond wrote:
>>
>>> What does it tell us when Le Pen gets resoundingly thrashed in the
>>> Presidential
>>> elections by a four-to-one ratio?
>>
>> But aren't the Italian "Le Pen"s all in the government?
>
> And Buchanan's gotten trounced even worse. Does that mean the U.S. is
> groovier than France?
On that particular point, I'd say yeah, definitely. In the case of France, we have an overtly racist and anti-Semitic candidate, running for office in a country that's actually _been_ occupied by the Nazis-- and he still polls what, one fifth of the votes?
Meanwhile, here in America, we have Patrick Buchanan-- a guy I wouldn't mind characterizing as a _covert_ racist and anti-Semite, but whose image to most other Americans is much less so. And he couldn't even poll a more than one or two percentage points.
So, if I were to draw a conclusion from _only_ those two little factoids, I'd say we have it all over France when it comes to keeping racists and anti-Semites out of power. I'd call that "groovier."
Oh, and Dredmond, who listed the following as Things He/She Couldn't Live Without:
(1) Left Coast immigrant cultures (2) Valve Software (3) Portland Trailblazers (4) LA hip hop
I'm on the East Coast, so we get different immigrant cultures, I'm not much of a sports fan, never liked hip-hop that much, but Valve Software _rocks_. Might even get a new machine to handle _Half-Life 2_-- and hey, what about Warren Spector's incredible _Deus Ex_?