Do people in other countries look at the United States political mess and wonder WTF is going on?

Canada, here and I sure do.

I know, right?!

I wonder, so I’m sure other countries wonder.

Sure, just like those in rge U. S. look at politics in other countries and think the same thing. America hardly holds a patent on something like this.

Yes! My friends in Japan wonder – and are really disappointed in us. One guy said he thought we were better than this.
During the 2000 election process he was impressed that everyone worked so hard and absolutely trusted the process and everyone could vote. We made fun of the Hanginh chad bit but Japanese respected us for it
Now we are hearing about Murdoch, Hannity, Ingraham, et al. knowing they were lying about the election being flawed but doing it to keep traffic at Fox! That is big stuff in international news but it not being covered at all on Fox. (The only channel some folks watch.) It is an embarrassment.
“We thought you were better than this.”

They do. I recall being in another country just after our greatest 45 President was in office.
I mostly got a response like “Good luck back there, you are going to need it”

Yes. But then the UK is no better.

They probably think “Thank God I don’t live there”.

Yes, they do. I’ve seen at least a hundred such messages posted by people on foreign media, since 2017. There were also some during the G.W. Bush administration.

I don’t defend the US’s mess, but OTOH, Italy, Hungary, Israel and Gt Britain are also pretty screwed up politically at this time too. Not to mention most of South America.

@janbb Lots of other places in the world are pretty messed up. But they don’t usually achieve the level of theatrics of US politics. :P

@raum I think they do but we’re just too isolationist to know about them.

Venezuela – totally fucked up:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-48121148

Nicaragua politics – totally fucked up:
https://www.counterterrorismgroup.com/post/the-current-political-situation-in-nicaragua

Who could forget Filipino President and his wife with the shoes, Ferdinant and Imelda Marcos?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imelda_Marcos

Russia? Just wait until Putin is up for re-election. Right now, any opposition ends up accidentally falling from a high rise window or other such mishaps.

North Korea? There is no opposition. The opposition would end up dead.

Those are just some examples, my point being other countries can be awful, but we tend not to always pay attention to them, unless we’re reading extensively about world news.

^^ Exactly what I was saying. And Israel has legislation pending to make the judiciary subservient to the President and Nigeria just had a contested election with a lot of voter fraud, etc.

It’s just that the US tries to present itself as the “shining city on the hill”