What the Rest of the World Thinks About the Republican Party
http://www.vice.com/read/what-the-rest-of-the-world-thinks-about-the-republican-party-622The race for the Republican nomination has been a wild source of entertainment (and consistent source of terror) over the past months—and the fun is just getting started. There's a reason they call it the Grand Ol' Party! As it stands, there's a real possibility that we're going to have a Republican president next year; and while we're pretty sure it won't be Donald Trump, at this point, anything could happen. So, in anticipation of what's sure to be an emotional roller coaster of an election season—replete with all the name-calling, racial slurs, sexist gaffs, and cold hard cash that we've come to associate with American politics—VICE decided to ask our international offices what they think about the Republican Party.
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France:
There's kind of a trick to describe American politics in France. Basically, what we consider right-wing is actually your left. Democrats are the equivalent of our right-wing party, previously known as UMP and now called Les Républicains. So that leaves your Republicans to be some kind of rabid extremists. That's what they are, right?
As a country full of right-wing conservatives historically convinced to be profoundly socialists, we have a weird relationship with your politics. De Gaulle hated you. We hated Reagan. We see your country as completely corrupted—no, completely defined by capitalism. And you might know that we have a hard time accepting that we too, love capitalism. Your Republicans embrace it, they live by it. In French, the word "liberal " is largely accepted in its economical sense. America is many things: driving big trucks, hard work, blockbusters, individualism, what you call food, etc. But above all, America is liberalism. You are all a bunch of proud liberals, and the Republicans are the worst.
The GOP is also really stupid. We mean, really fucking dumb. Even before Donald Trump. You had Sarah Palin, or that guy who led two wars in the Middle East. In the French political puppet show Les Guignols, Georges W. Bush was often portrayed like a stupid kid trapped in the body of a president, sided by militaries who looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's how we see Republicans: dumb guys with big guns, always willing to use them. To be honest, that's how we see Americans in general.
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http://www.vice.com/read/what-the-rest-of-the-world-thinks-about-the-republican-party-622
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homophobia, and a foreign policy that combines heavy weaponry, extreme paranoia, and a blissful ignorance of what people in other countries actually think. A lot of the time, the Republican Party reminds us of Eric Cartman, and we would not like to live in a country run by Eric Cartman.
But yeah, mostly, the Republican Party seems completely nuts from where we stand. Like, whenever someone says something really wacky, misogynist or dangerous, it's either a Republican politician or Putin.
From the Netherlands: The Republican Party is like that racist, sexist uncle you see three times a year at family gatherings—you expect him to turn polite conversation about that new apple pie recipe your mom tried out into a rant about how civilization as we know it is going to end "because IMMIGRANTS," but it never fails to shock you when it actually happens.
From Canada: The Republican Party is, in short, a distillation of everything that's wrong with American politics: an obsession with individualism that borders on religious zealotry, obscene amounts of money being allowed to influence people and policy without accountability, and the most powerful people and groups holding tight to baffling persecution complexes.
From Australia: Also, why do poor people love Republican presidents so much? Don't they know that the poor are the first people to get screwed by rich conservatives acting in their own interests? What kind of person would try and vote themselves out of affordable healthcare and education or improvements to minimum wage? That's insane.
Great find, LiberalArkie. Thanks for posting it. 
