Yet pretty much every actual American person I've met has been no different from people from anywhere else.

Pretty much. The ones that get people's attention and make headlines do so because they're eccentric/mentally ill/addicted to the spotlight, committed some atrocity, or are some other kind of entertaining spectacle the media uses to get more clicks.

There's a tremendous amount of normal people who are providing a stable foundation to society. You never hear about them because the media doesn't see any ROI from covering those people.

I'm not American, but Black British

Donald Trump is not only dangerous to the US he is also dangerous to the world.

I watched him on TV with Ted Cruz the other day, full lies on the Iran nuclear deal during a tea party gathering

They made so many things up; unfounded projections of how the US and Israel is going to be bombed by Iran and all that rubbish

They are talking about Iran's track record... does the US have a good track record across the world? Countless wars enhanced or even started by the US (particularly during, but not limited to, the cold-war era). Does that mean that the US is now a dangerous country? Yes if these ultra right wing idiots get into the white house

And Whats this rubbish of being blindly pro-Israel?

Israel continue to oppress the Palestinians, flout the UN resolutions, commit all sorts of atrocities... and to the GOPs Israel is always right, the others are always terrorists

If Donald Trump becomes president he will bring much worse tension (possibly war) back to the middle east and make the world a less peaceful place, turning everything upside down. And the price of oil will immediately quadruple

In the words of Douglas; the job of the president is to divert attention from the real happenings. As if a president of any country would have any say in anything relevant.

TLDR; clown show, Not restricted to USA.

America is already a joke to the rest of the world, so Trump/etc isn't shocking any more. The fact that we're not really suprised by a complete clown such as Trump goes to show what is expected from "the greatest country". The fact that the idea of "American exceptionalism" exists and is taken seriously kind of illustrates the facepalming the rest of the world endures.

American election campaigns are ridiculous. American politics is ridiculous. American media is ridiculous. As in: deserving or inviting derision or mockery; absurd.

Tuning into American news is a surreal experience.

The essence of it seems to be a desire to distill any complicated idea down to just two (usually laughable) positions, and then categorise people into being supporters of one of those two archtypes, and then talking past each other and often just blindly hating each other. AKA an addiction to stubborn, simplistic worldviews and false dichotomies.
There's also massive contradictions pervading every part of public life there. Almost an expectation that everyone put up a facade of honesty and moral superiority while nursing an allergy to honest debate, open-mindedness, fact-based discussion or abstract concepts. There's an inability to honestly understand and consider an opponents argument without accepting it. If you discuss something, even hypothetically, in the abstract, then you're seen as supporting it. So everyone just talks past each other and never actually engages.

America has two parties. One is a right wing party that's terrified of anything remotely socialist despite the advantages it could bring.... and that's the Democrats.

The Republicans are just... jesus, I don't even know where to start. The fact that Trump can be taken in anyway seriously as a candidate just shows how utterly messed up they

are, and then there's Fiorina, Perry and the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter.

FFS, the fact that they're even debating homosexuality in 2015 should be an embarrassment.

It would be hilarious if it weren't so scary.

Trump does not have enough statistical voter support to get elected president - Soooooo why does anyone actually care about his media stunts anymore ?

Trump does not have enough statistical voter support to get elected president - Soooooo why does anyone actually care about his media stunts anymore ?

People shouldn't, but many do (whatever their reasons). But as long as they do:

1. It's shifting the focus and rhetoric of the Republican primaries for all the candidates, which could result in some pretty ugly positioning for the actual election regardless of who the Republican nominee is.

2. Voter support during primaries isn't meaningless, but neither is it a good picture of how voters will act during the election. A lot of support will flow to the eventual candidates of both parties which wasn't there for them in the primaries.

3. The airing of hyperxenophobic, conspiracy-stoking, absurdly simplistic ideas can shift U.S. culture in a way that enhances those same types of views at the expense of better and more rational ones. It's a feedback loop, where Trump is both a symptom and a driver of this.

4. It's hard to be confident, at this point, that the mania will burn out completely. If the stunts end up punting someone like, say, Cruz, who works the same schemes on conservative voters as Trump, ends up getting vaulted to the candidacy it would be the worst of everything the Republican slate is offering up this season.

The airing of hyperxenophobic, conspiracy-stoking, absurdly simplistic ideas can shift U.S. culture in a way that enhances those same types of views at the expense of better and more rational ones. It's a feedback loop, where Trump is both a symptom and a driver of this.

QFE.

Most people will never get a chance to talk with any of the candidates in person. The only information they get is provided by media or word of mouth (which is now called "social media"). How accurate could that information *possibly* be after it's been wildly reinterpreted, edited and manipulated, converted to headlines and sound bites? Not to mention people just inventing *complete lies* and injecting them into the maelstrom of information.

People in general are allowing themselves to be influenced to make very important decisions using false or incredibly corrupted information. They're also paying a lot of attention to topics that *don't matter* (Clinton's e-mail server? Seriously?). Useful information is being drowned out by misinformed soapboxing ignoramuses using social media, then the mainstream media eggs them on for profit. This is the part that bothers me the most.

Can you imagine a computer program where one of every ten variables had an uninitialized or hacked value? Would that program work properly? Hell no, it wouldn't!

TL;DR - I've been genuinely in awe at, perplexed by and deeply worried for you guys for a long time now. But it's not really just America that's at fault here. The world in general is pretty messed up and the US simply happens to be a shiny example that's easy to look at.

Long reply:

I'm from Europe.

I'm kind of curious why anyone outside of Trump's immediate follower base bothers to take him seriously at all. The Trump crowd are either idiots or simply enjoy trolling.

I personally called Trump v Sanders for 2016 a while ago and if that were the case, Trump would lose. He might have the support of a large part of the Republican base, but in the grand scheme of things that's really not decisive or even important at all. Far more worrisome is the fact that this circus has started two years before the actual election. This among many other things is why to me American politics is little more than a neverending sitcom (that gets people killed). That's also the one reason American politics is pretty much the only bit of regular news I follow - mostly though "liberal" channels: Last Week Tonight, Comedy Central's political satire shows and Real Time.

The sad part is that it's not the news I'm after - it's this (in particular the question starting at 1:00):

On a more serious note - to me things got real when Obama won the reelection v Romney by a very narrow margin. That scared me. You guys only just had a crazy out of touch with reality douche in the White House. I mean, W was genuinely stupid. But he had no energy, so despite all the mess he created, the damage could've been far worse. Trump would probably start building the wall on day one.

The reason he's not really harmful, though, is because he is playing directly into the Democratic agenda - he's effectively taking out any viable candidates the GOP might have and with Clinton doing a wonderful job blowing up her own campaign, you'll end up with the one idiot who can't win versus the only person who should win. Which is a good thing.

Last time it was Herman Cain for GOP who somewhat filled the void that Trump is currently filling, but I think he eventually admitted to not having any intention of actually getting anywhere with his campaign and was, for all intents and purposes, doing little more than trolling the system. I think he even had an interview where he slipped and sounded intelligent and much better informed than his fellow candidates. The sad part is unlike Cain, Trump is not trolling and really is that crazy.

The only reason I care is because despite your horrible political system and an exemplary propaganda machine that should, at best, belong in a book, Amuric'n influence is freaking far-reaching. So whatever the outcome, it will affect most people in the world, including me.

Incidentally, the world has no shortage of idiots who either are in or are running for office. Australia, Russia and England are all major powers and none are immune. Neither is my own country, although when an idiot is elected into office here, on a global scale it couldn't even theoretically hurt anyone.

Incidentally, the world has no shortage of idiots who either are in or are running for office. Australia, Russia and England are all major powers and none are immune. Neither is my own country, although when an idiot is elected into office here, on a global scale it couldn't even theoretically hurt anyone.

Agreed, but they're just not in the same league as the US. Abbott was an idiot, agreed, but Putin and Cameron? I don't agree with them on .. well pretty much anything really, but I don't think they're stupid, I think they're evil.