Federal: Canadian government (Liberal minority) is okay, they try to do awful bullshit but they’re also good on social issues and are pushing through high-speed rail. Conflicted, but I’m okay with it.

Provincial: abysmal dogshit. Completely dropping the ball on the housing crisis, constantly burning billions on random bs and then cutting funding to actually good stuff like schools. The ruling party (CAQ) is projected to get 0 seats on the next election though, down from an absolute majority.

City: Super duper based, /c/fuckcars would be proud.

Nation, US: has gotten so ridiculously bad

State: Florida, not as bad as media would have it but pretty damn bad.

City: cool. Laid back cops. Ok all round, they try. But our city DA was removed by our asshole governor, for de-prioritizing culture war bullshit.

city, and state = Fine and acceptable. Not any dramatic shift from the last 30 years.

country = we are fucked (USA)

Love my state and city. Minnesota rules.

Federal government can get fucked.

Current Country: USA. Absolutely fucked.

Current State and City: Eh, just the average bullshit, nothing bad as the federal

Former Country: PRC. Absolutely fucked x2. Except there wouldn’t even be a “No Kings” type of widespread protest. Corruption everywhere. There is no “FDA” (or if there is, they never do anything about food safety), there is no “FTC”, there is no “FDIC”, there is no laws protecting consumers like if some fraudster stole money from your bank, oh well, (at least bank in the US might help you). No Medical privacy laws. And no “ADA” equivalent. No independent unions (there is supposedly a government controlled one that does jack shit), very lax worker safety regulations, and if your employer doesn’t pay you, good luck, there’s no government agency that’ll help you. For a country that obsess about control regulation, there sure is a lack of regulation 🤔.

Seems like the EU is the final beacon of actual freedom and prosperity, but unfortunately, I probably don’t qualify to immigrate to.

I am happy to say….What government?

The Netherlands…we’ll be voting soon again.

Germany: Merz. My Little Nazi. Lindner and Merz worked together to discredit the Greens and it worked. The AfD keeps winning local elections.

Local is weird. AfD popular even though the area literally depends on French customers for income.

Country is fucked.

Chicago City Gov’t: Moderately unhappy in general, unhappy with my Alderman specifically.

Illinois State Gov’t: Very happy. Pritzker is amazing and I hope he doesn’t run for president because we need him here for a few more years to keep cleaning up these messes. I’m very unhappy with my State Representative specifically, but he runs unopposed in both primary and general so my options are limited. And by “unopposed” I mean he’s the stepson of my Alderman, the Alderman whose wife held the State Rep seat previously, and it’s a whole nepotism / Machine thing.

US Federal Gov’t: Very unhappy. You’ve read the news, you know why.

Netherlands:

Country: an utter clusterfuck. After a fifteen year neoliberal government, the far right have taken over. Whereas the neoliberals broke lots of things, under the facsists, our country satgnated and it will probably take decades for us to recover. We are fucked. Sideways. With a chainsaw. Province: As far as I can tell, they try to do their best despite being fucked over by said far right. City: Right-wing mayor who actually appears do be doing a somewhat decent job. However, whenever he tries to act as a human being in a national or international context, he is being cut short by his party members.

The outlook is not good.

city government: run by suburban car lovers, absolutely intractable, getting bike or bus lanes might as well be happening on the moon

state government: run by liberals who largely run near or entirely un-opposed. They do good things sometimes, but are simultaneously incapable of forcing municipalities to do good things, and roll over the feds when pressed. For example, no resistance to the fucked up ICE kidnapping campaign that’s still going on.

National government is a hot mess and voting in my state has had a zero percent chance of influencing it in every election I’ve been alive for.

“democracy”

Our leader is a lying business man, told a ton of bullshit during the campaign. I’m talking about Mark Carney of Canada. The Liberal party has shifted so far to the right, it’s hard to tell the Liberals and Conservatives apart. The Liberals also want to take away our Charter (our version of the USA Constitution) protected rights to privacy.

We have a bit of a power struggle in Halifax, Nova Scotia with the Provincial leader Tim Houston wanting to overrule municipal decisions. If Houston is bored, we have a health care and housing crisis that will give Houston plenty of work.

Southwest New Hampshire, USA

Local: Not bad. Mostly moderate liberals who do work to improve to the conditions in the city. Fencesit too much for their own good sometimes when it comes to taking a stand on something.

State: Fucking awful. Completely full of MAGA dipshits passing anti-trans laws and doing nothing but gutting budgets (a city nearby me had to take out a private loan to fund their school system this year) and ignoring the huge problems we have (opiate abuse, housing, and mental healthcare).

Federal:

Canada:

A disappointment in some ways based on what we were promised during the campaign and especially in his dealings with the fascists to our south. Not an absolute catastrophe (despite what Maple MAGA cries on every social network), but definitely not focused on the little guy like they said they would be.

To be honest, I feel kind of tricked a little bit. We had a legitimately good third party that usually held the balance of power (NDP) and could use their votes to cooperate with the ruling Liberals to get some legitimately good things done. (You support 10 dollar a day daycare or we won’t use our votes to help you…that kind of thing). But during the last election, there was so much fear mongering about the Conservatives that we were essentially convinced that we needed to sacrifice the NDP in order to avoid splitting the vote. So now we have a party that can basically do whatever they want for the most part.

Even if it is the far far better of the two parties that has that power, the lack of a third party check and balance is bothersome.

but…still far far far preferable to Pierre Poppinfresh and his MAGA-lite cultists.

Municipal has been stellar my entire life mainly due to industrial plants bringing in a lot of tax revenue and then their PR funding of various public infra projects. It’s also an unusually well run small city it’s not just the money. Well staffed city workers maintaining stuff. I guess what impresses me most right now is despite being under 30k population we run our own bus lines, one exclusively for seniors. The other in partnership with the capital city. Then the extensive green belt and IIRC 50km of paved trails, which they’ve continued into the new neighbourhoods built away from the greenbelt.

Very easy to never drive a car here. Very ped and bicycle friendly city. Lots of serviced parks with structures you can book for bigger outdoor parties, play structures, ponds, dog parks, sports arenas, spray parks, baseball diamonds, etc, etc. Lots of dirt trails to mountain bike along the river which is down pretty deep here so a lot of verticality.

Industrial plant sponsored sportsplex with fitness gym and indoor track which is getting a big pool extension next year. The old pool was one sore spot, too small for the population. Uhhh what else…decent attention to history with the replica fur trade Fort rebuilt (but they don’t sugar coat how badly they treated the indigenous peoples) and museum full of old buildings and rural equipment. Still not a lot of crime and no sketchy parts of the city yet, too small still.

The city likes to brag about using a sheep herd to maintain the grass around the museum/Fort.

The downtown core has finally made a full recovery since Walmart decimated it 16 years ago and the abandoned downtown mall was demolished with new stripmalls* combined with townhouses being built in that spralling parking lot instead.

Also a really solid library attached to the city hall. Besides books, there’s a lot of activities for kids in the basement classrooms and education options for adults. 3D printers, computers, and extensive movie+video game rental section along with a few semi private reading/study rooms.

There’s more but this is getting long.

This is despite being in Alberta. I don’t have anything nice to say about provincial here it’s depressing and in rapid decline. MAGA adjacent. I think the ANDP under Nenshi is omce again absolutely dogshit at public relations. Basically out of sight, out of mind. Maybe they improve before election? I don’t have high hopes at the moment. They had messaging issues under Notley, and apparently still do. Unacceptable.

Canada is…shaky right now. American media brainrot might destroy us sooner than later if we’re not invaded first. Under Carney idk. Remains to be seen. He’s a conservative without the hateful identity politics so far. Doesn’t undo what Harper did with Americans being allowed to own our news media. I think that’s a critical error. Already snubbed the Air Canada union and dumped climate change goals. Remains to be seen if he can make Canada more independent from the USA. I’m watching how he handles the F-35 jet purchase or else threats from the USA the most closely currently and the housing crises long term. I think the reluctance to cut back on TFW keeps wages stagnant in a ballooning CoL situation, and the youth unemployment is worryingly high now. Frustrated youth = more dipshit conservative voters next go around IMO.

I’m really angry with the British government right now. In some ways they’re worse than the Tories, because at least with them you knew where you stood. With Starmer he keeps trying to outdo the far right, which leads to them adopting even further right policies, and him adopting them and so on. The cracking down on freedom of speech is genuinely scary, whether it be through the online safety act or abusing terrorism legislation to proscribe direct action groups. They need to fix the housing and healthcare crises urgently, but they’re tinkering at the seams while the far right are on the cusp of taking power in 2029.

On the local level, I don’t like our elected assembly much either, and I feel like all they do is pose for photoshoots and blame all their mistakes on the government in London.