Brazil's X ban is sending lots of people to Bluesky

As an outsider, I can't help but feel that the American election system that boils everything down to just two parties imposes a limited binary lens onto at least the American view of the world.

It happens in multiparty systems as well. All it takes is a significant portion of the population feeling like their voices are not heard, and then one of the parties taking up their banner as one part of the overall campaign (which doesn't even have to be in their new constituents' interests).

This is happening all over Europe as we speak. And even though it happens to be extreme-right atm, it doesn't have to be. We've seen extreme-left revivals in the past as well.

> As an outsider, I can't help but feel that the American election system that boils everything down to just two parties imposes a limited binary lens onto at least the American view of the world.

I don't think that the American election system holds any relevance to the problem.

The problem is fueling divisiveness to manipulate people with a "us vs them" mentality.

How else can you force working class people to vote against their best interests, such as taxing the rich fairly, ensuring access to affordable health care, uphold basic workers rights, without resorting to blatant fearmongering and moral outrage with bullshit like "they want post-birth abortions, impose sexual abuse in schools, import scary criminal gangs from distant foreign lands, etc"?

Not to mention the industrial level of propaganda dumped by foreign actors to destabilize democratic nations.

And Europe is actually resisting better than US due to election system. Here in best case scenario they are number 2, and took them a long time to get there after Trump

In the US, a populist just needs to win a primary, ie 50% of 50% of the American votes, and he is immediately at least nr2 in the run, and they get the support of one of the major parties.

Saying that populists / extremists also exist in Europe is just a bad comparison.

Are French Presidential elections so different? And the UK only has two major parties, so the outcome will be similar.

The French system, with its two rounds system has a built-in protection against extremism and to encourage compromise.

The UK is also a FPTP system, but has strong parties outside of the two main, for instance in the last general election over 42% of people voted for a party other than Labour or the Conservatives.

[admittedly that’s an outlier, but looking over the last few elections at least around 20% went to parties outside of the big two]

The UK system has a much less powerful Executive though.

To be clear: FPTP is terrible, but the reason the UK system isn't as broken as the US one is because the correct functioning of the Legislature is much more vital to the overall system - i.e. 3 viable parties can exist because they're fighting over hundreds of seats, and then it's by the Legislature that the Prime Minister is chosen - rather then by direct vote.

Intentional false dichotomy serves many purposes, yes

No country that I know of adopted US election system. Its beyond obscure, unfair and set to be rigged for anybody looking from outside, with no normal way out. Its just not resilient enough to everchanging society. I know the historical reasons, but only fools get stuck in the past ways at all costs 'because, you know, in the past, XYZ so we are where we are so suck it up' when its clearly not beneficial to general population.

One reasons out of ocean of reasons - number of actual votes for X or Y is irrelevant, its all about blocks based on some old history nobody should care about much anymore that decide winner. Freedom of choice is very limited, strong populists like trump have much bigger and long lasting effect than in more multipolar elections.

But for sure its a spectacle for masses for a good year and polarizes society for whatever bad reasons there are, that should be concerned about more serious topics than this.

The extreme right won the Dutch elections though - and they’re not the only country - so your argument that “best case (...) number 2” isn’t true. They can and do win elections.

What did winning mean, though? Is it Republican-style minority rule where they can work the system push through policies which a majority of Americans oppose, or a coalition government where half of his coalition is pledged to rein in his more extreme positions?

My wife is a nationally recognized expert in elections in the US. The combination of FPTP and politically controlled district geometry (gerrymandering) explicitly creates a brittle system that engenders extremism. It's well understood to be both the cause and a reinforcement mechanism. The mechanism we have now was left in place in the early 19th c. explicitly to allow a small minority to be able to control their individual states. The main change since then has been cross-state unification of the party system. To give an example: here, in Texas, the most volatile Federal district was won by a representative who received only 10% of the votes in his district. Some districts were won by reps with as few as 1% of the total votes (that's total turnout). (This is due to the primary mechanism and gerrymandering.) If you can win by harnessing just 10% of the electorate, you're shopping around for the ironclad voters, and they tend to have weird views (left or right).