I feel it's probably something that happens everywhere but would be nice to know where it happens more often, not sure if anyone knows if there's a statistic about it or something.

In Spain it's very common, the political landscape has been a two-party system for a very long time and only recently there has been some movement, first with Podemos (far-left to left) and now with Vox (far-right) however it's still very common to hear someone say things like "same dog, different collar", what's your experience?


19 comments
  1. It happens a lot. Constantly. Obsessively.

    It has started to make democracy pointless, on the grounds that few people turn up to vote.

  2. No, they say: “Nothing will change anyway.”

    Or in the form of an expression: “They raised the glass, took a piss, and everything stayed as it was. ”

    Often shortened in Dutch as: Glas, plas, was. (glass, piss, was).

  3. It happens, but is usually associated with low education (not understanding nuance) and bad morals (pointing at others is often used to diminish or even justify your own shortcomings)

  4. I was gonna say yes, but I see we come from the same country lol

    Anyways, anti-politics is always the gateway to totalitarism. If all politicians are the same, why have elections at all?

  5. In the U.K yeah. They are grossly underpaid for a position that they could hold in the private sector. Yet the people cry about competence…

  6. Norway🇳🇴

    It has been same «shit different wrapping» for a while. Until recently. Last year a new politician came out of nowhere and she had been wildly popular. She is for a centric party (we have a multi party system). So she works as a binding force between the left and right. For anyone curious, her name is Hanne Pålandet and she is in the party Fiseringen.

    It’s only one week left until votes are final, so it is very exciting indeed. Might be the first time it’s a victory for the centric parties in 30 years!

  7. I think “whenever” is an over-exaggeration. But from my own experience I think this opinion is held more than in the past.

    Partly I think it’s due to the fact that people just want change no matter what and the German governance system is based on consensus, which is very unattractive nowadays. This again leading to grand promises and against-them-rhetoric, which people nowadays expect I think, which then results in them (logically) not being able to be kept due to the nature of a) coalition government and b) the Bundesrat (representing state governments) being a de facto-veto player for the benefit of the opposition (which results in even more compromise).

    I personally (and I want to be clear, that I am not a CDU/EPP supporter) find Merz’s statement, as an example, just before the close of the election season a perfect result of this; he said: “‘Left’ is over. There is no left majority, and there will be no left policy in Germany anymore.” That’s only consequential if you think the CDU is going to have 50% of seats in parliament and govern alone, which Merz though knew was impossible.

    I have no idea how he expected this to go; the only thing it did was give his statement significant media attention: if that’s what he wanted, well done. Everybody well-informed knew that the reasonable scenario would be a government with the SPD, a left party. In the Bundesrat the state governments in which the Greens and Left party controlled around 45% of votes (and are in a substantial number of state governments). In the European Parliament his EPP is once again working with the PES.

    But those who are not so well-informed and take his statement at face value would probably just feel left with a broken promise. It’s of course not this statement or Merz as a person that is responsible for these developments, that’s just one of many examples where people I think got promised change and then didn’t get it.

    I personally think this multi-level, consensus based approach is a very good one, as it necessitates compromise everywhere: nobody gets their full packet, most people have to give in somewhere.

    Though, sadly, compromise, slow turning gears, slowly seems to be fading out of order. I think I am talking in a circle now, and I should stop as it’s not like I can get to the root of this anyway or have any solutions… people smarter than me certainly thought about this and continue to do so.

  8. Yeah but in Denmark when the government makes new big policy announcements it’s often done with many parties outside of the government.

  9. My grandfather was born in 1920. His favourite joke about politicians was ‘how do you know when a politician is lying?’ ‘Their lips are moving’.

  10. Since in most countries the majority of politicians are self serving a-holes I’d say yes, it’s common

  11. They are indeed all the same corrupt shit though, no one in the current political landscape should be trusted.

  12. Yes… most people say exactly that, and then they go voting and elect the even worse shit yet, among all the available choices! Profecy, that fulfills itself!

  13. Yes… most people say exactly that, and then they go voting and elect the even worse shit yet, among all the available choices! Profecy, that fulfills itself!

  14. Yes, but it’s all the same people that usually say it: don’t know a lot about what’s happening, usually only concerned about one topic and nothing else & usually not well educated in the way politics work. I noticed that it’s the same crowd that says thinks like “why don’t they just…”. It’s very sad to see

  15. It happens quite a lot. Exists in two variants:

    – “They are all the same” – expressed by your typical voter bitter over seeing MPs that they elected pull the very same stunts that they promised to prosecute the previous government for.

    – “PiS, PO, jedno zÅ‚o” (_”one evil”_ / _”the same evil”_) – used by voters of smaller parties to say that neither PiS nor PO (the two largest political parties) can be trusted and they don’t deserve the vote.

  16. The shtick in Brazil is to say “they are all the same…… but X stole more money, so I am voting for Y”

    In reality, probably Y stole more

  17. Yes, but there are also a looot of Polish people who disagree with this like “yeah maybe both party X and Y steal but our party Y steals much less and in much more sophisticated way than party x” 😂

  18. Simple people do say that, yes. Rural voters, populist voters say “Hey, this guy is different, he will make everything right once and for all!”

    Then the populist wins the election, within months journalists discover that he’s involved in lots of shady deals, tax evasion and such, and then the rural voters say “Ahh, they are all the same, I knew it, I knew it from the start.”

  19. Yes, and it’s dumb. Just gives an excuse for actual shit politicians to keep being shit. “They’re all the same” anyway, so why pay attention to who is actually corrupt and a piece of shit.

    Maybe none of them are saints, but there’s worse and better politicians everywhere.

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