It’s problematic at least. The Communist party is also banned in Germany.

I’m definitely not saying Le Pen is innocent.

Navalny was found guilty of multiple crimes. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/04/russian-court-extends-alexei-navalny-sentence-in-penal-colony

Being charged a criminal is subject to the court system and if that ever gets corrupted, democracy is over.

Many people here say that it’s not the same in France; that the French court system has no evidence of corruption. I agree. I prefer to have laws in place before they are needed, rather than too late.

It just changes the user agent instead…

I disagree. The angle of the sun is not a human invention. Trying to invent something from scratch based on that, I would definitely mark one time as “the darkest” and another “the lightest”.

I agree that hours, and therefore date lines and time zones are completely arbitrary though.

If we didn’t have hours we’d still need a way to group times by geographic or political regions; my example above still needs to handle the “lightest where?” question.

I think my conclusion is that organizing people and societies is arbitrary by nature.

It would be neater though to try to make midnight and mid day the basis for which we measure time. Stepping off of that makes it even more arbitrary.

Finally someone who actually wants a debate.

I agree that it’s not a problem until it is a problem. I think we differ in the way we are vigilant about defending the core of democracy.

Open elections, free speech and free press are very important to defend, even if you happen to dislike the person in question. I’d rather defend free speech of a person I hate than slowly carving away at it, one “victory” at a time. If one person doesn’t have free speech, there is no free speech left.

I see it the same with elections. If anyone can be barred from running in an election, the election isn’t open anymore.

I don’t see it as skeptical versus cynical. Maybe in your eyes. What I’ve seen lately though is that democracy can be over very quickly, or in a way that no one can stop, even if you can see the signs. Look at USA right now, it’s been going down hill for a while now but most people are realizing too late to do anything.

I’m not here to discuss France or their politics because I know nothing about it, nor about Le Pen. People seem to go very much into “it’s fine for now in France”.

It’s fine until it isn’t.

Very mature

But wouldn’t it be neat if midnight was att 00:00 and mid day was 12:00?

Also, you don’t get more daylight by moving the clock. You get more clock.

It’s not whataboutism if it’s on the same topic. I just raised a very real example where this is problematic.

In the near future, I bet we will see the same in America.

And what in this is false equivalency? We’re talking about banning criminals from elections, right?

I never said it was corrupted. I said in general, courts van be corrupted. See the supreme court of the USA for a recent example.

Yep but that’s what Putin also says before throwing people in jail.

Courts can be corrupted and if that happens, an open election is the last chance before full dictatorship ensues.

Not to defend Le Pen but barring opponents from elections is on page one of the fascist playbook.