Moments of political catharsis in your lifetime

[Sin Agog]

And how long did they last?

Maybe I'm just too much of an irascible Commie scumbag to ever be satisfied, but I'm having trouble coming up with any of my own right now so could do with an uplifting memory jog.  Doesn't matter how small a scale they are.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Seeing the Tories annihilated in 1997. It has never been bettered.

And the enjoyment level doesn't get any less with the knowledge of the partly very disappointing what happened next.

[Monsieur Verdoux]

The brief period where the News of the World closed down in disgrace and Murdoch was forced to squirm in the spotlight was quite satisfying for as long as it lasted

[Fambo Number Mive]

2017- Corbyn's Labour removes the Tories' majority.

2005 - Blair's Labour loses 58 seats due mostly to Iraq, although sadly the Tories gain seats.

[Paul Calf]

Seeing the Tories annihilated in 1997. It has never been bettered.

And the enjoyment level doesn't get any less with the knowledge of the partly very disappointing what happened next.

Yeah, this was the one. We watched the results coming in in the pub and went back for afters. Sat up all night drinking and singing.

I'm glad that we didn't know what came next.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

The brief period where the News of the World closed down in disgrace and Murdoch was forced to squirm in the spotlight was quite satisfying for as long as it lasted

Great call.

Highly recommend Nick Davies book on the subject which does a good job of explaining how painstaking it was just to achieve that small victory, and it ends on a low note which we now know, which is it didn't lead to the reform of the industry it ought to have, and the enemy regrouped and shapeshifted, cleverly hanging only hasbeens and minor figures out to dry.

But they laid the corruption, venality, hypocrisy and lowlife nature of tabloid intrusion bare for all to see, and previously untouchable people got a taste of their own medicine.

For just a small period, the good guys were winning

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Corbyn punching back hard and ramming two years of propganda back down the throats of the establishment was enjoyable and cathartic but I'm conscious not to let that be the "victory".

It was really the aversion of a disaster and the realisation by the Tories that they could be hurt in a way they didn't understand and didn't know how to fight. Really Rocky 1 with the triumphal 2 to follow (let's hope)

[BlodwynPig]

The collapse of the Tory party in 2020 after the Brexit failure, several prominent MPs offing themselves Japanese style with little public sympathy and Corbyn's government ushering in a new dawn of social, progressive change in Britain, that spreads across Europe and into Russia. The US global dominance is ended and the same sweeping changes are seen across that continent.

...

...

for 5 minutes.

[another Mr. Lizard]

  Doesn't matter how small a scale they are.

A post-Cenotaph Michael Foot winning NME's 'best-dressed person' poll by a landslide. Not only did my Tory parents simply not understand how this could happen, but neither did readers of 'The Face'.

[Sin Agog]

'ere, I really liked the insouciant fuck you to the waterheads that was the Chelsea Manning pardon.  A small, humane breather before the ensuing chaos.

[Sin Agog]

Not my lifetime, but there's a courtroom doc from the '60s called Point Of Order in which we see one of the biggest cunts of the twentieth century, Joseph McCarthy, systematically get squished and broken. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR6Q2KhEcFs

[QDRPHNC]

The entire presidency of George W. Bush felt like vinegar strokes, personally.

[garnish]

[ZoyzaSorris]

June 2017 for sure.
The continuous string of 'pink tide' victories in latin america, although the US has obviously fought back brutally ever since by mostly undemocratic means. Mexico, Bolivia, Venezuela & Uruguay still standing, just in the case of Ven!

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

Bernie Sanders winning the Michigan primary in 2016

[Twed]

Bernie Sanders winning the Michigan primary in 2016

Yeah, was going to mention some of his upsets. New Hampshire one was good too, given that it was early on, massive, I was living here... but that was tainted even on the day by a matching Trump win.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6JrFp8aVxY This feels so long ago

[Replies From View]

Corbyn punching back hard and ramming two years of propganda back down the throats of the establishment was enjoyable and cathartic but I'm conscious not to let that be the "victory".

It was really the aversion of a disaster and the realisation by the Tories that they could be hurt in a way they didn't understand and didn't know how to fight. Really Rocky 1 with the triumphal 2 to follow (let's hope)

So many people I know hate Corbyn for one inexplicable reason or another and will just be wasting their vote on the Greens* or not bothering to vote.  I fear that the 2017 result will have been the best he'll muster.

* Great time to protest at the options available, idiots.  Let's put the Tories back in because you are too fucking thick and uncaring to see what is going on.

[thenoise]

[Kelvin]

So many people I know hate Corbyn for one inexplicable reason or another and will just be wasting their vote on the Greens* or not bothering to vote.  I fear that the 2017 result will have been the best he'll muster.

* Great time to protest at the options available, idiots.  Let's put the Tories back in because you are too fucking thick and uncaring to see what is going on.

It's my belief that the singular focus on Corbyn is a mistake. The goal should be longer term, so that if Corbyn fails to win an election (which we hope he won't but very well could), then the left can continue the process through another left wing leader - constantly moving the debate left and changing the wider public perception. For that to happen, Corbyn and the Labour left need to oversee and prioritise internal change, so that this movement doesn't begin and end with one man. 

[non capisco]

It was really the aversion of a disaster and the realisation by the Tories that they could be hurt in a way they didn't understand and didn't know how to fight. Really Rocky 1 with the triumphal 2 to follow (let's hope)

That night I found Lord Buckethead the most deliriously funny thing on earth. He spoilt it later by speaking and tweeting actual words, rendering the whole thing a bit naff, but for that one night when he was just a silent figure in a daft helmet standing directly next to May in a village hall he was a one man personification of my delicious schadenfreude.

[Phil_A]

Obama's election, when it felt for a few moments like genuine change was possible after eight years of Bush. I remember being up till the moment it was called with a handful of diehards in the Cab chatroom, it was an astonishing night.

At the 2012 election, Karl Rove's impotent fury on Fox News as it became clear Romney's chances were completely and utterly fucked is a moment I'll always treasure.

How crazy is it that it was only four years between then and the election of Trump, it feels like a lifetime went by between those two events.

[Mister Six]

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez beating a well-moneyed Democrat mainstay with a grassroots campaign based around such insane communist ideas as properly taxing the obscenely wealthy and setting up a nationalised health service was a minor cathartic moment. But it's been followed by a string of delightful moments since, pretty much every time she opens her mouth (or uses Twitter) and terrifies Republicans and the Democrat hivemind alike.

Every time someone has folded/been charged during the Mueller investigation has been an absolute pleasure. Partly because it rattles the foundations of Trump's house of cards, and partly because they're all such loathsome, previously untouchable pieces of shit that there's pleasure, too, in just seeing them knocked down a peg.

Been avoiding UK politics as I find it too depressing, but Corbyn and Labour booting the Tories out in a general election will make me ejaculate in every sense. And if Brexit gets cancelled I'll collapse in orgasmic pleasure (that mental image is free - you're welcome).

On the US side of things, any of the following would light me up like a Christmas tree: Trump being imprisoned and dragging down those who backed him in the GOP; Bernie making US president; and - on a particularly petty note, but fuck it - Trump's tax documents being released and proving unequivocally that he is not a billionaire.

[Moribunderast]

In Australia, 2007 when John Howard finally lost the Prime Ministership. His successor ended up being a disappointment but the level of relief after a decade of that utter prick was intoxicating.

On that note, when Howard's successor, Kevin Rudd, offered a national apology in Parliament to the Stolen Generation of indigenous Australians after a decade of Howard refusing to do so. It's forgotten now and could be argued to be a token gesture in retrospect but at the time it did feel like a very positive step.

Two years ago when Australia voted overwhelmingly in favour of gay marriage after the Murdoch Press and all number of awful conservative pundits and politicians made it seem like the entire country actually was homophobic.

Obama winning felt incredible at the time but sadly became a learning point for me where I discovered even the best-seeming US President will still do horrendous, basically evil things so maybe that doesn't count?

[bgmnts]

I'm in the same boat as OP. The first world little successes don't really satisfy me. Need full on global change.
Not happening.

Wish I could get a lobotomy.

[biggytitbo]

Voting to leave the EU. Lasted about 2 years.

[PlanktonSideburns]

When those planes thumped into those tower blocks

[petril]

'97 for me. was a teenager at the time, so my first 'proper' general election in terms of following things. The relief that comedy wouldn't need to rely on "Get In The Sea Tories" material for a bit. The assumption that yeah, the Tories have actually managed to lose this one, thank fuck. The thought that eh, it'll be about 360, 370 something like that. The fact the Labour number kept going up, and the Tory number looking grimmer by the minute. Everyone else except Plaid Cymru and the SDLP gaining seats. The Tory seat count ending up as low as it did. under 200? fucking hell. Over half their seats gone. Spitting Image, Rory "*puts glasses on* I'm still here" Bremner, "did you threaten to overrule him?", "WE'RE ALL RIGHT!", The New Statesman, so much of the culture I'd come across as a (what's a young petril? dead dinosaurs?), salmofuckingnella, the eerie Broadcasting Standards Commission after Watchdog normally, had this tinge of "here's the worst of this lot", but now something I'd known of as just the background I couldn't fully understand, offski Dziekanowski. Definitely. Officially. No False Dawn.

The warm feeling on a sunny May morning watching Supermarket Sweep and working out which friends' exams ended at lunchtime so we could head up to Beatties and commandeer the N64 demo machine for a Wave Race tournament.

Then at the end of that summer I feel asleep not long after the start of Borsalino and missed all the excitement

[Blue Jam]

Michael Portillo loses his seat:

https://youtu.be/BVvWE6V9ulE

Nigel Farage fails to win in Thanet and stands there with a face like a slapped arse:

https://youtu.be/me5BZuHQcdI

[touchingcloth]

[hummingofevil]

Portillo losing was just awesome.

The rise of the SNP was good as it gave a bit of hope that there is a way of breaking the two-party system but the way it's turned out with the SNP cleaning up on old Labour seats so all Unionists have defaulted to Tories is a bit bleak.

But just watching Nicola Sturgeon be a functionally competant politician and leader was worth a bit of enthusiasm.

The expenses scandal? The fuckers brushed that off didn't they? What about disgraced-national-security-threat Dr Liam Fox being forced to resign and banished from politics forever?