“But over time, the executive branch grew exceedingly powerful. Two world wars emphasized the president’s commander in chief role and removed constraints on its power. By the second half of the 20th century, the republic was routinely fighting wars without its legislative branch, Congress, declaring war, as the Constitution required. With Congress often paralyzed by political conflict, presidents increasingly governed by edicts.”
all men are created equal
IS SLAVE STATE
Never has been.
Is a two party system really a democracy?
If you think so, let me pick the two options you get to choose from for the rest of your life. Does that sound appealing to you? Would just fully represent the country?
No you don’t ever get a chance to change your two options, I picked them for you. You will fall in love with one of them, the other you will hate. This is democracy, you being forced to pico from the two options I gave you.
TBH I think peak democracy was between 2003 and 2010 before the Citizens United decision.
It gave us Obama and Medicaid expansion.
Nah, The US hasn’t been good since before Reagan. I’d say maybe the 1950s. Maybe 60s, space race years.
Maybe for you it might have been, or maybe not, but back then we didn’t have equal rights. After that Nixon actually helped save the Whales so that was cool, but he also perpetuated the war in Vietnam for seemingly no reason at all.
We like to fantasize about the past but quality of life has only gone up and crime has only gone down long term.
I personally am riding out the storm before I make any call on this type of stuff. As much as the current president is mucking things up, I’m holding hope.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Exactly what I was thinking.
And once Trump, the GOP and the oligarchs are deposed, we should declare the American Second Republic and write a new constitution.
It’s not over yet
“Democratic” in the loosest sense of the word.
we should all start delegitimising the USA and call it what it is: a long lasting colony committing multiple genocides
It already was dead for a long time.
No, it wasn’t, but it’s been dying since Reagan.
Since Johnson.
But it was Hoover that laid the framework for the rampant executive abuses of Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes, and Trumpolini.
This article must be written by naive children. The moment “American Democracy” died would be with the Patriot Act after 911.
Snowden, Assange and all that.
The moment “American Democracy” died would be with the Patriot Act after 911.
American Democracy flourished from 1864 to 1877, only to be killed by The Corrupt Bargain of Rutherford B. Hayes. It enjoyed a brief resuscitation following the 19th Amendment in 1919 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, before once again becoming moribund and unresponsive under the Nixon Administration of 1972. By the election of 2000 the institution barely demonstrated a pulse, enjoying one of the lowest turnouts in the nation’s history. Still, it was the Brooks Brother’s Riot that officially pulled the plug, with the democracy formally being pronounced dead on December 12th, twenty days later.
The Patriot Act was effectively just putting bullet holes into a corpse.
Subsequent gerrymandering in 2005, the ACORN controversy of 2009, and the 2016, 2020, and 2024 primaries were effectively just ritualized defacement of the grave.
You sure it wasn’t when we had the balls to write that all men are created equal while simultaneously denying the rights of anyone who wasn’t a rich man?
Like I know it was a different time but the plot was lost long ago.
And it was still seen as radically progressive
Most “democracies” started off with slavery so I think the counting needs to start somewhere in the middle.
We’re supposed to evolve, intellectually and physically. It looks like we tried for a bit, then got way too comfortable/complacent, blissfully ignorant that our (relatively) high standards of living came at the expense of people far away that we didn’t see, routinely. The banana republics never really went away, we just became distracted with more entertainment culture, and when something broke through, grabbed our attention and outrage briefly, we just collectively shrugged, declared there’s nothing we can do and went back to American Idol, Fear Factor, The Apprentice, Ice Road Truckers and whatever else fake reality garbage. Then it came to our doorstep and we continued doing the same, and still are. It’s almost like we need a certain level of conflict to avoid complacency.
Citizens United has entered the chat
Citizens United was about bribing the campaigns but there was still a “rule of law”.
The Patriot act basically threw the entire legal sysrem in the dumpster in a very blatant way.
Of course there were violations before that but the cut off needs to be made somewhere.
there was still a “rule of law”.
Who was actually punished for violating this rule of law?
I seem to remember a congo-line of Congressmen who flagrantly violated campaign finance laws, anti-bribery laws, and a host of other ostensibly liberal democratic strictures. But virtually all of them either had the charges dropped, were given fines far less than the sum of the corrupt money they received, or were pardoned or the decisions reversed shortly after conviction.
the cut off needs to be made somewhere
You can’t cut off what never began.
Eh, that was just a rebranding of “We the People”. Same bunch of rich white dudes with an aversion to taxes.
No, that was when we got Super Pacs which is how billionaires have a control over a majority of US Senators needed to break a filibuster.
“We the People” is how you got plantation-owning slaveholders to write the constitution (and be senators) so they could control U.S. policy despite being way fewer in number than their northern buddies. Kind of the same thing, all told.
Oligarchy masquerading as democracy.
Or with the implementation of institutionalized slavery.
Neo libertarian with capitalism pleasure doing business with you.
Was it even alive then?
Died upon birth perhaps?
If you’re not good at US history: 1789 was when the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation.
time to flee to the old world from prosecution and religious pressure lol
Electric Boogaloo
Aside from this being a little fucking melodramatic and defeatist, the thing that really bothers me is the implicit assumption that if only we’d all just vote blue no matter who we wouldn’t have this problem, like the Democratic Party hasn’t been kowtowing to and enabling those same oligarchs to undermine our democracy. It’s like they’re standing in the rubble of a bombing and saying, ‘This is happening because you chose the short fuse on the bomb, if only you had chosen the long fuse we
wouldn’t have noticed this happening quite so quicklywouldn’t be having this problem!’Don’t get me wrong, boom tomorrow is definitely better than boom today, but it’s important to not forget that there was never not going to be a boom.
The only way to have time to stop the bomb from going off is to choose the longer fuse. We didn’t even give ourselves a chance to replace neoliberalism with socialism, people let fascism win in 2024.
How much time would you need and what would you do?
The longer fuse was still a fuse and was picked over and over for so many years without anything else done. At this point other then being able to say “don’t blame me I voted for kodos” there is little value in the “long fuse” party. The us needed real options outside of fascism vs fascism lite.
I mean, nobody who paid attention actually thought the democrats did enough. The whole point was to buy enough time to hopefully shame them into doing something progressive instead of token concessions, but it’s a moot point now.
shame them into doing something progressive
That’s been failing for the 30+ years during which I voted blue, why does anyone imagine it would suddenly start succeeding now?
Not to be churlish but does gay marriage just not count as progressive now? Or marijuana legalization? Exceptions to the rule possibly, but pretty fucking big exceptions if so.
Then the equation is still fascism now vs fascism later. Fascism later was still worth a shot.
Every time I see people trashing the vote blue no matter who people, I just see “democrats suck so we might as well have the fascism now.” Which if you’re an accelerationist then sure.
What I don’t get from the American people, who have always portrait themselves as champions of everything with this attitude now of “there was no way to avoid it because we are legless turtles and all we can do is vote blue or red and hope our daddies do right by us”
True, the last election would not had saved you but anyone with a firing neuron saw this coming 40 years ago and you all did fuck all to avoid it while still making ignorant jokes about the French being cowards
Yeah, I’ve been expecting this shit since childhood. Weird now how the people who raised me to see it coming consistently voted to make it happen.
that sucks brother
there’s a reason The Grapes of Wrath has that turtle section in it…
Take North Korean propaganda, paint it red white and blue and give it a specific set of “freedoms” and you’ll have any answer of “how”. We’re literally made to be this way. Even those of us with a “firing neuron” are a result of this propaganda, granted just not in the intended way. Drowning and understanding why we’re drowning ends the same way.
Indeed, although anyone who says they knew what shape this would take 40 years ago was either a liar or a time traveler, I’ve been watching it go to shit for my entire life. I too tried voting blue for 30 years only to watch them unwind and fall apart when the chips were down. Now I favor rather more extreme measures, but most Americans are like ‘waah, I keep choosing the lesser evil, why do we keep getting evil?!’
Indeed, although anyone who says they knew what shape this would take 40 years ago was either a liar or a time traveler
Hmmm maybe for common folks like you and I. But there have been plenty of literature warning about this, it is our own fault (talking in general, not just about America as I am not American) not to heed the advise of those who actually looked into this. For most of us, it is not that it was impossible to predict, it was more like it was much more convenient to believe the comfortable lie than to face the harsh reality
The world is absolutely flooded with people warning about literally everything all the time. Sometimes a few of them happen to be right; that doesn’t make them prescient, just lucky. Broken clocks, and all that. Whose advice do you follow? The guy who says fascism is on the rise, or the guy who says the economy is going to unrecoverably tank? Does it matter that both of them have pretty good evidence to suggest that they might be right? Or that there are 400 more books released in any given year that claim that fascism is on the decline and the economy is booming like there’s no tomorrow, and that they also have pretty good evidence to suggest that they might be right? This is the nature of prediction: it’s all down to how you interpret the signs and signals.
For most of us, it is not that it was impossible to predict, it was more like it was much more convenient to believe the comfortable lie than to face the harsh reality
The more recent you look the more that becomes the case, but 40 years ago anyone who said ‘in 40 years we’re going to have a fascist dictator of a president who wants to ransack the courts he packed’ or whatever would just be one more whisper in the hurricane.
If everyone on the outside looking in had been saying the same thing for decades and continually been proven right- I dunno, I’d probably listen to them at some point instead of calling them alarmists and flipping them the bird for daring to weigh in on your problems.
I’m so sick of these high tower pseudo-big brain “told ya so” comments. “I saw the end of the US before it’s inception. I saw the end of the US when humans migrated from Siberia 16,000 years ago!” Well, you are so smart and I’m so proud of you, but you aren’t adding a damn thing to the conversation.
Because even after the facts are laid bare, you still seem unable to take any responsibility for it and the entire world pay for the mistakes the people of the USA make
Brother, I didn’t do shit. I’ve been vehemently against Trump since 2015. Do you blame Vladimir the grocery store clerk for Putin?
no, as I wouldn’t blame your kids because their ancestors rolled over and let democracy die
brother, I didn’t do shit
That’s exactly the problem. And I am obviously generalizing
What exactly could I have done? Be specific.
Here are two good articles about what to do
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/24/trump-fascism-what-to-do
https://itsgoingdown.org/dont-just-do-nothing-20-things-you-can-do-to-counter-fascism/
Kinda shitty to assume all Americans are responsible. There’s a lot of people here who tried to keep this stuff from happening and fought against it, and still are. If it’s not cool to paint the French with a broad brush it isn’t cool to do that to everyone in the US.
I’ve been hoping to hear some sort of glimmer of a thought from someone that when America does wrestle control back from the fascists, and history says you will, one way or another, that you don’t just rebuild the same system that produced Trump and his techno-fascist mates in the first place.
This interview was the first time I’ve actually heard it.
IDK why people are so hopeful of fascism falling within their lifetime?
The fascists in power now have technology in everybody’s pockets, even your light bulbs for crying out loud
They can track you within feet across the country. And a lot of this stuff, you can’t really avoid. You can’t really go off the grid if you want to have a normal job now
Not only that, look at China. China is still here and has been for quite some time…
Buttigieg is establishment democrat. Actually listen to him instead of doing what most people do, which is stare at him and wait for him to “say something gay” and then be impressed that he’s such a great orator. He’s never advocated for the social and financial overhaul that the US needs. He’s argued that the system is sufficient for our best outcomes, the same system that is currently on fire.
This reminds me of Obama so much. On one hand it would be nice to have another leader who unites the country, but Obama wasn’t necessarily good for our nation’s long-term future. He was not a leftist or advocate for the poor, he was also establishment Dem/Liberal who passed every opportunity to create real and lasting change in the country.
Buttigieg is currently touring the right-wing spaces and dropping his messages there without resistance because he’s advocating for preserving the wealth in the country. He’s tacitly being endorsed by the billionaire class. They want a return to normalcy, and Buttigieg may have exactly what the country needs to get there, which is clear messaging, hypnotic blue eyes and an appeal to many men’s latent curiosity about what what a strong homosexual male even looks like… or if nothing else, an avenue for libs and neo-libs to feel performatively progressive by dropping his name. It’s enthralling to the masses and we should all be terrified.
He is going to be a strong candidate if we have elections again, and I would take him over Trump, but we need to understand what he is. He is NOT our leftist savior, he’s barely more progressive than a liberal savior.
I want to make it clear, if he’s the final candidate against like, Mecha Trump or Don JR or Vance or someone equally absurd, we all better push Buttigieg’s booty up that hill and I will wave that rainbow flag along with everyone else. But we have to understand that it’s a band-aid on a massive infected wound that’s bleeding out.
I’m not gonna disagree with any of that, as I’m not super familiar with him. I’m just saying it’s the first time during this entire Trump fiasco I’ve heard anyone even suggest that maybe we shouldn’t just revert to the pre-Trump status quo should anything ever actually be done about stopping him. I’m hoping others are saying it, I just haven’t heard it.
What section does he mention it (if just one or two)? Don’t have the free time for listening to the full hour, unfortunately, but I am curious (if you don’t mind, of course).
Yep, we now basically have a one party system. Both sides are controlled by the 1%. We need a party that will get rid of the 1%, but that will never happen. They learned their lesson with FDR and watch for someone like him just to make sure he doesn’t get in to office.
I… I’m conflicted. Buttigieg talks a great game, I like much of what he has to say, but at the same time when he was in the 2020 primary I read an article that talked about how he had the most corporate/PAC support of any candidate and I wonder… does he actually believe what he’s saying, or is he just charismatic enough to pull off seeming like he does and he’s just like every other career politician? And also even if he’s 100% sincere and he wins the white house in 2028, he doesn’t have a free hand because the money required to win a national election comes with rather sturdy strings attached, so I don’t think he can accomplish what he claims to want.
But it is, I will admit, rather refreshing to find a Democrat who does in fact have some good-sounding ideas about how to make things better instead of just ‘vote for me or the world will literally blow up!11’
Watch his messaging when he tours FOX and other right-wing podcasts and youtube channels. He talks to the right without without resistance or pushback from the hosts because he’s advocating preservation of existing systems instead of actual overhaul to our nation’s policies and financial systems.
He is likely going to be our next Obama. Charming and beloved by many, but secretly propped up by the billionaire class who want to keep feasting from the table of status-quo. Obama was a great leader, but as a president, he passed on very real opportunities to make lasting change over and over. He didn’t exercise his power in any remotely overreaching way even when he had house and senate. He didn’t pack the Supreme Court and didn’t enshrine rights in any way that would protect people. He could have rammed single-payer healthcare through and been hated and loved by many, probably impeached, but we would have had something great from it.
We really need to do better as a nation understanding the different between leadership and management. And we need to pick people for our local and community elections that have these qualities. They are the ones who prop up the larger system and the ones who largely run unopposed because people are far more fascinated with Buttigieg’s dazzling blue eyes than what their local comptroller believes.
Yeah, I just watched the ~hour long interview he did with Jon Stewart that someone posted, and like it was all good-sounding ideas that may do some good but don’t meaningfully challenge the status quo. Which is a pretty good summary of Democratic policy for the last 40 years. I’ll give it to him though, he’s definitely charismatic (I can’t help but like him even though I think he’s not very far left of, say, Hillary Clinton who is a full-on neoliberal) and he could probably win and be a damned sight better than the current administration. But also that’s maybe not the best long-term because we need the system to fail messily as it is right now to wake people up to the alternatives. I hate advocating for accelerationism because even if the harm caused in the short term is outweighed by the harm prevented long-term, I still have a hard time advocating for things that I know will definitely cause harm.
I’m exactly where you are, assessments included.
I was never an accelerationist and thought at one time it was the laziest of ideals, but now I’m seeing my whole nation dissolve into the investment portfolios of a small handful of people and wondering exactly what kind of consequences my countrymen actually need to experience before they realize how incredibly important it is to take part in, and be aware of, how motherfucking democracy
worksworked. Our people here have the memory of goldfish, and either didn’t remember the last time they got screwed by republicans broadly, or were so distressed by the contention and gravitas of the election cycle that they tuned out and stayed home… with the rest of the 45% of eligible, registered voters who stayed home.To say nothing of the weakest, flimsiest excuses people gave for being lazy about taking part in democracy. You saw tons of it right here on Lemmy. “I cannot in good conscious vote for anyone who won’t take a stand against Israel.” Uh huh, sure buddy, your post history is entirely video games, I am having a hard time believing you’re regularly out there on the Gaza strip handing out aid and food.
Our country really needs a hard slap across the face, and sadly I don’t even think this current situation is doing the trick. The slap that will be hard enough to get people out of their couches will be a real bad one that I don’t wish on anyone, but I feel like it’s inevitable either way. One way is boiling to death slowly, the other is jumping into the fire. I can’t decide which is worse, but the outcome will be the same.
Yeah, too many people in the US are still fat and comfortable with their lot in life, not even dreaming of what could be but stuck in the daily grind.
And I mean I made the same argument many times re:Israel - my standard for whether or not I can vote for someone has been reduced to a binary ‘supports the Israeli genocide in Palestine, yes/no’; it’s an extremely low bar, but both major candidates still managed to ooze under it somehow - but I did at least vote for not-fascism (for what good it did me living in a deep red state) which is more than I can say for most of those folks.
But yeah, we need something to wake people up, and my estimation of what that will take grows increasingly dire as the country goes to shit around us and still people are like ‘No this is fine, we can fix this by voting!’ Nah, the days of voting fixing a damned thing have been over for 20 years at least. And yeah, while the outcome will be the same, one of those is unfortunately going to hurt a lot more than the other, so I’m still reluctant…
I just keep repeating to myself and others, “Nobody is coming.” Even if people made better choices last November, it would have only been delaying the inevitable consumption of the nation that we’re seeing in full mouthful right now.
Even if we got the biggest, boldest grass-roots movement started, it would immediately be swallowed by the existing political Machine & Spectacle, which would either digest it (Remembering that time Tim Waltz was forbidden from calling Republicans “weird” anymore) or they would destroy it with the same old “amplify both sides to the point which reasonable followers tune out” tactic that the KGB pioneered.
Somehow all arrows point to a future where the constitution has become a nifty relic somewhere, everything is privatized, climate change is in full-swing and people are really feeling the shift, while America is suffering through a catastrophic but slow, steady decline to the point that President/CEO Baron has to install a firewall around the US so the citizens don’t see news from Europe or China and how their quality of life is. This could be in 10 - 15 years.
Put away gold I guess, I dunno man, I’m tired.
The d’s had 50 years to come up with their own plan. And they did nothing. We had a choice of different sides of the same coin and here we are.
Even if they had the time frame that Republicans had with drafting and promoting Project 2025, they could have had their own. They knew it existed, only Trump pretended it never existed and was a hoax.
If the DNC had its own Project 2025, something like “Project End Fascism” it could have worked. Instead we got “Maybe 100K for new home owners. Not gonna go after the corporations buying every home.”
Yeah, reverting to the do-nothing corrupt situation before Trump will do nothing to prevent a resurgence of fascism. It was fertile ground for it before, and still would be.
Bullshit. If Gore won, there’d be compost powered cars and shit. Hilary was pushing for Obamacare since her husband was in office. Biden was all about stimulus to working families. We’ve been living if the New Deal over half a century.
Hilary was pushing for Obamacare since her husband was in office.
That part’s mixing up two different plans. The healthcare plan that Hillary came up with when Bill Clinton was in office was overly complex, would have delivered even less than Obamacare (which was Romneycare rebranded, with a few tweaks-- Romneycare was a response to Hillary’s disastrous plan), and didn’t make it through Congress. It was a red flag that Hillary didn’t have what it takes to lead any complex effort (such as the Presidency).
It was a red flag that Hillary didn’t have what it takes to lead any complex effort (such as the Presidency)
LOL. It’s a good thing there was such a competent alternative to vote for then.
LOL. It’s a good thing there was such a competent alternative to vote for then.
Can you imagine if the party didn’t actively work against him in the primaries?
yeah let’s be real, people fell for Trump’s brazen rhetoric, even if it was all an empty facade that you could see miles away if you just looked at his CV objectively
This is what I don’t get: what brazen rhetoric? He can barely string a coherent sentence together when he isn’t merely bullying someone? What kind of fuckwit gets persuaded by that? Don’t answer that.
Yup, they have no positive vision for the future anymore since they’re so far up the oligarchs’ asses they can’t see past the end of their nose. And people still choose the ‘lesser evil’ and then act like they’re somehow surprised that what they got was still evil.
If we strip-mine all the social programs before Republicans get the chance we can do it in a way that keeps the most important part of the system in place. Checkmate fascists!
If we strip-mine all the social programs before Republicans get the chance we can do it in a way that keeps the most important part of the system in place.
The cut taken by parasitic middlemen?
What we really need is MORE Middlemen to keep a closer eye on all those brokies and make sure they’re not getting too much. That’ll stop the waste, surely.
Yeah, it’s definitely melodramatic. I just enjoyed how it laid out the actions of Trump that got us here, as well as describing the expanded role of the Executive.
Fair.
enabling those same oligarchs to undermine our democracy.
Oh you didn’t hear? You can’t say oligarchs because American simpletons need to hear “king” instead because we have a long history of fighting kings and definitely not because the term oligarch applies to more than just Trump but instead better describes the cozy relationship between money and power in this country and illustrates that the rich have captured the government.
better describes the cozy relationship between money and power in this country and illustrates that the rich have captured the government.
That’s exactly why I use it.
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Aside from this being a little fucking melodramatic and defeatist, the thing that really bothers me is the implicit assumption that if only we’d all just vote blue no matter who we wouldn’t have this problem, like the Democratic Party hasn’t been kowtowing to and enabling those same oligarchs to undermine our democracy. I
Reminder that Clinton pushed for Trump to be the nominee as she thought she would win easier with him. Trump is a non-zero amount of Clinton’s fault.
Don’t get me wrong, boom tomorrow is definitely better than boom today, but it’s important to not forget that there was never not going to be a boom.
Playing hot potato with a bomb, passing it along between various administrations and congressional members, and none of them were going to get hurt. It was always going to explode with the victims being the 99%.
Trump is a non-zero amount of Clinton’s fault.
Hillary should never have been the candidate. The only rationale for choosing her was that it was her turn. Anyone who expressed admiration for Henry Kissinger like she did is unfit for office.
Indeed, on both counts.
So cute copium, but it’s over. You can discuss what we can do with the next empire? I’m over this one and good riddance honestly it was cringe at the end.
Here’s a radical idea: let’s not have one. Let’s instead have a society that is committed to ensuring that the needs of all of its citizens are met instead of just those of the capitalist class. Voting (blue or not) will never get you there though, because both parties are on the same corporate dark money IV drip. This shithole is the way it is because the people with all the money and power want it this way, and if you think voting will dig you out of it you haven’t been paying attention.
Or, you know, you could just primary existing candidates. That’s always been an option. Take over the infrastructure from within is not as hard as you make it out to be with how it’s set up.
You cannot change the government without the will of the people on some level.
Listen, I voted blue for 30 years and watched them steadily run to the right so hard the party leadership is sitting in Reagan’s lap now, primarying candidates does not change the system because all of the candidates are just puppets hanging from the same set of strings (otherwise they don’t have the funding to get (re)elected.)
Also you definitely can change the government without the will of the people, Trump’s doing a pretty fair job of that while his supporters go ‘I was in favor of deporting the bad people not my mom!’ or ‘I was in favor of firing the lazy government employees not me!’.
Melodramatic and defeatist?
On Lemmy?
Literally at this point I feel like that sentiment is the product of a successful psyop.
It differs by state but America only became a democracy by modern standards in the 1960’s. There was arguably a brief period after the Civil War before Reconstruction ended but women couldn’t vote so I give it a C- on my Democracy-O-Meter (patent pending).
Also, a Gentleman’s C is a term for a reason. That’d be an F at a commuter school. Only private schools put up with polite rich kids who are dumbasses but come from a “good” family.
give it a C- on my Democracy-O-Meter (patent pending
Are you grading on a curve? Where was there a more functional democracy in the mid-19th century?
The United States in the mid 1800’s is famously known as a place and time of peace and harmony where gentlemen-scholars voted in free and fair elections.
Imagine counting the first four score and seven years as democratic.
we count ancient Greece as a democracy, don’t we?
Last I checked, democracy didn’t mean “fair,” it ment that the leaders were voted into power.
we count ancient Greece as a democracy, don’t we?
In the same way we count the Wright Flyer as the first airplane, sure.
democracy didn’t mean “fair”
I have heard more than a few people discount the existence of democracies in US adversary states - such as Cuba and Venezuela and Russia - precisely on the grounds that their democracies aren’t “fair”.
Broadly speaking, “democracy but its a rigged election” is just dictatorship with extra steps.
This depend very much on how you define “fair,” and how it is used in context.
So, I would say a system that only let’s white male landowners vote is not “fair” because only an elite group gets to vote. But if their votes are counted properly, and their decision upheld, the election is “fair,” and it’s a democracy.
On the other hand, a system that lets everyone over 18 vote is arguably “fair.” But if the votes are not counted correctly, and the results are false, then the election is not “fair,” and you don’t have a democracy.
To further the thought, I suppose that if the voting populating is a small enough percentage of the general populating, then it is not a democracy, rather than just a bad democracy. Not sure where that line is, though.
This depend very much on how you define “fair,” and how it is used in context.
One-Person, One-Vote is the generally recognized answer. There are all sorts of ways to fudge that figure via how districts are drawn and delegates are awarded. But straight up disenfranchising whole ethnic and gender groups is as explicitly “unfair” from any but the most revanchist perspective.
So, I would say a system that only let’s white male landowners vote is not “fair” because only an elite group gets to vote. But if their votes are counted properly, and their decision upheld, the election is “fair,” and it’s a democracy.
What you’re describing is Republicanism, in so far as decision making power is devolved to a base constituency and managed via a legal doctrine rather than the whims of a dictator. But the fundamental problem with describing democracy in this manner is that you can make the voting pool arbitrarily small without violating the constraints. Why stop at “White Male Landowners”, after all? You can shrink it to Firstborn Sons or military officers or immediate family of the preceding executive. Taken to its absurdist conclusion, it’s a single person issuing a single vote on all issues. But hey, it’s “fair” by the letter of the law, so ignore the rest of the disenfranchised population.
Not sure where that line is, though.
Not unfair to say “Democracies exist on a spectrum”. But at some point, you’re so far off the ideal that the term becomes farcical.
One-Person, One-Vote is the generally recognized answer.
Yes, that is the general answer for who gets to vote. But as I describe, that doesn’t guarantee fair.
To get what we think democracy means, we need as fair system, (who gets to vote) and a fair election. (votes counted properly)
But you’re missing my point. I’m not arguing that a restricted voter population is a good thing. I’m arguing that it’s still a democracy, provided it meets certain qualifications. I’m arguing that words have meanings, and that we shouldn’t be letting 1960 anti-red patriotism trick is into thinking that “democracy” means anything more than leaders appointed by voting.
A bad democracy is still a democracy. An unfair democracy is still a democracy. A corrupt democracy may be a democracy, depending on the nature of the corruption.
And the Wright Flyer was an airplane.
Yes, that is the general answer for who gets to vote. But as I describe, that doesn’t guarantee fair.
Chattel slavery is incompatible with liberal democracy. There’s no fuzzy area to debate the point.
I’m not arguing that a restricted voter population is a good thing. I’m arguing that it’s still a democracy
For any policy authored by the enfranchised majority that impacts the disenfranchised minority, its passage and execution is categorically and indisputably undemocratic.
And the Wright Flyer was an airplane.
That stayed airborn for 12 seconds.
Chattel slavery is incompatible with liberal democracy. There’s no fuzzy area to debate the point.
I would agree with that. Can you point to where we were discussing liberal democracy?
For any policy authored by the enfranchised majority that impacts the disenfranchised minority, its passage and execution is categorically and indisputably undemocratic.
So no laws involving children or immigrants, then?
You’re doing exactly what I’m arguing against. You’re attributing a bunch of other qualities to “democracy,” and demanding that they be treated as part of the actual definition.
I think we are done here. You’re arguing against things I’m not writing.
By this standard, the US is still a democracy. Leaders are still voted into power and that isn’t going to change.
Will they let everyone vote? Obviously not, but you seem to think it’s democracy when only white men can vote so…
It’s not a good democracy, no. The fact that Trump is not following the rules suggests that it isn’t a democracy at all, since we are voting for stick figures, not leaders. But he was elected fair and square, at least until we find evidence otherwise.
And again, “democracy” doesn’t mean “good,” or “fair” or “virtuous.” We are none of those things right now, weather we are a democracy or not.
He didn’t even get a majority. He got a plurality. 49.9%
Yea. If we counted popular vote, rather than EC, that would not qualify him for president.
I’m not actually sure what happens if no candidate gets a majority.
I guess this means that Russia is a democracy.
I’m prepared to argue that fake voting doesn’t count.
we count ancient Greece as a democracy, don’t we?
We? No. But they gotta keep the bar as low as possible to justify this fantasy.
By contrast to literally every other country. Yes very much in that time period. Believe it or not, most monarchies were also completely fine with slavery and plantations. And their citizens had even less political power.
By contrast to literally every other country.
One of the proximate causes of the American Revolution was British abolitionism leaking into colonial politics.
You had ex-military ultra-wealth planation owners defecting to the revolution in drovers following Dunmore’s Proclamation.
most monarchies were also completely fine with slavery and plantations
They were completely fine with collecting rents off their subjects - slave or free. But quite a few of them had strong reservations against chattel slavery (the Spanish Catholics, most notably). And more simply could not stomach the expense of policing transatlantic trade from piracy.
That is what ultimately lead to the outlawing of the practice across Europe.
Democracy isn’t defined relative to other countries. Only property-owners could vote, and only white men could own property, so that means the vast majority of the population couldn’t vote. That doesn’t sound like a democracy to me, that sounds like an aristocracy. I will grant you it was more democratic than monarchies and such, but even some of them (like the UK) had a parliamentary system so the king’s power wasn’t universal. They were deeply unequal, of course, but that’s just the pot calling the kettle black, because so was (and is) the US.
Yes because if it isn’t perfect may as well not even try.
I’m sure glad that United States never decided to split away from England and was unable to influence the entirety of Western democracy to form.
Without USA, you never get the French revolution as Thomas Paine never publish common sense without French revolution. You don’t get free France without free France. You don’t have European democracy.
Thomas Paine never publish common sense without French revolution
The French Revolution in 1789. Paine published Common Sense in 1776.
Paine was also involved in the French revolution, but the Jacobins threw him into the Bastille because he was opposed in principle to capital punishment, so refused to vote to execute the king.
The pitfalls of typing things on your phone at work is that sometimes when you mean to say American revolution, you write French revolution twice because you’re only commenting while you’re waiting for something to happen at work and not giving your phone your full attention.
Yes because if it isn’t perfect may as well not even try.
Do you have to try to be that disingenuous or does it come natural?
What a thing is trying to be is pretty irrelevant to what it is. A wife-beater can talk all he wants about how hard he’s trying to stop beating his wife, but meanwhile she’s got a fresh supply of new bruises every day. Whether or not he’s trying to stop, what he’s doing is beating his wife, so is he a wife-beater or is he a changed man? Here’s a hint in case it’s not as obvious to you as it is to everyone else: he’s still a wife-beater, but that doesn’t mean he should stop trying to change.
The fact that the US talked a big game about democracy does not make it a democracy, but that also doesn’t mean it should’ve stop trying to become one.
Only recently has everyone above the 18 had the ability to vote, excluding those who are slaves as per the 13th amendment. For most of American history, women couldn’t vote. Black people weren’t considered people. We kicked out anyone Chinese. We locked away Japanese Americans because they were ethnically Japanese.
America was maybe a democracy for 56 years, since the Voting Rights Act of 1968. That’s a stretch at best, as the country never healed for being an Apartheid for 200 years.
Right? Someone clearly hasn’t read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States.
Name one year that the US was a democracy.
2024 when fascists won a fair and free election. Our democracy was never perfect, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a democracy.
Insisting America wasn’t a democracy isn’t clever analysis. It’s factually wrong and it’s not even an effective narrative to fight fascists.
You’re being downvoted but you’re not far off. Women and minorities couldn’t vote for a very long time. We had slaves and still do through incarceration. It’s only been in the last few decades that we were closest to be what we claimed to be, and yet still quite a ways off. And that progress was greeted with the system coming down on us attempting to “fix” what we had broken by moving towards true freedom for all.
If over half of the population is unhappy with the election results after an election takes place, I think its clear you’re not living in a democracy.
I think a Parliament and rank choice voting are prerequisites to democracy. The only reason the US doesn’t have these things is to ensure that the power remains in the hands of the plutocrats
