What is your line in the sand?
Edit: thank you all for your responses. I think it’s important as an American we take your view points seriously. I think of a North Korean living inside of North Korea. They don’t really know how bad it is because that is all hidden from them and they’ve never had anything else. As things get worse for Americans it’s important to have your voices because we will become more and more isolated.
Even the guy who said, “lol.” Some people need that sort of sobering reaction.
For a long while I thought America was a democracy but that the population was rather uneducated. Their media and culture seemed to glorify ignorance and shame intellectualism.
I now consider America a fascist state, early stages. I’ve seen too many simulations to know that the level of organized resistance required to prevent the descent into fascism is either too morally grey or too risky to be worth it. It must get much worse before resistance is meaningful.
At best an American is a victim, at worst they are a fascist.
Never have
People seem to think freedom and democracy are synonymous. Places can be free, but not have democracy; places can also have democracy and not be free. When a simple majority of the voting public supports cracking down on freedoms - you will have one of the two, but you can’t have both.
American political system can very easily produce a new authoritarian leader, the president has much more power and with Congress majority can easily turn things around. The fact it hasn’t happened before is a great achievement. Looking at everything Trump administration has been doing is to concentrate power at the top and to become new dictatorship. It wont be Trump, maybe JD Vance who knows.
It depends on what the Americans will allow to happen, cause I feel that Americans are getting pissed harder each year and many large protests will happen. Is it going to be a wakeup call to become democratic and sensible again or full dictatorship only time will tell.
Is anywhere really?
To me it never really was. If you look into how they do voting here, its insane, really.
US citizens always loved to make these “we’ll bomb some democracy in to you” but they never brought democracy either. I think it’s fair to say that no other country started asa y dictatorships as the US has
Add to that;
Bush lost the election and became president anyway.
Trump has heen successfully lying his way through the past four years (and well, yeah the 4 years before that too) instigated an insurrection and was never held accountable
So many people not reading the “people outside the US” part.
If a presidential candidate can lose an election and still become president, it’s not a democracy.
It is still a democracy, but that democracy is in crisis. You will know over the next 2/years if it will survive, although the next federal election will be the real test.
- if the judicial and congress still share power,
- if elections are still fair.
Democracies can recover if they keep their representation.
Elections in the US aren’t really all that fair TBH.
Researchers at the Brookings Institution agree that the strategic manipulation of our electoral process is largely to blame for the erosion of US democracy in recent years. Brookings says this manipulation takes various forms: the intentional addition of administrative barriers to voting, unfairly drawing electoral maps, the subversion of the election certification and counting process, and the violent coup attempt on January 6, 2021.
The United States is experiencing two major forms of democratic erosion in its governing institutions:
- Strategic manipulation of elections. Distinct from “voter fraud,” which is almost non-existent in the United States, election manipulation has become increasingly common and increasingly extreme. Examples include election procedures that make it harder to vote (like inadequate polling facilities) or that reduce the opposing party’s representation (like gerrymandering).
- Executive aggrandizement. Even a legitimately elected leader can undermine democracy if they eliminate governmental “checks and balances” or consolidate power in unaccountable institutions. The United States has seen substantial expansions of executive power and serious efforts to erode the independence of the civil service. In addition, there are serious questions about the impartiality of the judiciary.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/understanding-democratic-decline-in-the-united-states/
One thing that I think they may have missed in this analysis is erosion from the inside. Our supreme Court overturned or instituted a couple major rules that have allowed corporations to funnel billions of dollars directly to politicians with citizens united decision, then helped erode administrative functions of government by overturning Chevron deference. When you combine that shit with the way we allow corporate lobbying in the US, we’re not even close to “democracy” in this shit hole. It’s a corporate oligarchy masquerading as a republic/democracy. Corporations own this country, the government protects them, that bullshit you hear about the “land of the free” is about corporations not individuals.
Speaking on the federal level (have less of a view on the local and state level). It was a very flawed democracy, and it’s descending a less and less functioning system as we speak, moving towards some form of fascism/techno feudalism.
We are mostly a democracy but it’s crumbling. Trump has ignored judges and stuff and causing a real shit fest. But for the most part, the people elected for this. Now if the people get their heads out of the asses and vote this guy out, but he’s still president, then it’s not a democracy.
I never considered it a democracy. It’s one-party system with two parties, what can be democratic about it? Smoke and mirrors.
Democracy is an umbrella term. These are the types of democracy the US is:
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Representative Democracy
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Constitutional Democracy
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Presidential Democracy
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Liberal Democracy
Types of Democracy the US is not:
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Direct Democracy
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Parliamentary Democracy
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Illiberal Democracy
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Participatory Democracy
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Social Democracy
So yes, it’s a democracy.
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Nope, it’s an oligarchy pretending it’s a democracy.
For me, the US is still a democracy with elements of an authoritarian regime. Yes, I believe this can happen in any country, including mine, if the elected party or a wealthy figure decides to amend such authoritarian, manipulative, and exploitative policies.
