The Future of American Democracy is in Danger

[Mihalik]

How something that never existed be in danger?

As long as electoral college exists, which results in shit system where only votes of majority matter in each state, which prevents anything other than major 2 parties from participating, US has no real democracy. Maybe having that pathetic excuse for democracy in danger and then collapse is actually needed, so people would realise that system is ancient shit and needs to be rewritten for modern times.

That's some accelerationist bullshit.

If that sham of a system collapses, what we would get in America is some flavor of fascism. How many people are you willing to let die for the possibility of a "reform" on the other end? How many years of Gilead/Nazi American Fourth Reich?

[PhaelixWW]

How something that never existed be in danger?

As long as electoral college exists, which results in shit system where only votes of majority matter in each state, which prevents anything other than major 2 parties from participating, US has no real democracy. Maybe having that pathetic excuse for democracy in danger and then collapse is actually needed, so people would realise that system is ancient shit and needs to be rewritten for modern times.

Ah, yes, the haggard "no real democracy" argument. Knew it was going to show up at some point.

Also, the US is actually a democracy.

[Dacia Ultan]

That's some accelerationist bullshit.

If that sham of a system collapses, what we would get in America is some flavor of fascism. How many people are you willing to let die for the possibility of a "reform" on the other end? How many years of Gilead/Nazi American Fourth Reich?

Bingo. I would most likely have to literally leave the fucking country; and I'm not sure I can afford that unless they start taking Americans as refugees.

Ah, yes, the haggard "no real democracy" argument. Knew it was going to show up at some point.

I don't know; I like flinging it back in their faces when they're using it as a defense of the former guy.

Also, the US is actually a democracy.

Closest thing that exists to one in the modern world, anyway.

[Huehuecoyotl]

I guess you have never visited other countries. Just check EU countries, where there are many parties, where each voter's vote actually makes difference, then you'll see what actual democracy is like.

Ignorance of Americans never cease to amaze me.

Yup. Just imagine being someone that leans socialist in America. Do you vote for the extreme right wing party, or the moderately right wing party? Because if you vote for anyone else, your impact on the electoral process just dropped to zero.

The notion of cooperative political processes with a wide range of parties is so alien to them, that they believe their confrontational winner-takes-all approach isn't just acceptable, but it's the best in the world. And I'm speaking as someone in the UK, where it can be argued that the process is just as bad; hell, it's worse in some ways, at least Biden didn't get elected because 40% voted for him and 60% voted for other candidates.

[PhaelixWW]

TIL "not the most idealized form of democracy" is the same thing as "not a real democracy".

Or, you know, you guys could crack a book and actually learn a little bit about that of which you speak.

Not gonna hold my breath, though.

...

Seriously, I can't believe the attempts to "no true Scotsman" the US and democracy.

[Dezerte]

No country in the world has real democracy. There's always something that can be improved upon to make a country more democratic. Trying to make an argument about how the US isn't a real democracy seems like a red herring to me.

[Levelfive]

When there are only 2 parties taking turns to rule country, when nobody else has even a chance, when choice of presidents is "bad" and "terrible", it is not a democracy. It is full cringe and, which might be news to most Americans, pretty much the entire world outside of US is laughing at that pathetic excuse for democracy.

On top of that add lobbying system, which in civilised countries would be considered corruption and it turns from joke to sad.

Americans who have never lived outside of US are too brainwashed to see it, as this thread clearly shows. Decades of being shoved slogans like "leader of free world", being told that US is the greatest country in the world by politicians from both parties, has taken its toll.

"The US has flaws so lay down for the impending white nationalist takeover" doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.

- - - Updated - - -

Whatever hope I had went out the window when the answer to the supreme court by Biden was a right wing commission.

For me, I think it was that commission's draft report with its mealymouthed "both sides" hand-wringing about how doing anything to unpack the court will compromise its legitimacy, as if elected Republicans and the SC members themselves hadn't already done that.

[Levelfive]

"impending white nationalist takeover" doesn't deserve to be taken seriously. It is a variation of "commies takeover", based on nothing but fear mongering and ignorance.

For your doom and gloom scenario to happen in a real democracy, majority of country would have to be white nationalists. Are they? I doubt that, even when Trump won he didn't have majority votes.

And here lies main issue with any changes. US is incapable of changing because ignorant people think in absolutes. World is not black and white, political parties don't have to be extremes and choices should not be binary. Comic book / Hollywood binary thinking of good and bad works for children, adults should not think like children.

This isn't even worth reading, frankly.

[Shadowferal]

Americans who have never lived outside of US are too brainwashed to see it, as this thread clearly shows.

People that don't live in the US long enough to be able to participate in the system will never understand.

[muto]

No country in the world has real democracy. There's always something that can be improved upon to make a country more democratic. Trying to make an argument about how the US isn't a real democracy seems like a red herring to me.

Yeah pretty much especially when it’s always a two party race. I also don’t know how out of 330 million people we wound up with Joe Biden, and Donald Trump.

[Levelfive]

You are right. Some people are so far involved in US politics without any experience with proper democracy, that nothing can cure their ignorance.

From the guy who didn't read past the thread title.

Moving on, this is from April, but a very in-depth, illuminating look at the parallels between now and 1876, about a "herrenvolk democracy":

"National conservatives are trying to define away the problem. If those who voted against Donald Trump are ipso facto not really Americans, then, presto, that means Trump won a popular mandate among those who are! Glenn Ellmers took this approach in an essay for The American Mind. He writes off all who voted against Trump as those “who may technically be citizens of the United States but are no longer (if they ever were) Americans.” Ellmers uses a variety of terms for those whom he would exclude from the body politic: “citizen‐​aliens,” “non‐​American Americans,” “gerbils,” “human rodents,” “robots.” Regardless of the term, his basis for exclusion is that “they do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people.” Ellmers does not bother defining what any of that means beyond making it clear that “American Americans” are necessarily Trump supporters."

https://www.libertarianism.org/artic...l-conservatism

As a side note, Ellmer's essay is also referenced in the first post--comparing political opponents to vermin always ends well, right?

[Specialka]

This isn't even worth reading, frankly.

Unfortunately, he is right. And I can't usually stand his position.

[Draco-Onis]

Yeah pretty much especially when it’s always a two party race. I also don’t know how out of 330 million people we wound up with Joe Biden, and Donald Trump.

because less than half of people voted and one of the political parties entire goal in life is to stop certain people from voting.

[Levelfive]

'When do we get to use the guns?’: The ongoing danger of false fraud claims
By Philip Bump

The death toll from Donald Trump’s false claims about election fraud is murky, ranging from one to seven depending on how you count. Ashli Babbitt, the Air Force veteran shot as she tried to climb through a window near where members of Congress were evacuating during the riot on Jan. 6 is the one indisputable death. Without Trump’s false claims about the election there’s no massive rally on that day in that place, no mob overrunning the building and no one breaking the window where Babbitt died.
2021 Election: Complete coverage and analysis

Other deaths are less direct. Two people died of natural causes in the midst of the mob; another from what a medical examiner called “amphetamine intoxication.” Three police officers died in the aftermath of the riot, including two who took their own lives. Officer Brian D. Sicknick was thought to have died as a result of injuries sustained during the attack; it was later determined that he died of natural causes.

That, then, is an estimation of the number of people who have died as a result of Trump’s false claims about the election, claims that are now a central point of belief for his party. What is not clear is how many more people might die because of them.

On Monday, the right-wing youth organization Turning Point USA had an event during which founder Charlie Kirk took questions from members of the audience. At one point, a bearded man asked one, as seen in video obtained by Media Matters.

“At this point, we’re living under corporate and medical fascism. This is tyranny,” he said. “When do we get to use the guns?”

Members of the audience applauded.

“No, and I’m not — that’s not a joke,” he continued. “I’m not saying it like that. I mean, literally, where’s the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?”

Kirk’s response was not, as you might hope, a strident rejection of the premise. He argued that an embrace of violence was what the left wanted, allowing for the creation of “Patriot Act 2.0.” (The original Patriot Act was not a project of the political left, as some will recall.) When the questioner asked “where the line” was, Kirk didn’t say that there was no line that would warrant the use of gun violence for political purposes, instead suggesting that the next step was for states to reject federalism.

We’ve pointed this out before, but it’s important to reiterate it now. The problem with these false claims of election fraud — these false, nonsensical, debunked, irrational, garbage claims of election fraud — is that people believe them. They believe them because they trust the people making the claims, like Trump or Kirk. They believe them because people who know they’re false think it’s useful to pretend they aren’t. People believe that the 2020 election was stolen because Trump insists that it was because he’s embarrassed it wasn’t. Because Trump’s allies went along with it so he wouldn’t be mad at them and so that they could rationalize new limits on voting.

But if you actually believe this happened, then you’re in the position of that guy in the audience. If you think the election was stolen and that no one is doing anything about it, it’s natural to wonder why more isn’t being done. That was clearly part of what unfolded on Jan. 6 itself: A lot of people who thought the election had been stolen were convinced that being at the Capitol at that time afforded them the chance to do something. They were told the election was stolen and they accepted that, and then Trump told them the time and place where intervention was needed. So they showed up.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) made a similar point on former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast Tuesday.

“The real truth is the communist revolution that the Democrats funded and waged every single day and every single night in American cities all across our country,” she said, misrepresenting last year’s protests centered on the death of George Floyd. “You see, that was an attack on innocent American people, whereas Jan. 6 was just a riot at the Capitol. And if you think about what our Declaration of Independence says, it says to overthrow tyrants.”

Just a riot at the Capitol — and one somehow rationalized by the Declaration of Independence. After all, it’s not like Joe Biden won the election fairly.

This is not the first time that Greene has downplayed the violence on that day or celebrated those who engaged in it. She has repeatedly suggested that those arrested for their roles in the violence were unfairly targeted, at one point referring to them as “prisoners of war.” She is also the legislator who, in a photo of freshmen legislators taken a few days before the riot, wore a face mask reading “stop the steal” — a slogan centered on the false claims of fraud. At another point, her mask read “Trump won.”

Trump didn’t win. Donald Trump lost. Those are words he loathes hearing, so he’s done everything in his power to pretend they aren’t true. And as a result, his supporters injured scores of police officers at the Capitol, and several gave their lives. As a result, frustrated supporters are wondering out loud when they get to murder the people Trump is saying stole the election. As a result, those musings are greeted not with condemnation but applause.

This is not a trajectory on which the death toll doesn’t grow.


https://wapo.st/3jJuuWN

I would only push back on the idea that the majority of rank and file Trumpists actually believe the election was stolen. There's a persistent idea on the left that right wing leaders know they're lying but their base doesn't know they're being lied to (borne out of misguided, self-flattering snobbery that the right in many cases fairly ascribes to the left*)--I think most of them know better and just don't care, any more than the Trumpist leaders they're taking their cues from. The important thing is that they all repeat the lie together so they can use it to justify their anti-democratic project, lest they sustain a grievous attack--which here means abiding the democratic principle of sharing power according to the people's will--on their "birthright" to maintain power regardless of how people vote.

*In the left's defense, it's preferable, if naive, to believe that people are acting out of ignorance rather than malice.

[muto]

because less than half of people voted and one of the political parties entire goal in life is to stop certain people from voting.

I feel like there's better candidates they could have gone for if they wanted to prevent certain groups from voting, like say Greg Abbott, or Stephen Miller.

[Draco-Onis]

I feel like there's better candidates they could have gone for if they wanted to prevent certain groups from voting, like say Greg Abbott, or Stephen Miller.

Incumbents don't often get primary challengers and the RNC changed the rules making it impossible to do so, there were several people who tried but their campaign died thanks to the RNC.

[Levelfive]

I feel like there's better candidates they could have gone for if they wanted to prevent certain groups from voting, like say Greg Abbott, or Stephen Miller.

Aside from the fact that Stephen Miller has the charisma of a dead eel, how much better did they really need to do than Trump, who provided the perfect excuse to disenfranchise voters and build the infrastructure on the state level to simply overturn election results they don't like?

"In the first nine months of the year, more than 425 new voting restrictions were introduced in 49 states and 33 new laws passed in 19 states to make it harder to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice—the greatest rollback of voting access since the end of Reconstruction.

Republican-controlled states like Texas have already begun enacting heavily gerrymandered maps that will help them retake the House in 2022 and lock in anti-democratic power at the state level for the next decade, in part by denying fair representation to voters of color, the same targets of voter suppression efforts.

Inspired by Donald Trump’s “big lie” of a stolen election, nearly a dozen states have enacted new laws to undermine fair elections and Republicans motivated by “stop the steal” conspiracy theories are running to take over election machinery at all levels of government, promising to overturn future elections if their side doesn’t win.

“The single biggest issue,” Trump said in Iowa last week, “is talking about the election fraud of 2020 presidential election.” And he’s already planning to nationalize his voter suppression crusade if he regains the presidency in 2024, through legitimate or illegitimate means.

Democrats breathed a sigh of relief when Biden was inaugurated, but Trump and his allies were just getting started with their efforts to undermine democracy. Just because the first coup failed doesn’t mean the next attempt won’t succeed.

This has all the makings of a constitutional crisis, but Democrats have done nothing to stop it. The Freedom to Vote Act would counter many of the GOP’s anti-democratic tactics by expanding voting access through policies like automatic and Election Day registration, two weeks of early voting, and no-excuse absentee voting nationwide; banning partisan gerrymandering; and protecting the right to have your ballot counted. But voting rights advocates are now shouting from the rooftops that time is running out to pass it and, if they don’t do so soon, Republicans will do everything they can to rig the political system in their favor and Democrats will likely lose their majorities as a result, becoming powerless to reverse the extreme gerrymandering, voter suppression, and election subversion."

https://www.motherjones.com/politics...-to-stop-them/

[Milchshake]

Ok I'm DONE, sign me up with the accelerationists!

Two of the worst people in America not only ruined Democracy. They swerved out of their lane to ruin Ted Lasso.



US Senate; the poshest troll farm in history.

[Dacia Ultan]

I guess you have never visited other countries. Just check EU countries, where there are many parties, where each voter's vote actually makes difference, then you'll see what actual democracy is like.

Ignorance of Americans never cease to amaze me.

Meant that constitutional republics in general are the closest extant equivalent of genuine democracy, not that the U.S. in particular is. I'm not going to say "sorry if I was too vague," because I was definitely too vague.

[Yuujin]

"impending white nationalist takeover" doesn't deserve to be taken seriously. It is a variation of "commies takeover", based on nothing but fear mongering and ignorance.

For your doom and gloom scenario to happen in a real democracy, majority of country would have to be white nationalists. Are they? I doubt that, even when Trump won he didn't have majority votes.

And here lies main issue with any changes. US is incapable of changing because ignorant people think in absolutes. World is not black and white, political parties don't have to be extremes and choices should not be binary. Comic book / Hollywood binary thinking of good and bad works for children, adults should not think like children.

This is a dogshit take and you know it is because of the people who are agreeing with you.