You’d think a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players, would have some mechanism that would prevent itself from throwing down it’s key ideology.
Is it really that the president is all that decides about the future of democracy itself? Is 53 out of 100 senate seats really enough to make country fall into authoritarian regime? Is the army really not constitutionally obliged to step in and save the day?
I’d never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile.
Second amendment
America’s vaunted “checks and balances” are, in the end, just smoke and mirrors to lie to the population and hide the fact that American institutions give way too much power to the president and there are no institutional controls to make the president behave.
a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players
Your proof of this is… what?
For real. US history is replete with supporting dictators, military coups, and so on.
The US empire chooses to ally with any group who opposes Russia or uses mineral/oil wealth as significant public welfare enhancement instead of enriching their rulership or privatizing for cheap bribes to US national champions, and not being a US weapons customer. This already makes the US empire a demonic evil fascist force. It calling apartheid ethnostates of Ukraine and Israel “great democracies”, and all elections that go against it “rigged” is an ultra fascist view. Control over colonies media is control over their democracy, and control over their people to ensure subservience of allies. Internally, to US, there is always money for the empire and the oligarchy, never for people.
The veneer of democracy and “rules based world order allies” is a BS that helps with its demonism. But removing the veneer to demand more tribute from colonies, and Americans is not change. It simply removes the emperor’s veil/clothing. If voting could change anything, it would be illegal.
Trump can help Americans realize this. But if you were praising US democracy/values before this, you simply were not paying attention closely enough.
Is the army really not constitutionally obliged to step in and save the day?
The constitution is no protection against the Army. A military coup does not necessarily mean a more militarist US, or anti-American, anti-pluralist/liberty government. Asking/supporting the military to depose corrupt leaders should be based on that corruption, not looking up whether a nation’s constitution permits it (they never do).
It’s funny that Germany has safeguards against nazis in power in it’s constitution which was designed
byin cooperation with the USA, France and GB, yet afaik all three don’t have similar mechanics in their own constitutions because they never belived to have to deal with the next hitler themselfs.Those same safeguards that banned AfD years ago, thank god they exist!
Lets take out the politica for a moment, and just look at railroads
This is what I call the “Old Railroad Theory”:
The US build the railroad/subways so long ago, that most of it is now in decay and as far as I know, none of the US has any Platform Safety Barriers, and people could just fall on the tracks (see NYC)
In constrast, in China (PRC), because most subways are only recently built, they are much more modern, air-conditioned, and have Platform Safety Barriers, preventing any “fall on tracks” incidents. (I’ve seen first hand the subway in GuangZhou, they look much nicer than NYC, when I first got to NYC, the tracks were terrifying for me, I alwats have intrusive thoughts about falling in)
Its because once you build a system, its unlikely to get replaced even when better technology comes along. Too much cost to replace, politicians don’t care.
Same thing with Constitutions.
It was written do long ago, now its too late to add new ideas like Defensive Democracy. 3/4 of US legislature means its almost impossible to add it as an amendment.
(Btw, Germany has a AfD problem, that they still haven’t banned yet… 👀)
PS.: With the current trend we will find out in about the next decade if the safeguards work …
Decade? More like 3 months. He’s already doing wildly unconstitutional things. If the Supreme Court refuses to take on challenges to it or outright approves it, well, they didn’t work.
Ich sage: nieder mit diesen Gesetzen!
Macht Deutschland wieder Groß
You mean that way, approximately?
If you really believe that the USA has “100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players” you are in delusion.
That’s what 2a is supposed to be for
2A is supposed to facilitate millitias in case England attacks again.
Guns can have multiple uses.
The American Revolutionary War literally started over the attempted seizure of guns by a government that feared its subjects could use them in an uprising.
… in case England attacks again.
I have been thinking about coming over there with a cricket bat.
And the benefit is most yanks won’t even be able to make a cheeky single if you flat it past the square leg
Ah fuck you really going to make me infodump I hate you sm fr
Part 1: The Two Parties
In the 1960s Civil Rights movement a deep political polarization began which results in wealthy interests backing the Republican party more and more, President Ronald Reagan in return shifted the party away from unions and towards deregulated and low tax markets and industries, and when Democrats introduced a campaign finance reform to curb the issue in 1995 it failed but was reintroduced and passed in 2002 it furthered that divide yet again, that bill was then sued by Citizens United wealthy interests and the SCOTUS sided with Citizens United as a Partisan 5-4 decision. So now we live in a world where political divide has all of the wealthy interests backing one side whose policies are actually extremely unpopular but people are easily misled into not knowing the stances of people they are voting for, or misled on the repercussions of those actions.
Figure 1: Partisanship of Congressmen
Figure 2: Partisanship of citizens
Part 2: Legislative Requirements of the USA
The USA has steps to pass laws:
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It gets called to vote by majority leader and passes the House of Representatives, which is capped at 435 congressmen allotted very very roughly proportional to the state populations.
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It gets called to vote by majority leader and passes the Senate with a simple majority of 51 votes, unless a handful of senators decide to filibuster it to delay the vote indefinitely, in which case the bill gets amended with concessions and sent back to the House for yet another round of voting. Filibuster can be bypassed with 60 votes which is basically impossible due to aforementioned partisanship.
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The president signs it into law.
Now the problem here is that to remove a congressman, the president, or a supreme court judge: you need 60 votes following a successful impeachment inquiry. So it never happens.
Part 3: Foreign Interests
Influential media from the Murdochs, the Kochs, and the CCP are constantly pushing the USA further into the grave they’ve been digging for 50 years. China has always been a source of cheap labor and the relationship soured greatly following the Chinese influences on Korean and Japanese elections during the time those two nations were rebuilding following the World War era and were under the watchful eye of the US Military who were a central figure in the aforementioned conflict. This divide deepened with the 1984 Tienanmen Square Massacre where cities all over China were quelled by military forces being deployed on their own people. But far from being the end of it, the Pacific was still a prime trade route where the USA sought profits, and so Chinese influence continued to spread more as the days went by.
Part 4: Where We Are Now
President Obama was denied a lifelong SCOTUS nomination in an election year, giving the nomination to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump was granted yet another lifelong SCOTUS nomination in an election year. The SCOTUS was thusly deeply conservative.
His court nominations allowed him to run for office despite not qualifying under the insurrection clause, because if the courts choose not to reverse a lower court decision that he wasn’t barred from office then nobody is enforcing the law.
Billionaires bought or operated their own home made social medias in the USA, the CCP deployed TikTok campaigns to elect a fascist.
This isn’t just a thing that happened which we were unprepared for. It’s a thing that has been happening for decades which so many of us have been desperately attempting to stop.
This is good information, a few follow up questions:
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what does China gain by influencing the US to elect a fascist? It’s clear what us billionaires gain, less so for China
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where are the breaks on choo choo train to Nazi America, based on this trend?
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Apparently that’s what America wants. You mean for a possible future where it’s a bad thing?
What’s your definition of Nazi? I would think Andrew Jackson still a worse president than Trump. And not even the Supreme Court was able to stop him
That mofo made it to the $20 bill. Sick.
I am learning that in modern America, Nazi is just anyone they don’t like.
Actively spreading hate towards the LGBTQ community and making some of the most marginalised people isn’t nazi enough for you? What a sick world we live in.
This very liberal use of Nazi and fascist as a epithet has devalued its meaning.
Hate is not enough. The Nazis did far more than spread hate. National-Socialism was much more coherent and thought through ideology than Trumpism/MAGA is today.
Nazi might be useful as an expression of anger and resentment, but it’s not conducive to serious analysis or discourse regarding the situation.
He knew it from the beginning. People didn’t listen.
He also didn’t want to be president or have his face on money. They really just ignored the dude.
I guess ignoring Washington’s wishes foreshadowed what the US would eventually become.
Who would have thought a government created in model of a constitutional monarchy would do this?
Oh right, all the people who opposed the US constitution. People forget the Anti Federalists every time.
Except most of the Anti Federalists weren’t arguing against the specifics of the model, they were arguing against a centralized government at all. Which had literally just failed.
Next you’re gonna tell me a constitutional monarchy isn’t a centralized government.
It is though?
Correct.
I think they’re implying you’re making a distinction without difference. OP states the Anti-Federalists opposed the adoption of the Constitution, which was largely modelled after the constitutional monarcy of England. You clarified that they didn’t object based on the system’s model, but rather on the basis of all centralized government being bad. Their response is basically saying, yeah man, the Anti-Federalists were against centralized government , that’s what I said.
I am inferring that OP believes that they had the right of it in the first go, no centralized government is preferable to any centralized government, specifically because of how centralized governance encourages the consolidation of political power into parties.
I’m not nearly well versed in this time period to dissect that argument in detail, but I believe your rebuttal that their plan had been tried under the Articles of Confederation and found wanting, hence the whole debate about the Constitution to begin with, is a fairly succinct counterargument to the position I am sketching out on their behalf (read as: the strawman I have set up).
All of which is to say, I’ve expended entirely too much mental bandwidth on this interaction and need to go touch some grass for a bit.
That’s where I am too. That’s why I’m confused. The Articles of Confederation failed horribly.
I mean, did he propose a solution?
Yeah, don’t have political parties.
To some extent, political parties are naturally occuring . The group dynamics of a legislative body will naturally result in groups forming around specific issues and even philosophies. But there is definitely a strong argument to be made that we’ve made them far too official, and far too entrenched.
Impeachment. That’s it.
But you’re also forgetting that in the US states have a significant amount of power. For example the President cannot cancel elections. If a state cancels elections they just don’t get counted.
There’s a lot in that particular area that shields people from federal government stupidity.
They can ignore election results though, or fraudulently certify them.
If they ignore election results then they’re illegitimate and the country is free to descend into chaos.
The CIA can always assassinate a president who gets too far out of line,
like what happened to JFK,but they don’t tend to mind the right so much as the left.Trump spent his first term selling classified documents to enemies of the state that revealed the identities of CIA operatives and got them killed and so far they have done nothing about it. I think it’s safe to say the CIA is not as scary as hollywood wants us to believe.
The CIA is right
leaningwing globally and at homeThe CIA is not great at high profile assassination, their declassified documents are plenty scary though.
They have a long history of infiltrating foreign governments and assassinating world leaders, so what makes you think they’d have trouble doing the same in the US? Surely, during the height of the Cold War, they would’ve had contingencies for America electing a socialist. If they did back then, then who did what when to change that situation? Nobody’s really said no to the CIA since, again, Kennedy fired Dulles and was assassinated shortly afterward.
Because they haven’t? Inaction speaks pretty loudly.
Which of my questions is that supposed to answer, exactly?
They haven’t because nobody’s actually crossed a line. A few leaked documents isn’t going to provoke an assassination, it’s an extreme measure so they’re not going to do it over something so trivial.
Law enforcement tends to lean conservative…
There are many conservatives, who hold democratic values, freedom, and the US constitution in high regard. Those in government service have sworn an oath to protect it against enemies foreign and domestic. They have their red lines and breaking points. The ones in powerful positions draw their whole legitimacy from it.
Yes, the President can be impeached and removed by Congress. On the opposite side of the coin a President can veto laws passed by Congress, which Congress can override but it’s harder than passing a law. The problem is when Congress also goes nazi at the same time. In that case we’re fucked. In fact I think Article 97 sub-paragraph E13/W even says, “Such conditions and circumstances shall by Law constitute Fuckage.”
If the US military goes Nazi, then the USA is beyond fucked.
Cool, but half the country supports this shit. And no, people who don’t vote don’t matter in this context.
Then maybe they should have their own shithole country and stop taking our tax dollars.
That is by design. If the “majority” of the country wants the US to be Nazis, that is the direction it will go. That is how a representative democracy works. The flaw was the founders assuming retarded puppets would not be elected by even an uneducated public. But, they also didn’t plan for automatic weapons either. Well, they sort of did, they said we should be rewriting the constitution every so many years so it can evolve with the times, but we chose to enshrine and misinterpret it like a civic bible. Oops.
Just to be clear, your solution to saving democracy would be for the military to usurp a president who received the majority of the vote less than six months ago?
The military has rules limiting what they can do, especially against acting within the US, and every service member is supposed to disobey illegal orders.
USA hasn’t been a democracy for decades. It’s hard to pin it down to a certain tipping point but I’d hazard it was when you decided that corporations are people and buying politicians is free speech.
Hold your ponies. The US is very much still a democracy, if a flawed one in many ways. The US has always been a country run by the wealthy elites, as are most countries in the world.
Buying politicians works, especially in the US, regardless of party. Democrats and Republicans are both the parties of big business and capital interests.
Besides laws around spending money for political purposes, the media landscape has revolutionized over the last 20 years. The role social media has played in Trump‘s ascendancy can’t be overstated. Trump spent less than Kamala Harris in this election and still won, because of his exceptional way to use media to his advantage.
Sometimes a voting population needs to be protected from the consequences of their vote, right? A good chunk of the German voting population in the 1930 voted the NSDAP and Hitler into power, and we can agree that it would have been for the best if that party and its leadership had been deposed ASAP. Now, the US isn’t quite that far down the slide yet, but they’re certainly slipping, and the worst part is that the checks and balances that are supposed to keep a president in line are also failing. Not to be alarmist, but we’re in for a wild ride.
Sometimes a voting population needs to be protected from the consequences of their vote
Who should have the power to make that decision?
Do you want a benevolent king at the top that can dissolve parliament, dismiss government, call for new elections, make parties illegal, and censor the press?
Or maybe have something like an electoral college?
Or the army coups, if things get too far?
The ultimate check on power is the people. A general strike, large scale protests, and occupation of public buildings can topple a government. Institutions from military, police, local government, government agencies, and so on value their positions and won’t go down with a sinking ship.
Your first question is pretty philosophical. All I can say, is that most representative governments place a huge emphasis on giving the people the power to write their own collective destiny.
A military takeover based on the desires of a minority of citizens would violate that principal. I don’t think any reasonable person can call it saving democracy.
a huge emphasis on giving the people the power to write their own collective destiny.
A functional democracy is not a dictatorship of the majority, and people from the US love making this mistake. It is true that the president gets elected by a majority vote… but this person now represents everyone, including the minority that opposes them. They do not have the right to sink the ship and kill everyone because the majority thinks that’s a good idea.
It is natural that their government will make decisions aligned with their voters (in theory) but they shouldn’t be allowed to actively undermine the rights of everyone else.
No matter how inflated your perception of your “flawless” constitution and democracy is, this is something many countries understand pretty well and yours struggles with.
Yes, but it is a question that is pertinent to the situation. What do you do if a population elects someone that starts undermining their democracy? I understand that forcibly taking that person’s power away is in itself anti-democratic, but if their actions are even worse, then it would be justified right? A smaller anti-democratic act to stop the larger anti-democratic effort where they’re dismantling the democratic system that put them in power.
