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.
Never have, they are ruled by their uniparty and indeed they can’t see outside their box.
I am probably that lol guy.It’s what they call a “flawed democracy” now. It’s not at the point where thousands of people simply disappear and every aspect of political life is dictated by one party’s leadership.
But it’s sliding downward.The amount of voter suppression, the broken FPTP system and mass media influence over the US electoral system, means that for all intents and purposes, the USA federal election is just picking your favourite of the two viable owning-class-endorsed candidates. “The people” never had a realistic chance of representation or empowerment. This is not a new critique, it’s been discussed for at least a century and a half.
There is simply no real value in calling the USA a democracy at any point during our lifetimes, regardless of whether you are allowed to vote or even write-in candidates, regardless of the two-party system, because the power imbalance between the working class and the owning class surrounding that vote makes it as much a sham election as Russia’s sham elections. But even compared to other (until recently) close allies, the US implementation of federal voting has long been an absolute circus.
It hasn’t been a democracy since it had the ‘electoral college’ and unequal representation. So, forever…
But within the context of the previous status quo - I’d say it stopped being a democracy exactly when Trump was allowed to be a candidate for the presidency after the Jan 6 coup attempt, and parallel attempts to invent votes and pressure states to lie about their vote counts. Which was blatantly unconstitutional and illegal. More than enough evidence to bar him from being a candidate, and yet the senate allowed it to proceed - that was the end.
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.
I am outside the US, not a citizen, just someone whose life constantly seems to be affected by shitty US politics
One interesting thing I haven’t read here yet (haven’t read all the comments though) is religion. Sure, officially there’s separation of church and state, but Christianity is everywhere in your country, including government. The amount of times I’ve heard “God bless the United States” being said is ridiculous. To me, that’s undemocratic and I would feel very uncomfortable with that as an atheist.
Yeah, it’s a cheap knock off Christianity, too. It’s just there for the subjugation of people who cannot be bothered to think for themselves.
Christianity Lol
No my friend these people worship Mammon. They were taught to believe it was god
Of course you would be uncomfortable with that because you’re an atheist… You’re an atheist. The US has freedom of religion, this freedom also applies to government officials.
I never considered it a democracy. It’s one-party system with two parties, what can be democratic about it? Smoke and mirrors.
If a presidential candidate can lose an election and still become president, it’s not a democracy.
Why should all the densely populated urban centers be the only people with control over the federal election?
I barely considered it a democracy as a two party system as the elites controlled it all, but now it’s just even more messed up. They need to hold people accountable and not elect criminals to office.
I fear for the future of America as a country.
Nope, it’s an oligarchy pretending it’s a democracy.
Absolutely not. When laws don’t apply to the president, the jig is up. Trump clearly plans to be in power forever. Either there won’t be elections or they’ll be rigged.
all those images of venezualen immigrants … being handled like the absolute worst possible being… its crazy
When was the US the last time a democracy?
You can vote democrats or republicans, which mostly get bankrolled by the same rich assholes. As a normal citizen of the US you have almost no influence at politics at all, because the media is controlled by rich people, the biggest internet platforms are controlled by rich people, elections are paid for by rich people, …
The current situation is not a spontaneous, miraculous, magical result of Trump and his gang, it was years in the making by lobby groups, influential/rich/powerful people and neo liberal brainwashing of the masses.
Same holds true for most other western so called democracies.
Canadian here.
Before Trump? Ehhh, not really. I’ve always viewed the US as a place where you vote for which oligarch-backed monarch you’d want to put in absolute power for 4 years. Every 4/8 years the new incoming overlord just rips up whatever the previous one did and nothing of substance is actually achieved.
After Trump 2.0? No. There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Trump is going to surrender all that power he and the GOP have accumulated. And why would he? He doesn’t have to. He literally controls every branch of government that he can and ignores those that he doesn’t. If the US ever has another election it will purely be for show, like China’s elections. The mask is now fully off and the charade of US democracy is over as those who actually wield the power now do so openly on their sleeves.
China’s democracy is among party members.
Oh I love parties! I’ll bring the glowsticks!
Never have
Not since I saw this graph:
From this paper:
This was published in 2014, back when Obama was in office.
The institutions are completely captured. Yes, even the ones you thought were on your side all this time.
I am a bit too dumb to understand that graph and asked ai for an explanation. It helped me, maybe it also helps others:
This graph comes from a study by Gilens and Page that examines how different groups influence U.S. policy decisions. It has three separate charts, each showing how policy adoption (whether a policy is enacted) relates to the preferences of different groups:
1. Average Citizens’ Preferences (top chart)
2. Economic Elites’ Preferences (middle chart)
3. Interest Group Alignments (bottom chart)
Breaking It Down:
• X-axis:
• In the first two graphs, it represents how much each group supports a policy (from 0% to 100%).
• In the third graph (Interest Groups), the x-axis shows alignment, with negative values meaning opposition and positive values meaning support.
• Y-axis:
• The left y-axis (dark line) shows the predicted probability of a policy being adopted.
• The right y-axis (gray bars) shows how often different levels of support occur in the data (percentage of cases).
Key Takeaways & Surprises:
1. The top chart (Average Citizens) is nearly a flat line.
• This means that whether the general public strongly supports or opposes a policy has little impact on whether it gets adopted.
2. The middle chart (Economic Elites) has a rising curve.
• This suggests that policies supported by the wealthy have a much higher chance of being adopted.
3. The bottom chart (Interest Groups) also shows a strong upward trend.
• The more interest groups align in favor of a policy, the more likely it is to be adopted.
Big Picture:
This graph suggests that the opinions of average citizens have little to no effect on policy decisions, while economic elites and interest groups have significant influence. This challenges the idea that the U.S. operates as a true democracy where the will of the majority decides policy.
Average citizens banding together into interest groups is a pretty common way to get things passed, and this chart agrees.
That is not what the paper means by “interest groups”.
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.
