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.
Congress removed a ban on arming and funding Nazis in order to arm Nazis in Ukraine, the last president violated domestic & international law to openly arm a genocide, and NATO has been openly pushing the Nazi agenda since its founding with Hitler’s former commander.
All that is to say, if you think it’s just a Nazi president or this is a recent change, you’re deeply underestimating how entrenched Nazis are in the current system, and you don’t appreciate just how many politicians are at least sympathetic to Nazis.
The system is not going to turn on itself and suddenly start fighting against the people who’ve crafted it to do this for the past 80 years. It can’t be reformed. It must be destroyed.
So, giving the public a means of dealing with tyrannical leadership, either through intimidation or something more, is literally and unironically one of the intended use cases for the second amendment. That’s not to say you won’t face prosecution, but there it is.
Whoosh
LOL give me a break. This (undemocratic) state was literally founded by slavemasters, the original proto-nazis, so they could violently maintain their racist privilege. Ofc there’s no law against it.
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).
Well isn’t that the reason everyone uses on why America needs so many guns. So they can stand up to the government? But seems it ment standing up to a government giving more people rights not one taking them away.
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.
“100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy”? That’s not even true in a very minimal definition of democracy, let alone if we also mean equal rights for all. Just off the top of my head:
The vote of racial minorities was not protected before 1965.
COINTELPRO was a thing just over 50 years ago, targeting whatever political group was considered undesirable by the FBI. The FBI was found to be using unlawful surveillance targeting protesters for the inexcusable killing of a black man by police as recently as five years ago.
Last election there was an attempt to overturn the election results. It’s not taken as seriously as it should have because it failed, but it was literally an attempt to overthrow democracy. It’s important to note that Trump was allowed to run for president and the case against him was dropped as soon as he got elected. I’m pointing it out because the system was already there to protect him and it’s not something that he caused through his own actions as president.
There are so many unwarranted invasions of other countries, assassinations, and human rights violations that I don’t even know where to link to as a starting point.
Don’t forget the large scale surveillance both within and without the country.
And then there’s all the undemocratic qualities of unregulated free market capitalism. Politicians are lobbied. News outlets belong to wealthy individuals who often have other businesses as well. Social media too. Technically, you get to cast a vote that is equal to everybody else’s. But your decision is based on false data, and your representative is massively incentivized to lie to you and enact policies that server their lobbyists and wealthy friends instead. Do we all really have equal power?
So if you mean democracy in a very literal and minimal sense, that the people have some sort of power through their vote, that’s technically still going on. If you mean in it a more general sense, where people have fundamental rights that are always protected regardless of race or other characteristics, and where power is not unfairly distributed between individuals and racial groups, then again not much has changed. Because that was never the case. If you think fascism was universally condemned then you just hadn’t realized how widespread and normalized it always was. Maybe fascism is growing. Maybe it’s becoming more blatant. But it was always there.
So if you mean democracy in a very literal and minimal sense[…]
If you mean in it a more general sense[…]
Where would ancient Greek democracy fall in this spectrum?
I don’t know if there’s a meaningful way to treat that as a spectrum and to place political systems on it. I mostly pointed out the different definitions one might use so that people wouldn’t read my examples of rights violations and think “what’s that got to do with democracy?”.
Also, there’s no ancient Greek democracy. Greece was a bunch of city-states, each with its own political system. I know that in Athenian democracy there were slaves, and as you would image they didn’t get a vote. Neither did the women. If it existed today it would probably not even be called a democracy by western standards.
I mostly pointed out the different definitions one might use so that people wouldn’t read my examples of rights violations and think “what’s that got to do with democracy?”.
Yet you wrote
That’s not even true in a very minimal definition of democracy
Are you contradicting yourself later by conceding (flawed as it may be) it fit “a very minimal definition of democracy”?
Other common restrictions in ancient Greek democracies were being a male citizen (who was born to 2 citizens), a minimum age, completed military service. Still, rule wasn’t restricted to oligarchs or monarchs. I think we’d still call that a democracy in contrast to everything else.
Your writing seems inconsistent.
If it existed today it would probably not even be called a democracy by western standards.
Do good, objective definitions vary by time & culture? Seems problematic.
Seems you’re claiming something doesn’t fit a minimal definition of democracy while using a non-minimal definition of democracy. Sure, it’s a flawed democracy, but we can repudiate it on those considerations it fails and clarify them without overgeneralizing.
Where would ancient Greek democracy
They had slaves, so it wasn’t particularly democratic.
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.Law enforcement tends to lean conservative…
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.
I believe this is where the second amendment comes into play. Luigi was on to something.
Impeachment, but that starts with a 218 vote in the House and the House is on his side.
So you actually need majority to PREVENT the collapse of democracy, and if you don’t have it, you’re fucked? How the fuck did this country even manage not to succumb into dictatorship for such a long time?
I mean imagine if you could impeach the president without a majority. That would be the death of democracy. Just to put things in perspective: The GOP democratically won both houses of Congress and the presidency and because of DNC incompetence also has the Supreme Court. Them being able to do whatever the fuck they want is, in a way, democracy working as intended. It’d be weirder (and much more undemocratic) if there was a way to remove a sitting president without the Supreme Court or Congress.
This only proves that two-party system is just an authoritarianism with rotation. There’s always a ruling majority and the winner takes all.
Things would be different with at least the third party. 2 out of 3 parties would agree that the party no.3 is a fucking malice and rule him out.
Two party system wasn’t in the constitution, its an emergent property of FPTP voting method. FPTP + Electoral College means we get this fucking bullshit.
TLDR: There’s no “two-party system”, that’s just the result of FPTP. Nuke the FPTP system, replace with Ranked-Choice ballot (and also delete the Electoral College, that shit is outdated AF).
Very much on the electoral college, it made some measure of sense when the electors would have to ride a horse from California to DC maybe but that died a century or so ago.
From a smart ass perspective though, I just want to point that the TLDR portion actually has more words than the block above it. 🙃
From a smart ass perspective though, I just want to point that the TLDR portion actually has more words than the block above it. 🙃
Lol I started to use “TLDR” as a replacement for “In Conclusion”, because the concluding paragraph is supposed to summarize what you wrote anyways, so those terms are interchangeable.
If they hadn’t capped the number of representatives at 435 over a hundred years ago, we wouldn’t be in the situation where a vote from Wyoming carries 3.7 times more weight than a vote from California. By my math, if the 435 cap was abolished, we would have 143 more electors generally sprinkled among the more populous states. I still agree that the EC is outdated, but it’s not even operating the way it was designed.
Third party would most likely make things better but there’s no guarantee it would help in the situation you’ve set up. If two of the parties are fine with an actual Nazi in the White House and between them they control over half the votes then we’re still in the same situation.
It’d be weirder (and much more undemocratic) if there was a way to remove a sitting president without the Supreme Court or Congress.
Turns out there is, in fact. It just doesn’t involve governmental process at all. You’re quite correct that it’s undemocratic. (See: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy)
It has been under corporate dictatorship for over a century.
^ this.
The president isn’t in charge. He’s existing within boundaries created by the wealthy.
Well the country didn’t previously have a legion of mouth breathing retards screaming at the top of their lungs about micro-aggressions and declaring that the nation was illegitimate. I’d also question your metrics for deciding now that he’s an openly Nazi dictator, other than parroting what you hear from other
peoplesocial media accounts.Yes it had, and that legion even stormed the fucking capitol.
If enough people in a democracy decide that they want a dictatorship instead, then there is no stopping it, because rules don’t matter at this point. The trick is to don’t let it get this far. Tough shit for the US, though.
Worse… The House makes the impeachment charge, that’s a 50% majority vote.
THEN it goes to the Senate for conviction where you need a 2/3rds majority to remove them. 67/100.
That’s the body which can’t do anything because they’re blocked by a 60 vote super majority to over-ride A filibuster.
So you get 218 in the House, goes to the Senate, needs 60 votes to end debate and proceed with charges, then 67 votes to convict and remove.
Trump’s first impeachment got 48 and 47 votes.
His second was 57 votes.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_impeachment_trial_of_Donald_Trump
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impeachment_of_Donald_Trump
If he had been convicted, he would have been inelligible to run in '24.
The founders probably imagined no self respecting person, oligarch or otherwise, would want to live under authoritarian rule.
Turns out the 21st century bourgeois is full of pussy ass bitches.
They never could have imagined our modern society at all. The amount of power and influence held by just a handful of private citizens couldn’t have been accounted for in the 18th century.
I’m just speaking from a matter of principle. They don’t have to know the conditions to conclude living under a kings rule in any condition is unappealing.
If people democratically voted to end democracy, what are we suppose to do?
People democratically sat on their asses and didn’t bother to fucking vote. More people abstained from voting than actually voted for either candidate. The real winner of the election was apathy. We deserve whatever fucked up outcome we get.
The rest of the world doesn’t deserve it…
The ruling class was able to get along well enough up until the US Civil War, at which point the slavers decided they were willing to tear the country apart to keep on slaving. I include this because the Nazis were inspired by Jim Crow and how we did things over here. Fascism started bubbling up in the early 20th century because industrialization and capitalism polluted everything and made people work awful hours and all that, and liberalism and conservatism hadn’t fixed it. There was a serious coup attempt forming in the early 30s called the Business Plot, but they went to a war hero Marine general who told them to fuck off and told the federal government about it.
At least in the US, we’re in this situation now because authoritarians have been working toward it since the 60s (the Powell Memo was written in 1971 I think) and they’ve taken advantage of how terribly the Constitution is written, along with consolidation of wealth and stoking backlash to all the civil rights movements to get people to back them. The worst part is that it’s a feedback loop: since Reagan took power, Republicans campaign on “look how bad the government is!” and make the government worse once they’re in office, which feeds their cause.
tl;dr capitalism makes living conditions terrible, people abandon liberalism and conservatism for socialism/communism/etc and fascism, liberals don’t want much to change, fascism lives or dies based on how much conservatives sell out to/ally with them. The fact that we’re doing this all again shows to me that liberalism is a dead ideology and capitalism is going to kill us if we don’t kill it first.
2A
Not that it would be used, but the 25th Amendment is another avenue to removal of a President.
Yeaaa… thats pointless when President and Vice President are elected together, so they are almost always the same ideology.
Let’s just say the amendments are sorted by importance.
This is the result of ever-expanding executive power.
Really because the rest of us have been watching you be wildly volatile for years now.
But who will wield these instruments? It’d be more relevant if he made an effort to hide his nature before the election.
Right now the majority voted fascism with open eyes.
The army or the police should immediately jump in and arrest Elon after the second salute, when it became obvious the guy knew what he was doing. And yet he saluted 3 times and half the country is extremely enthusiastic about that.
… and half the country is extremely enthusiastic about that.
There’s the reason nothing is done about it. It’s probably not actually half, but enough people didn’t speak up early enough, and so this has become the loudest voice in the room. Unless, and until that changes, the whole world is in for a rough ride.
This isn’t Germany where they can just arrest nazis. First amendment (unfortunately) also apply to hate speech. 🤷♂️
You’re calling for military generals to have the power to remove the government? Effectively a military dictatorship?
That seems unwise.
Elon isn’t a government official, there would be nothing unwise about arresting him for things most people would get arrested or at least questioned by the police for.
I thought it was twice? I mean, that doesn’t detract from your point, and I don’t even disagree. I just want to make sure the details are set straight.
I saw a full clip on reddit. First time was just as bad, because he did it spontaneously, with no “throwing hearts”. He just heiled out of nowhere.
America doesn’t have a law forbidding the Nazi salute. It’d be against the first amendment.
The right to free speech is faulty if there are no repercussions from breaking the law.
Again, the first amendment protects the right to free speech and association; as far as American law is concerned, Elon didn’t break any laws.
Sure, but that’s not what I’m saying. You said that forbidding a Nazi salute would be against the first amendment. I’m only saying that IF Nazi symbols were to be outlawed then the freedom of speech should not equal to freedom from breaking the law.
IF Nazi symbols were to be outlawed then the freedom of speech should not equal to freedom from breaking the law.
It does, though, because such a law would be struck down as unconstitutional. The First Amendment doesn’t just protect lawful speech; it protects all speech and the American government just barely carved out an exception for inciting violence. These amendments are part of the constitution, which stands above and restricts the rest of American law. If you made a law saying that Nazi symbols were illegal, your law would (at least theoretically) be illegal and struck down in court and people would retain the freedom to use Nazi symbols. You might take issue with that, but if only legal speech was allowed then… the government could just make any speech it doesn’t like illegal.
You talk about amendments as if they couldn’t be amended.
