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.

  • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 hour ago

    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.

  • kava@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    I’d never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile

    Ignore the political system and look at the economic system. The US is capitalist and as it turns out- capitalism is not mutually exclusive with fascism.

    If a human being lives long enough, he will eventually develop cancer. It’s simply a natural physical consequence of repeated cell division. Eventually there’s some mutation that leads to a chain reaction. The cancer spreads enough and there’s no going back. Capitalism, similarly, will always inevitably embrace fascism.

    Marx got it wrong. He believed that the workers, realizing their position as class consciousness increases, would inevitably revolt against the power structure. The reality is more depressing.

    Capitalism has cycles of crisis. Sometimes the economy is doing good which leaves the workers content. Sometimes the economy is doing bad. The problem is when the economy is doing bad coincides with some other set of crisis, the combination of events radicalizes the workers. This part Marx predicted. However he was mistaken about human nature.

    Really, our problem started back in 2008. The global economy never fully recovered. Interest rates were kept low in a desperate attempt to increase spending to keep the boat from tipping. Then COVID pumped up inflation to historic levels- supply chain shortages wrecked chaos. After that, the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed up inflation even higher. Prices go up but wages lag behind.

    Workers, naturally, become more radicalized- as Marx predicted. The issue is Marx was too optimistic about human nature. Humans as a whole are fearful herd animals. They need a shepherd to point somewhere. And eventually, inevitably, some megalomaniac with a vision will take advantage of a vulnerable system and point somewhere. In the 1930s it was to the Jews and the communists. Today, it’s the illegals and “wokeism”.

    All this to say that this shouldn’t be surprising. Left wing voices have been warning about this for a long time.

  • frezik@midwest.social
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    3 hours ago

    Hitler didn’t take power democratically. Neither did Mussolini or Franco. They each found cracks in how liberal democracy worked in their respective countries. Those cracks were usually the places where the system was decidedly undemocratic, which in those three cases, was generally something where the old nobles still had some power and they lined up behind fascists to save them from leftists.

    America never had nobles, but it does have plenty of cracks in its liberal democracy to be exploited by fascists.

    So to answer your question simply, no, there are no instruments to fix this. Congress can potentially either reign Trump in with legislation, or even impeach him, but I don’t expect either one to happen. If the GOP can be swept out of Congress in 2026, then we can maybe start to fix some things without resorting to extralegal methods. Even that is only a starting point.

    I do know for sure that we can’t go back to the old trajectory as if Trump was just an outlier.

  • clutchtwopointzero@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    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.

  • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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    4 hours ago

    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).

  • masquenox@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    8 hours ago

    a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players

    Your proof of this is… what?

  • Matombo@feddit.org
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    10 hours ago

    It’s funny that Germany has safeguards against nazis in power in it’s constitution which was designed by in 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.

    • Miaou@jlai.lu
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      4 hours ago

      Those same safeguards that banned AfD years ago, thank god they exist!

    • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 hours ago

      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… 👀)

    • Matombo@feddit.org
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      10 hours ago

      PS.: With the current trend we will find out in about the next decade if the safeguards work …

      • NιƙƙιDιɱҽʂ@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        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.

      • Hupf@feddit.org
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        10 hours ago

        Ich sage: nieder mit diesen Gesetzen!

        Macht Deutschland wieder Groß

        You mean that way, approximately?

    • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 hour ago

      Germany has a modern constitution created in response to nazis.

      USA has extremely outdated constitution created by proto-nazis.

  • Daerun@lemmy.world
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    10 hours ago

    If you really believe that the USA has “100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players” you are in delusion.

  • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    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:

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • 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.

    • danciestlobster@lemm.ee
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      3 hours ago

      This is good information, a few follow up questions:

      1. what does China gain by influencing the US to elect a fascist? It’s clear what us billionaires gain, less so for China

      2. where are the breaks on choo choo train to Nazi America, based on this trend?

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    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.

  • itsnotits@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago
    • with a 100-year* tradition
    • throwing down its* key ideology
    • Are* 53 out of 100 senate seats
    • make the* country fall
    • yarr@feddit.nl
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      10 hours ago

      I am learning that in modern America, Nazi is just anyone they don’t like.

      • febra@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        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.

        • VerifiedSource@sh.itjust.works
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          6 hours ago

          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.