The US has never been a democracy, they’re just being more straightforward about it recently
Comment on [deleted]
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org 10 months ago
At what point is a democracy not a democracy anymore?
Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
Randelung@lemmy.world 10 months ago
People keep commenting this without context and it’s driving me mad. It’s factually wrong, so at least tell us what you mean in the figurative sense.
Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
It is not factually wrong, even if you argue that a representative republic can be democratic it’s an easily verifiable historical fact that ours never was. At every point in US history there have been groups of people who were deliberately and methodically disenfranchised from any representation while still being subject to US rule. If being told that hurts your feelings it just means the propaganda worked, try being less gullible.
Randelung@lemmy.world 10 months ago
No, this is just the first time anyone actually invested more than the one sentence into an explanation. Can you give me a little more to look into? I genuinely have no idea what you’re referring to.
undergroundoverground@lemmy.world 10 months ago
A better question would be “when was there ever been a true democracy?”
For me, there hasn’t been. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try. It means that we need to truly internalise that wealth and power will, if left unchecked, succeed in perverting it entirely. We need to be ever augmenting it, with that in mind, with a view to playing whack a mole with the interests of the 1% and keeping it working for the 99%.
I mean that won’t work either. The rich and powerful will never allow us to simply vote away their ill beggoten wealth and power. However, at least people could say that they tried.
throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I don’t think we’ll ever have a “true” democracy.
Its like the concept of “utopia”, you can get closer and closer, but never actually reach it
Like an asymptote in mathematics.
Monument@lemmy.sdf.org 10 months ago
For the U.S., the decisive blow came with the Citizens United ruling, although it’s not unreasonable to suggest the refusal to punish Nixon during watergate signaled that the rule of law was merely a suggestion. That kicked off a whole cascade of political and legal maneuvering to get both the legislative and societal landscape into such a contortion that it would willingly hand away the entire nation to vulture-capitalists.
sadTruth@lemmy.hogru.ch 10 months ago
- For Patriots and politicians: As long as there is democracy in the name (Democratic Republic of Korea)
- For decent people: As soon as the laws/choices the government produces are no longer what the average person would choose.
throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Sadly, some states, people voted against ranked-choice-voting in referendum. Seems lile people just hear a complex idea and want to shut it down because it challenged their simplistic worldview.
throwawayacc0430@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Not sure. Ancient societies also used FPTP and they are still considered by some Scholars/Historians as “democracy” 🤷♂️
SabinStargem@lemmy.today 10 months ago
Personally, I think government systems are actually a type of technology. Unfortunately, they aren’t the kind of research where you can easily experiment and iterate upon, since people tend to die in massive numbers if the experiment fails.
Rekorse@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
The USA is too big to be a democracy. It would need to be several smaller regions/countries that had equal rights when dealing with each other. But its much easier to just force people to do what you want rather than make a mutually beneficial deal.
Hazor@lemmy.world 10 months ago
So, like, … maybe 50 or so smaller regions? And a few other mostly even smaller territories that don’t get those rights, just for funsies?
I joke, of course. But in seriousness: Are you suggesting the US just defederate and become more like, say, the EU? What are you anticipating that would solve? Moreover, what is it that makes it too big to be a democracy? Can large governments exist only in authoritarian forms? Why would that be?