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.
First off, I’m an American. Born a stone’s throw from the location of one of the critical events in the history of the American revolution.
To answer the question, no. Leaving aside the whole Republic versus democracy argument, my point of realization was when one party seized upon a minor technical issue and disenfranchised countless voters via lawsuit, sufficient to allow the race to be called in their favor.
I’m sure there are many readers who believe I’m talking about 2016. For those readers, your keyword search is “hanging Chad”.
Another key search from the same events is “Brooks Brothers Riot”.
Wow, this happens before I was born, had no idea this shit happened before.
Wrelcome to what the few of us paying attention have been trying to shout at everyone else for a quarter century.
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.
Absolutely not. A two party system was barely nominally a form of democracy. Current government walks like a dictatorship and quacks like a dictatorship. They might hold a fake election one day like many of those do, but still no.
Firstly, the USA is obviously not a “dictatorship”. Come on, be serious. Words mean things.
Second, America’s two-party system also has internal factions and primaries, many of them completely open (you don’t even need to declare allegiance to the party). The primaries are effectively the first round in a two-round electoral system (of which there are plenty in the world). The whole point is to create a binary choice in the final round. For some reason this always gets missed by otherwise informed observers. “There are only two parties” is just not a valid argument in this debate.
Of course, none of these facts will be popular here, since the real point of this thread is to allow participants to performatively dump on the shared hate-object. Classic social media, I get it.
Firstly, the USA is obviously not a “dictatorship”.
You sure about that? Have you read the news lately?
Yeah I have and saying that kinda just makes you seem uninformed.
Like the people who call the US “a 3rd world country in a Gucci belt”. It just makes it super obvious that you don’t understand how high quality of a life the average person has in the US. Especially globally.
I’m not going to list all the red flags, but there is a reason people feel like this. A few major ones, president talking about taking over other countries out of the blue, attacking our allies to the point where Americans are suffering much more than necessary, his sidekick doing Nazi salutes on stage, literal commercials for his $idekick on the white house lawn.
It’s pretty clear there is no rule of law for blatant corruption and no accountability. Replace USA/Trump with Russia/Putin or NK/Un, guess what, same shit, different smell. Either follow orders or get shipped out is the example they’re trying to set, as well as making free speech illegal.
We’re FAR from a functioning democracy.
The primaries that are not required to be democratic and can simply be rigged by the party?
I wouldn’t call America a dictatorship yet, but I would claim that it is heading there at a rapid pace. Trump and Republicans actions such as disregarding the Constitution, removing rights, beginning mass deportations including legals, bringing in a billionaire to shred the government, and ignoring court orders is not a good look for a democratic government.
Yes, I know all that and I completely agree. It’s all but impossible to imagine that the USA will ever be an actually dictatorship, despite the ignorant shrieking around here. Because of its traditions of individual freedom and federalism.
But it’s obviously looking less and less like democracy.
While I don’t consider the system of governance there very good, I’ll have to agree. While I do absolutely worry for the American democracy, it isn’t a dictatorship in its current form. I also agree that the primaries do make the system better and more democratic. I still think that the two part system is abysmal, but the primaries do make the claim to democracy stronger.
That’s a balanced and fair-minded take. Unfortunately it won’t be appreciated here, because what people are looking for in this thread is catharsis and confirmation of their biases.
The answer depends of the reference point. I was born in Russia (I’m living abroad from 2022) and compared to the putin’s dictatorship US is a democracy. You guys still have a freedom of speech, not fake opposition to Trump and independent courts. From the other side, most of the countries are democracies if compared to Russia…
