What is your line in the sand?

  • esc27@lemmy.world
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    52 minutes ago

    If you want to be pedantic, the US is not a democracy in much the same way Linux is not an operating system…

    Otherwise, of course it is. It just had a major election last year. The vast majority of citizens were eligible to vote, multiple people were on the ballot. The ones with the most votes won.

    That’s not to say it doesn’t have flaws. Gerrymandering in particular. But even that can be overcome if people actually bother to vote…

    Of course the next election may be different…

  • humanspiral@lemmy.ca
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    10 minutes ago

    Ignoring court orders, and “fake national emergency declarations” to create war and international extortion and remove rights and citizenships for deportations crossed the line. The voter suppression/rigging that won election for Trump is also clearly anti-democratic, but anti-democratic as usual. Media/oligarchy/Israel influence/disinformation might not make for an ideal democracy, but also “democracy as usual”.

    The big problem with the world is the US empire’s manufacturing of hatred/war against “those who are less democratic than us and our colonies” Corruption of democracy in US, who can cheaply manipulate democracy in its colonies, means that you don’t have functional democracy either. There is something wrong when the most important issue of your government is to increase divisiveness/threats to the US’s enemies when the US unjustifiably threatens you, and that thrills you as right track.

    So, democracy is simply not working at bringing progressiveness and shared prosperity, or even the most basic understanding of humanist/national interests, to those who say they love it so much. This is global collapse level of delusion. Nations doing best economically are those distancing themselves from US colonial control.

    The more objective measure of “good government” is control against oligarchist pillaging, while having pluralism/sustainability, and economic constructiveness. US approved democracies are failing hard on these metrics. Warmongering based on “blanket, evidence free, refusal to accept election results when non-CIA candidate wins” is not the democratic/liberal ideal you think it is.

  • LetterboxPancake@sh.itjust.works
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    28 minutes ago

    Yes, but hardly an example for a good one. Besides that, it has become a bad ally, if it even is one at this time, and a factor of uncertainty.

  • Freewheel@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 hour ago

    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”.

  • TXL@sopuli.xyz
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    2 hours ago

    Absolutely not. A two party system was barely nominally a form of democracy. Current one quacks like a dictatorship and walks like a dictatorship. They might hold a fake election one day like many of those do, but still no.

    • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      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.

      • TrippaSnippa@lemm.ee
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        17 minutes ago

        Firstly, the USA is obviously not a “dictatorship”.

        You sure about that? Have you read the news lately?

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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    34 minutes ago

    Kinda. On how the voting process works in general, I consider it a worse democracy than Brazil, since nearly anything only gets voted if there’s enough lobby money being thrown at it, not to mention the astronomic campaign costs. Each state having different voting laws makes the democracy weaker

  • JacksonLamb@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    still consider

    It has only two political parties, and a weird system where all votes are not equal and the actual vote majority doesn’t always win.

    It has frequently had multiple people from the same families running for office, and only wealthy people have a shot. Corporations get to lobby for laws in their favour.

    It also spies on its own citizens, holds people indefinitely without trial, has a huge prison population, a militarized police with a high homicide rate, and is the only western nation with the death penalty.

    Trump and Musk are laying bare how fragile the veneer of “democracy” really is in that country.

  • TeaWalker@lemm.ee
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    3 hours ago

    Am Dutch. I have considered the US an incomplete democracy since I learned about voting in school. It’s not one person one vote, which to me is crucial for a democracy. The US right now is still a nation of laws, but democracy is sharply in decline. The voter-roll issues and Gerrymandering come to mind immediately. Not to mention the fact that guaranteed access to polls has been pulled by the courts. Which is insane to me.

    • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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      3 hours ago

      Also president having so much power was clearly never democratic to begin with as we can see it all play out now.

      • RupeThereItIs@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        The power of the president did not start out like this. Congress kept giving their power to the executive for political reasons.

        It happened over centuries.

  • sinnsykfinbart@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    I really never did, not a well functioning at least. They’ve practiced voter repression for decades, and then they had fun testing how low they could go after 9/11, doing a lot of unlawful shit, going after citizens who spoke out against their policies and wars.

  • Intergalactic@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    Absolutely not. A country where two parties are the only two viable electoral options, is absolutely not a democracy. Doesn’t mean I’ll stop my membership for the PSL.