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.
We’re ignoring the constitution already.
14th Amendment. Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
The man is an adjudicated insurrectionist. Congress just ignored their duty.
So yes, there “are” protections. Said protections are simply being ignored.
The problem with 14th amendment is that the people who wrote that never specified an enforment mechanism. So we don’t know how to properly invoke it. Any attempts to invoke it would just result in the supreme court spontaneously “invent” a method of enforcement. They could say that the supreme court get to decide if someone is ineligible, then rule that trump is eligible because the supreme court doesn’t have enough evidence to prove trump was involved in Jan 6, or just declare Jan 6 to be a “protest” not insurrection.
I mean “No man shall hold office who committed insurrection” seems like a mechanism in and of itself. Dude just can’t run/be on a ballot. We just have two branches of government bought and paid for by the insurrectionist and America’s richest and most fanatical scum who refuse to follow the law.
Well if we consider the Constitution unable to be enforced, its worthless, and the states can chose to disregard the same 14th Amendment and secede. https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=akronlawreview
Can’t be a very good protection if it can just be ignored. I was under the impression that in the US, the constitution is strictly executed, though it looks like even that is a lie
The mechanism was the election.
I mean, sure, impeachment and whatnot, but it’s not like people didn’t know who this guy was. I can give other institutions a whole bunch of crap for not getting rid of the guy the first time, but when you’ve given him a Supreme Court supermajority, both chambers of Congress and the presidency AFTER he attempted a coup I’m gonna say that’s on you, guys.
The mechanism was the election.
That’s making the very bold assumption that there was no interference in said election. In fact, we know for a fact that there was, we just don’t know the extent of the interference and whether it changed the outcome. The reason we don’t know is because it wasn’t investigated (or if it was, it wasn’t publicized), so I’m going to take the stance that it’s very possibly on the outgoing administration, actually, for not making a bigger stink about it.
See, you think that doesn’t make it sound like desperate deflection after having handed the country to the nazis, but it does. I was here during the campaign, I saw how that went.
Nah, man, there is no amount of interference that justifies Trump having a fart’s chance in hell of not losing every single state in a country unwilling to hand the keys to these guys 1932-style. Beds were made, sleeping in them is to happen.
It just sucks that the rest of us are under the covers getting dutch ovened as well.
Nah, man, there is no amount of interference that justifies Trump having a fart’s chance in hell of not losing every single state in a country unwilling to hand the keys to these guys 1932-style.
Let’s say, hypothetically, Trump had personally walked into every polling place, took every ballot that was cast and replaced them with copies that included a vote for him, and then waved his hand Jedi Mind Trick style and made everyone who knew it had happened immediately forget. Obviously this amount of interference would cause him to win the election regardless of how voters voted.
This is obviously an absurd example, but the point I’m trying to make is, saying ‘No amount of interference justifies this outcome’ is similarly absurd and simply normalizes and discounts the interference that took place.
There were certainly a surprising and disheartening number of people voting for Trump, but we will likely never know what the outcome would have been if there hadn’t been any fuckery going on.
Yes we do. This election has no more evidence of being stolen at this point than the previous one did when the nazi weirdos were banging that drum. You’re free to do the MAGA rounds, though, but I doubt you’re going to get the same traction. Don’t quite see anybody storming the MAGApitol at the moment.
Not that it changes anything, because you let it happen and now it happened, so the end result is the same, however you want to cope with whatever part of responsibility you personally have on the matter.
however you want to cope with whatever part of responsibility you personally have on the matter.
I voted for the only other candidate with a chance of winning, she won my state handily, and I did what I could to convince others to do the same, so, nope, I take zero personal responsibility for the outcome, and as such I don’t need to cope with that, thanks.
I said whatever part, and that’s certainly a part.
You will have some coping to do in any case, I’m afraid, and best of luck with that going forward. I mean that sincerely.
we just don’t know the extent of the interference and whether it changed the outcome.
We do.
There was close to zero in the polls. (Democratic and Independent poll watchers would’ve reported that, and I’m not seeing any of such reports)
The real interference was the far-right propaganda funded by unrestricted spendings thanks to Citizens United ruling.
We’ve always had interference, its just that now its getting more and more extreme, especially after Citizens United, exacerbated by modern technology (like social media that people use almost 24/7).
There was also rampant disenfranchisement prior to the election, whatever Trump’s comments about Elon were referring to, and the bomb threats on election day, just to name a few. Maybe it all amounted to literal nothing, maybe it changed the outcome, but I don’t think we’ll ever know. Trump did a fantastic job of priming the country for 8 years to consider claims of election interference to be wild conspiracy theories and made the democratic party unwilling or unable to question anything without sounding like loons, so here we are.
interference
If system relies on candidates not using legally allowed methods of advertisement (aka ‘propaganda’) that are deeply ingrained into every field of media and commerce, then probably there’s a problem with the system in the first place. Many popular musicians, games or products gained popularity by the same kind of ‘propaganda’ working by the same mechanics yet people were always okay with that.
He knew it from the beginning. People didn’t listen.
He also didn’t want to be president or have his face on money. They really just ignored the dude.
I guess ignoring Washington’s wishes foreshadowed what the US would eventually become.
I mean, did he propose a solution?
Yeah, don’t have political parties.
To some extent, political parties are naturally occuring . The group dynamics of a legislative body will naturally result in groups forming around specific issues and even philosophies. But there is definitely a strong argument to be made that we’ve made them far too official, and far too entrenched.
The country just elected this guy knowing that this is what he would do. That’s democracy.
Democracy is when the people can remove anyone in office from office. American democracy is saying bribes are lobbying.
No democracy is perfect.
America’s is less perfect than many.
That said, Trump won the popular vote.
If people want tyranny people must get tryranny. Issue is if people no longer want tyranny they must be able to get rid of it as well. Or maybe don allow tyranny in the first place since people have proven over and over again to be too stupid to be allowed full control.
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.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 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.
The CIA is right
leaningwing globally and at home
Law enforcement tends to lean conservative…
There are many conservatives, who hold democratic values, freedom, and the US constitution in high regard. Those in government service have sworn an oath to protect it against enemies foreign and domestic. They have their red lines and breaking points. The ones in powerful positions draw their whole legitimacy from it.
The mechanism is impeachment. It’s broken because of polarization.
It turns out that a handful of young land-owning white men from the 1700s, born almost 200 years before the advent of game theory, didn’t actually properly anticipate every way in which the political system they were designing could fail.
Lol they fucked up real bad. I mean, Washington wanted 2 terms to be the norm. So why didn’t he just advocate for that to be… ye know… written into the fucking constitution?
Also, they had a contingent election like just 4 years after his retirement, because checks notes Pres and VP are just 1st and second place? And electors cast 2 votes for the same office? NANI?!? What a bunch of mess. (Imagine if the Federalists just tell their electors to, instead of voting 65 for Adams and 65 for the VP, just vote all 130 for Adams, 0 for the VP candidate. Just win with a Federalist Pres and Democratic-Republican VP. Oh wait checks 1796 election that actually happened. They got a Federalist Pres and Democratic-Republican VP because of shenanigans. Imagine a trump-walz or harris-vance. What a dumb ass idea. It failed so bad, they had to write an entire amendment to fix this shit. 🤣
(When I read about that, my brain just had an aneurism, like WTF is that election system?!?)
The funny thing is that so much of it is based on the idea that everyone involved is going to be on their best behaviour, working for the good of the country, compromising with their opponents, and so-on. And, then it all falls apart as soon as one person realizes that they get an advantage as soon as they simply ignore the norms.
Also, don’t forget that there was less than a century between the revolution and the civil war. If your brand new form of government is so poor that a significant fraction of your population thinks a civil war is preferable to resolving things through that system, your system isn’t very good.
The civil war wasn’t about the form of government.
The civil war was due to the fact that the disputes over what should and shouldn’t be allowed couldn’t be resolved within the framework the government provided.
It was about State’s rights…
State’s rights suchs as the right to own slaves
In fact that was the only right they cared about.
I mean, Washington wanted 2 terms to be the norm.
He didn’t, that’s just a whitewashed version we tell ourselves.
He just didn’t want the President to be viewed as a monarch or a lifetime appointment. He turned down a third term because he feared he would die in office and the public would believe that’s the norm.
The US was the first large scale modern democracy. Of course it has design flaws.
Parlamentarism, as we know it now, had only been recently established in the UK in the 17rh century.
Contemporary to US early democracy were absolutist monarchies based on aristocracy. Separation of powers envisioned by Montesquieu, Rousseau‘s social contract, were still new political ideas. The federalist papers and later US constitution were cutting edge political theory at the time.
It’s very impressive that the US has lasted so long actually and was able to adapt. The French established their first democratic republic later and were unable to create a stable state.
it’s working as intended
It’s funny that Germany has safeguards against nazis in power in it’s constitution which was designed
byin 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.Lets take out the politics 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 always 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 so 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… 👀)
Edit: typos
PS.: With the current trend we will find out in about the next decade if the safeguards work …
Ich sage: nieder mit diesen Gesetzen!
Macht Deutschland wieder Groß
You mean that way, approximately?
Those same safeguards that banned AfD years ago, thank god they exist!
Germany has a modern constitution created in response to nazis.
USA has extremely outdated constitution created by proto-nazis.
How were they proto nazi? That’s a first.
I believe this is where the second amendment comes into play. Luigi was on to something.
This is something we can all agree on, including Mr. President. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/us/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton.html
Yes, the President can be impeached and removed by Congress. On the opposite side of the coin a President can veto laws passed by Congress, which Congress can override but it’s harder than passing a law. The problem is when Congress also goes nazi at the same time. In that case we’re fucked. In fact I think Article 97 sub-paragraph E13/W even says, “Such conditions and circumstances shall by Law constitute Fuckage.”
Cool, but half the country supports this shit. And no, people who don’t vote don’t matter in this context.
The voters were supposed to be that check and the Framers were explicit in that it was part of how they designed the Constitution.
Even regarding electing a felon, the Framers didn’t want a case where one state pushed through a a felony conviction quickly to keep someone out of office.
That conviction was nothing like rushed.
That conviction wasn’t rushed. But imagine it was the fall of 2020 and Trump thought there was a decent chance he might lose. Order his attorney general to indict candidate Biden on some random charge, force it through the courts to get a conviction, removing any judges that object or stall. Voila, Biden has a conviction and can’t run against Trump.
a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players
Your proof of this is… what?
For real. US history is replete with supporting dictators, military coups, and so on.
Upkeeping our own democracy. For a certain value of “Dem”
In 1776, people didn’t know what fascism was. Hell there wasnt even consensus on what capitalism was, Wealth of Nations was published that same year. They had never seen a capitalist system degenerate, as would happen in France under Louis Napoleon in the 1850s.
They knew what feudalism was, which was bad and a form of authoritarian autocracy, but this isn’t Fascism. They were afraid that the kings and queens would get restored, as revolutionaries (and capitalism was revolutionary and progressive at that time) they were safeguarding against a counter revolution which would come from monarchists.
There is no way they could conceive of a movement to overthrow capitalism, which they barely understood although being the revolutionary capitalist class, that would come from a greater demand of social reforms, one where the class they were a part of would rule society rather than just administer it as they had for centuries, one where a class that they didn’t even know about, the proletarian working class, would supplant them and bring greater prosperity and equality. This movement developed fully in Russia and Europe after the first world war when the last of the weakened feudal aristocracy destroyed their own continent to fight over scraps of colonial internationalism. A revolution in Russia inspired the global working class, especially where they were highly organized and industrialized such as Italy and Germany, and terrified the ruling capitalist classes of those countries.
In the shadow of the emerging workers movement grew the dialectical opposite and evil twin of German and Italian communism: Fascism. Fascists gleefully fight and kill communists, and desire power above all else, exploiting contradictions in liberal democracy (that’s “liberal” meaning supports private property, not cool liberals that like freedom and justice) to confuse the masses and gain power. The ruling classes, weakened by decades of militant worker struggles, assented to the will of the fascists and in a last ditch effort to preserve their dwindling control, handed power over to them. The rest is history.
The founders couldn’t conceive of the conditions you describe as they either didn’t exist or wouldnt be developed enough to study for 50-70 years. Not all forms of authoritarianism are the same. They thought they were doing away with their version of it. Besides, the “founding fathers” gags violently would have fucking loved Trump
Capitalism is defederating power, otherwise youll end up centralizing power and end up under some form of authoritarianism. We have all these elites because of privaleges granted by the state, not capitalism. We need less state if we want more equality.
I love the other comments you made, but I want to point out one other thing: How did those privileges come about? That is, what were the conditions that led to the government taking the power to grant companies de facto monopolies?
In some cases, it was an unintended consequence of political conditions. For example, private insurers came to rule our healthcare system because of a cap on income to raise funds for WW2. In order to get around this cap, employers offered non-cash benefits and the rest is history. Libertarians love this one, it’s pretty cut and dry that a form of socialism shot itself in the foot.
However, there are many other cases where it was an unintended consequence of regulation written in blood. An easy and popular example is the FDA. Making food and adhering to food regulations at scale is definitely something that requires so much up front capital that it has been favoring existing corporations for quite a while, leading to a relatively small number of companies controlling a huge portion of the food supply. But that regulation came about because companies large and small, unfettered and unrestricted, were adulterating the food or cutting dangerous corners to maximize profit. The solution can’t just be less regulation, those same companies will continue to dominate but now with the ability to outright feed us poison while buying or otherwise destroying any competition.
Please elaborate.
As far as I know a very important side effect of the capitalism is the great concentration of power (aka money) in just some small individuals and how this creates an oligarchy which the only objective of extracting value form the other layers of the society. And of course the self perpetuation.
This have been happening since monopolies were created since centuries ago.
I really want to see how a system that by nature is concentrating power in some individuals really is really a de federated thing.
The state is the historical apparatus that manages the inherent contradictions between classes. It administrates capitalism for and by the ruling class. Capitalism is maintained by the state, the state sustains capital and private property, through violence.
Capitalism is a form of class domination, various forms of slavery stitched together to exploit the masses for the benefit of the few. Only a democratically organized working class can “fix” capitalism, by eradicating it. The government is the apparatus that temporarily fixes the contradictions of capitalism, but the relations defined by this irrational, inefficient social system (unless you consider monopolies efficient) are what state governments under capitalist rule try and eventually fail to “mitigate”. The contradictions compile until you have an economic crash, which is actually good for monopolistic capitalists who can purchase the productive capital of their competitors at a fraction of the cost, leading to systematic downsizing; while the rest of the population suffers recession, inflation, and mass indignity.
The poor exist because there are rich. The capitalists are in control, as a class, and governments merely mitigate the worst tendencies. This is why reformism isn’t a long term strategy. Capitalism can’t be reformed, it can only be replaced.
And if we, the working class will be able to replace it with a system of greater freedom, equality and democracy, then the aims of socialism will have been reached without the “authoritarian” tendencies becoming reified in any significant way.
You can have your doubts about this, but your libertarian perspective is one of false appearances. If you want to understand the state and the economy, it must be considered as a series of relations brought about by human activity, using the tools laid before us by history and nature. If you think of the world like this, considering the subjective nature of politics and the economy, such as incentives, motives, etc., then your investigation will uncover the true relations that comprise this mass wage slavery to the billionaire class, known as capital.
It has impeachment. The list of reasons for impeachment are (quite possibly intentionally) vague. But it has to be done through Congress.
And when the nazi controls Congress you know how far that’ll go.
Yeah, it’s rather obviously flawed in light of the current situation, but that is the mechanism that exists in the constitution.
That is true. I can’t argue that.
Not really.
In some countries, they have this idea of Defensive Democracy which would allow the government (via court ruling) to ban political parties that are deemed to be a threat to democracy.
In post WW2 Germany, the nazi party was banned, and later a “far-left” (aka: Marxist-Leninist) political party was banned during the cold war, because they meet Germany’s definition of being anti-democratic.
Unfortunately, the US constitution does not have this concept of Defensive Democracy.
I mean we do have impeachment… but we all know how that is (doesn’t work at all).
You say “unfortunately” but do you really trust the GOP with this kind of power?
Had the defensive democracy been in place after the civil war, we could have banned Confederate symbolism, the Dixiecrats and the then Democrat party.
A new conservative party would probably have been created.
The problem with any government system is that it’s still operated by humans. It would have become corrupted but hopefully with a system in place to overturn the corruption.
Had the defensive democracy been in place after the civil war, we could have banned Confederate symbolism, the Dixiecrats and the then Democrat party.
And then accomplished what? I mean many more people should’ve been executed or spent their life in prison, that’s for sure, but after the civil war there wasn’t a threat to democracy to defend against.
There’s been a political theory that the alt right of today is only emboldened due to the south never really being “punished” for seceding from the union. They didn’t have to pay reparation and it took literal gunpoint for them to fully integrate blacks into schools.
(Aside: the north is guilty of segregating blacks from whites but using capital power, not political power but let’s keep to the point)
As an example, many Confederate statues were erected not shortly after the civil war but in the 1950-1960s, right when civil rights were being decided and enforced. Defensive democracy would have stopped these from being erected.
You have to remember that these people only want democracy so long as it aligns with their goals.
If conservatives become convinced they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.
There’s been a political theory that the alt right of today is only emboldened due to the south never really being “punished” for seceding from the union.
I don’t think they’re thinking that much about it. The alt right of today isn’t a secessionist movement so using the Confederates as a basis for understanding what they do is, I think, not very productive. They’re trying to take over America, not secede from it, and as they haven’t come out and said they want to get rid of democracy and turn the US into a fascist dictatorship, even in Germany you wouldn’t be able to use state force against them.
Defensive democracy would have stopped these from being erected.
I mean yeah, and then? They’re statues; they’re ugly and they glorify slavers but they’re not really doing any immediate harm. Not to say they shouldn’t be taken down, but they don’t fit in with the scale we’re discussing here.
I don’t think so. Reconstruction ended in the election of Rutherford B. Hayes as a political compromise to settle the disputed 1876 election. Even if the Democratic Party in name didn’t survive, a new party would have formed, doing the exact same thing and that party would have been given the go ahead to implement Jim Crow at that time.
I mean, if implemented properly, it can work.
Do you think Germany should legalize nazi salute and swasticas, because of “potential abuse” of the power that was used to ban those things? (Those things mentioned are currently illegal in Germany btw).
I mean there’s no right answer here, but do note that the same power of the state to ban Nazi symbolism and rhetoric is also used against pro-Palestinian activists, and this is from a perfectly democratic Germany. If people like the AfD come into power expect many more kinds of speech to become illegal.
