this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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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.

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[–] hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago (14 children)

Just to be clear, your solution to saving democracy would be for the military to usurp a president who received the majority of the vote less than six months ago?

[–] miridius@lemmy.world 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

USA hasn't been a democracy for decades. It's hard to pin it down to a certain tipping point but I'd hazard it was when you decided that corporations are people and buying politicians is free speech.

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[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 24 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Well isn't that the reason everyone uses on why America needs so many guns. So they can stand up to the government? But seems it ment standing up to a government giving more people rights not one taking them away.

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[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (10 children)

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).

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[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

Second Amendment.

The odds aren't in our favor.

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[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 15 points 3 days ago (6 children)

You can impeach a president for any reason. You don't need a crime or such committed, all you need is congress to do it.

Be careful what you wish for though since the other party could do "tit for tat" with the president you support.

[–] dx1@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That gets to the root of the problem. We have "checks and balances" designed around the idea that separate institutions would check the excesses of each other. Even if you don't accept the "Republicans and Democrats work for the same people" theory, well, now all three branches of government are majority Republican, and not even in a way where there's significant internal division or strife, so it's just a bulldozer. The stupidity of not including popular recall votes in the Constitution - or really, just not having a mechanism for popular referendums, vetoes, etc. - is I think its biggest fault. The "representative democracy" model is inherently flawed because you can corrupt representatives, while corrupting an entire population, while not impossible, is a hell of a lot harder.

[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Check and Balance was intened to stop bad individuals, not an entire political party working in unison to destroy the system.

[–] dx1@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Honestly, no amount of careful planning and constitutional design will restrain a society where enough people have gone completely insane. Look at "Israel". Even 100% direct democracy there would still be a genocidal nightmare. Gets to the problem of how culture is the real driver behind the shape of society. And in that case, how religion incinerates real morality.

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[–] Deestan@lemmy.world 29 points 3 days ago (14 children)

But who will wield these instruments? It'd be more relevant if he made an effort to hide his nature before the election.

Right now the majority voted fascism with open eyes.

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[–] SuspiciousUser@lemmy.world 20 points 3 days ago

we have systems for putting people like him in jail but we just didn't want to do it

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 18 points 3 days ago (1 children)

So, giving the public a means of dealing with tyrannical leadership, either through intimidation or something more, is literally and unironically one of the intended use cases for the second amendment. That's not to say you won't face prosecution, but there it is.

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[–] nintendiator@feddit.cl 19 points 3 days ago

I'm told three marked bullets work wonders.

[–] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 20 points 3 days ago (2 children)

We have the second amendment, but I don't know how bear arms will help.

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[–] patatahooligan@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (5 children)

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.

"100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy"? That's not even true in a very minimal definition of democracy, let alone if we also mean equal rights for all. Just off the top of my head:

The vote of racial minorities was not protected before 1965.

COINTELPRO was a thing just over 50 years ago, targeting whatever political group was considered undesirable by the FBI. The FBI was found to be using unlawful surveillance targeting protesters for the inexcusable killing of a black man by police as recently as five years ago.

Last election there was an attempt to overturn the election results. It's not taken as seriously as it should have because it failed, but it was literally an attempt to overthrow democracy. It's important to note that Trump was allowed to run for president and the case against him was dropped as soon as he got elected. I'm pointing it out because the system was already there to protect him and it's not something that he caused through his own actions as president.

There are so many unwarranted invasions of other countries, assassinations, and human rights violations that I don't even know where to link to as a starting point.

Don't forget the large scale surveillance both within and without the country.

And then there's all the undemocratic qualities of unregulated free market capitalism. Politicians are lobbied. News outlets belong to wealthy individuals who often have other businesses as well. Social media too. Technically, you get to cast a vote that is equal to everybody else's. But your decision is based on false data, and your representative is massively incentivized to lie to you and enact policies that server their lobbyists and wealthy friends instead. Do we all really have equal power?

So if you mean democracy in a very literal and minimal sense, that the people have some sort of power through their vote, that's technically still going on. If you mean in it a more general sense, where people have fundamental rights that are always protected regardless of race or other characteristics, and where power is not unfairly distributed between individuals and racial groups, then again not much has changed. Because that was never the case. If you think fascism was universally condemned then you just hadn't realized how widespread and normalized it always was. Maybe fascism is growing. Maybe it's becoming more blatant. But it was always there.

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[–] Professorozone@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago

Apparently that's what America wants. You mean for a possible future where it's a bad thing?

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 23 points 3 days ago (1 children)

The USA has had a literal Nazi party since the 50's. If they let George Lincoln Rockwell run for president while calling himself a nazi why would they do anything?

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[–] eric5949@lemmy.world 11 points 3 days ago

Bro we have the oldest still in use codified constitution in the world and haven't updated it in 40 years, really longer. What exactly made you think this fucked up system was anywhere close to resilient?

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