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.
It has impeachment. The list of reasons for impeachment are (quite possibly intentionally) vague. But it has to be done through Congress.
The Constitution assumes the people through the ballot box or through protest would clean up any issues like that
We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear’s work, that is its affair. We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come.
Joseph Goebbels
Couldn’t keep a:
34 count felon
Child rapist
Fraudster
Tax dodger
Draft dodger
Grifter
Deadbeat
Wife beater
Philanderer
Classified documents thief
Obstructionist
Out of office… so why would they be able to keep a Nazi out?
The US government is not (and has never been) against fascism for ideological reasons. Fascism and American-style democracy go hand in hand quite well. Our government fought a war against fascists because they disrupted the global trade status quo and threatened US economic prosperity and that of our primary trade partners.
Assuming America is a democracy is the first mistake. killing the native population, viewing non land owners, poc and many more as lessors. Let’s not forget who wrote the constitution.
This is the result of ever-expanding executive power.
2A
Normally, it would be the electoral system that would act as the check. But otherwise, it doesn’t put any other limits based on political belief and affiliation (other than having allegiances to other political powers). If the majority wanted to elect someone who wishes to abolish the democratic election system, then that is what they will get.
That’s possibly for the better. Being able to bar given political alignments or affiliation from office would either need to be so specific so as to be useless (a modern nazi typically has little directly to do with the original), or be broad enough that it’d be a dangerous thing, since it could be used in either direction.
Depends how you define “instruments”. For example, there was a recent survey that we have something like 500 million, uh, instruments.
What do you mean by “nazi”
Impeachment, but that starts with a 218 vote in the House and the House is on his side.
So you actually need majority to PREVENT the collapse of democracy, and if you don’t have it, you’re fucked? How the fuck did this country even manage not to succumb into dictatorship for such a long time?
It has been under corporate dictatorship for over a century.
^ this.
The president isn’t in charge. He’s existing within boundaries created by the wealthy.
The ruling class was able to get along well enough up until the US Civil War, at which point the slavers decided they were willing to tear the country apart to keep on slaving. I include this because the Nazis were inspired by Jim Crow and how we did things over here. Fascism started bubbling up in the early 20th century because industrialization and capitalism polluted everything and made people work awful hours and all that, and liberalism and conservatism hadn’t fixed it. There was a serious coup attempt forming in the early 30s called the Business Plot, but they went to a war hero Marine general who told them to fuck off and told the federal government about it.
At least in the US, we’re in this situation now because authoritarians have been working toward it since the 60s (the Powell Memo was written in 1971 I think) and they’ve taken advantage of how terribly the Constitution is written, along with consolidation of wealth and stoking backlash to all the civil rights movements to get people to back them. The worst part is that it’s a feedback loop: since Reagan took power, Republicans campaign on “look how bad the government is!” and make the government worse once they’re in office, which feeds their cause.
tl;dr capitalism makes living conditions terrible, people abandon liberalism and conservatism for socialism/communism/etc and fascism, liberals don’t want much to change, fascism lives or dies based on how much conservatives sell out to/ally with them. The fact that we’re doing this all again shows to me that liberalism is a dead ideology and capitalism is going to kill us if we don’t kill it first.
Worse… The House makes the impeachment charge, that’s a 50% majority vote.
THEN it goes to the Senate for conviction where you need a 2/3rds majority to remove them. 67/100.
That’s the body which can’t do anything because they’re blocked by a 60 vote super majority to over-ride a filibuster.
So you get 218 in the House, goes to the Senate, needs 60 votes to end debate and proceed with charges, then 67 votes to convict and remove.
Trump’s first impeachment got 48 and 47 votes.
His second was 57 votes.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_impeachment_trial_of_Donald_Trump
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impeachment_of_Donald_Trump
If he had been convicted, he would have been inelligible to run in '24.
The founders probably imagined no self respecting person, oligarch or otherwise, would want to live under authoritarian rule.
Turns out the 21st century bourgeois is full of pussy ass bitches.
They never could have imagined our modern society at all. The amount of power and influence held by just a handful of private citizens couldn’t have been accounted for in the 18th century.
I’m just speaking from a matter of principle. They don’t have to know the conditions to conclude living under a kings rule in any condition is unappealing.
I mean they waged a bloody revolution against Kings, and inequality has increased a thousand-fold since, so wtf are we doing?
If enough people in a democracy decide that they want a dictatorship instead, then there is no stopping it, because rules don’t matter at this point. The trick is to not let it get this far. Tough shit for the US, though.
I mean imagine if you could impeach the president without a majority. That would be the death of democracy. Just to put things in perspective: The GOP democratically won both houses of Congress and the presidency and because of DNC incompetence also has the Supreme Court. Them being able to do whatever the fuck they want is, in a way, democracy working as intended. It’d be weirder (and much more undemocratic) if there was a way to remove a sitting president without the Supreme Court or Congress.
This only proves that two-party system is just an authoritarianism with rotation. There’s always a ruling majority and the winner takes all.
Things would be different with at least the third party. 2 out of 3 parties would agree that the party no.3 is a fucking malice and rule him out.
Third party would most likely make things better but there’s no guarantee it would help in the situation you’ve set up. If two of the parties are fine with an actual Nazi in the White House and between them they control over half the votes then we’re still in the same situation.
Two party system wasn’t in the constitution, its an emergent property of FPTP voting method. FPTP + Electoral College means we get this fucking bullshit.
TLDR: There’s no “two-party system”, that’s just the result of FPTP. Nuke the FPTP system, replace with Ranked-Choice ballot (and also delete the Electoral College, that shit is outdated AF).
Very much on the electoral college, it made some measure of sense when the electors would have to ride a horse from California to DC maybe but that died a century or so ago.
From a smart ass perspective though, I just want to point that the TLDR portion actually has more words than the block above it. 🙃
From a smart ass perspective though, I just want to point that the TLDR portion actually has more words than the block above it. 🙃
Lol I started to use “TLDR” as a replacement for “In Conclusion”, because the concluding paragraph is supposed to summarize what you wrote anyways, so those terms are interchangeable.
If they hadn’t capped the number of representatives at 435 over a hundred years ago, we wouldn’t be in the situation where a vote from Wyoming carries 3.7 times more weight than a vote from California. By my math, if the 435 cap was abolished, we would have 143 more electors generally sprinkled among the more populous states. I still agree that the EC is outdated, but it’s not even operating the way it was designed.
It’d be weirder (and much more undemocratic) if there was a way to remove a sitting president without the Supreme Court or Congress.
Turns out there is, in fact. It just doesn’t involve governmental process at all. You’re quite correct that it’s undemocratic. (See: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy)
If people democratically voted to end democracy, what are we suppose to do?
People democratically sat on their asses and didn’t bother to fucking vote. More people abstained from voting than actually voted for either candidate. The real winner of the election was apathy. We deserve whatever fucked up outcome we get.
The rest of the world doesn’t deserve it…
Well some part of the world wanted this and did a lot to achieve this. But yeah, most don’t deserve what’s probably to come
Well the country didn’t previously have a legion of mouth breathing retards screaming at the top of their lungs about micro-aggressions and declaring that the nation was illegitimate. I’d also question your metrics for deciding now that he’s an openly Nazi dictator, other than parroting what you hear from other
peoplesocial media accounts.Yes it had, and that legion even stormed the fucking capitol.
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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.
Dude just can’t run/be on a ballot.
We tried that. The states, ostensibly, run federal elections independently of the federal government and decide who goes on the ballots. Colorado, Illinois, and Maine removed trump from their 2024 ballots on the grounds that he was ineligible under the 14th amendment. SCOTUS struck it down saying that the states (who, again, are supposed to have authority to run and administer federal elections within their territory) do not have the authority to enforce the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment.
I mean “No man shall hold office who committed insurrection” seems like a mechanism in and of itself.
Who decides who is an insurrectionist?
Simple majority in Congress? Well then Congress can just outlaw the minority party
Supermajority in Congress? Well look at the senate vote for the second impeachment. That doesn’t work either.
Courts? They have a 6-3 supreme court.
States? Then we end up with red states blocking democrats from the ballot by falsely declaring them to be insurrectionists.
Public Opinion? How do you even measure that? Voting? Well look at November 5th.
Criminal conviction of insurrection? Well trump never got convicted of anything involving insurrection.
So here we are…
Who decides who is an insurrectionist?
The legal system, which decided to take its fucking time.
I bet pardoning the 1/6ers qualifies as giving aid and comfort.
Only if there’s anyone left in government who will enforce the law. We couldn’t get that done with a democrat pres and a democrat DOJ, we’re not getting it done now that the maganazis control everything.
Unless those Democrats still in washington have levers they can pull that none of us know about, or some Republicans grow a conscience (insert laughing hispanic guy meme here) I have legitimate fear about what the next four years will bring.
For the first time in my life I’m typing something critical of our government and elected officials and wondering if someone is going to bash my door down for it a year from now.
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
People who say they follow the Bible are usually lying too. And anything that’s allowed to be left up to interpretation and still be called “law” is bound to be corrupted when convenient and ignored when convenient.
It’s like the ICC and UN. They just make suggestions. Whether they are followed or effectively enforced depends on who’s in the dock.
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
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.
The mechanism was the election.
NSDAP was elected.
Exactly my point.
