And what was his plan if they did violently take over DC? The largest army in the world would just take it back. Don't tell me they would follow his orders, they didn't like him before he started killing US civilians, politicians, and cops.
I guess we'll see what the committee discovers. Apparently, it's your belief that they'll discover nothing of significance in the next three years, but maybe we'll see after.
All Caesar had to do was harness this growing discontent of the masses through his fake populism and having undying loyalty in much of the army helped as well.
It took just one generation after Ceasars assassination for the establishment of the Imperium and the dissolution of the Republic.
Trump might or might not be reinstated but the beginning of the end of the American experiment has already been set in motion.
The only way to save it is through a radical reorganisation of power to counter the one to come but the establishment want to keep returning to the supposed Utopia that was in place before Trump - missing the obvious fact that it was their "utopia" that lead to Trump in the first place.
Sure, it's probably pointless to try to argue that there was some specific point where it changed from "is a democracy" to "isn't a democracy," or to try to argue that it's "55% a democracy now." The actual point is whether there are important institutions that have weakened or failed, whether there is indication that this will continue, and what the consequences will be.
I could be wrong, since it's been some years.
This is the key that people often miss in this regard. The staggering ROman Republic was hardly a great country.
Also, common to Rome is the notion that they are a special people who deserve dominion over the rest of the world. It might be shrouded in more egalatarian language (cue the exporting "freedom" talk) but barely so.
We need a new American experiment that is actually government by the people. One that doesn’t take ownership of other people as a founding principle (but you know, it’s cool because we took it back).
This is the reason votes in rural areas count so much more than urban votes. Because rural areas in the south were heavily populated by enslaved people and the slavers (meaning not just the title holding slave owners; many people who did not own slaves were still fundamental players in the system of slavery) held a lot of influence.
Also, in 1790 the US was much less urbanized. 5% of people lived in cities (vs 80+% today), and the economy was primarily agricultural. It was not a world in which the rural-urban divide was particularly significant. All states were rural states.
If every political decision in the US before the Civil War was made with the aim of preserving slave state power, why is it the South that left the Union? Couldn't they have just used their power?
I'd like to correct my previous comment. I said that the three-fifths compromise was the only consitutional component of slavery; in fact there were two others. The fugitive slave clause, and a clause forbidding the federal government from restricting the slave trade. I apologize for these errors.
They left because they were worried about losing their power — the northern population grew much faster than the south, and as the country expanded west most of the settlers were from free states, bringing attitudes about slavery with them. Things had reached a point where even deep compromises couldn’t tip the scales in the slavers’ favor, so the slavers decided to withdraw to attempt to preserve their power.
There were a significant number of northerners who were active abolitionists and not involved in politics. John Brown is an American hero in my mind. Slavery was doomed regardless of the political order, but the political order tried to protect it nonetheless.