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Comment by jeromegv | Hacker News Reader

Americans talks as if their democracy was fine, that the last president didn’t spend months telling everyone the results were fake and how a revolt happened on January 6th.

It’s not a frustrating outcome of democracy. It’s a failure of democracy with one party trying to take over and destroy all other opinions by all means necessary, which includes an open revolt and election stealing.

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Further in this direction, currently the lower house is being held hostage by a small group of extremists from the majority party who have no interest in governance. I don't actually share the opinion that this is a breakdown of democracy per se, but rather believe that this is democracy working as intended (by a certain few wealthy people).

If the lights stay on and food stays on grocery store shelves and people aren't getting dragged out of their homes by revolutionary militias, then democracy is still succeeding in broadly keeping the peace and keeping things humming along. If half the population wants to believe stupid conspiracy theories about the last election, that's fine so long as most of them don't act on it. So long as their attempted coups or revolutions die in the crib before they can do much damage, then democracy is working.

> It’s a failure of democracy with one party trying to take over and destroy all other opinions by all means necessary

Lots of people talk shit but almost everybody is still going about their daily lives in a normal civil manner. Obviously the state of American democracy could be better, but don't pronounce the patient dead just because he tripped and got his knee bloodied.

How about if the patient tripped, knocked their head on the sidewalk, and has started believing some very strange and scary and stupid stuff?

Are they otherwise managing to go about their daily life in a civil productive manner? People believing stupid things isn't a failure of democracy, democracy is tolerant of this.

Believing stupid things about democracy is a problem for democracy.

He sure did. And yet he isn’t the president anymore.

He will be again next year unless something drastically changes, unfortunately.

The institutions did their jobs. Trump failed to seize power extralegally, despite populist support. The US system of government could be better, but it is functional.

The institutions didn't do their job. He walked away from an attempted coup with zero consequences to him, and is currently the favorite to challenge at the next election.

There are issues with using the government to prosecute former leaders and the precedent that that sets.

There are more issues with not prosecuting people for crimes simply because they were in positions which magnify the threat and impact of those crimes, and both states and the federal government have prosecuted former leaders including state governors, state and federal legislators at all levels, state and federal cabinet secretaries, and even US vice presidents in the past.

There is neither a Constitutional nor a rational basis for a special unique exemption for past Presidents, and fortunately state and federal prosecutors seem to recognize that.

Yeah it can be done, but it's not completely unproblematic.

No, it really is completely unproblematic; "But", you might ask, "what if a current leader does so as partisan retaliation, is not constrained by other forces, and starts of a chain of retaliation against past leaders?"

Sure, but using criminal process or any other power of office to punish partisan enemies is a problem whether or not the target is a past leader; there's no special danger around past leaders. if anything, there is less danger around past or current high government officials in general, and past Presidents in particular, because of the extraordinary degree to which those persons tend to be visible and well-connected politically.

That's a good point

There are multiple court cases active against Trump and even his lawyers for advising him. He's recently been barred from speaking on certain topics as a result of those cases. These are absolutely consequences, in my opinion.

> The institutions didn't do their job. He walked away from an attempted coup with zero consequences to him,

Indictments on 91 felony charges across three different sovereignties in four different proceedings is...not what most people would describe as zero consequences.

(Also, there are several other active state criminal investigations relating to the fraudulent electors scheme, some of which have produced criminal charges against other people and any of which could very easily also result in further indictments for Trump.)

It's October 2023. The attempted coup was January 2021.

While I believe in due process, justice delayed is not justice.

And the body that should have sanctioned him (the elected government) voted down any punishment.

American democracy is mostly fine. There are certainly some problems and room for improvement, but overall it's doing better than any other major developed country. This is largely thanks to our wonderful written Constitution.

I grew up in a country without a written constitution (but have lived under the US one for 34 years). I can say with much feeling that it is wonderful to have a written constitution.

But this particular one? Not so much. Vastly better ones elsewhere, if only because they have less veto points and a better amendment process.

It is telling that when the US has helped developing countries write their constitutions, they have not modeled them after their own.

The bulk of it was largely designed around the specific circumstances of them 13 colonies->states, many of whom kind of hated each other, and full of appeasements to their different concerns at that time. Everything else has been retrofitted into it since then.

Not to mention that we then had a massive civil war, which left many of the underlying representative issues unresolved. It’s 2023 and we still have states trying to re-write their Congressional maps in ways that violate the law. https://www.npr.org/2023/09/05/1193749552/alabama-congressio...

> but overall it's doing better than any other major developed country

Which ones?

Canada? Japan? Australia? Germany? Even places with significantly unpopular governments like France and the UK don't have a situation where one of the houses of government can't function.

I think if the Italian government is more functional than the US then it's time to realize there is a real problem.

Here's a list of countries by GDP[1]. I'm looking at it and struggling to find a country that is (a) developed[2] and (b) a democracy and (c) doing worse in terms of functional governance than the US.

Turkey and Thailand are two options where they had attempted or actual coups, but neither are classed as developed.

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/

[2] https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/f0773d55-en/1/4/3/index....

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