I find the concerns for Democracy comical.
Most of you do not understand the type of people that built and fought for democracy. There is no real fear amongst these same type of people in modern America.
It’s also interesting that you served in the U.S. military and didn’t recognize how self-serving and institutionally corrupt it is. I come from a country with an oversized military relative to its government, and the parallels I can draw between its behavior and that of the U.S. Army are uncanny.
However, comparing American society with one of the Middle East does not resonate with me. That goes hand in hand with comparing a military of a dictatorship with one of a democracy.
- Imprisoning criticizers
- Removing the broadcast licenses of news network that questions him. He's been calling them fake news for years.
- More power to the rich buddies. Not just more money, now they get more control over government affairs. Musk and Thiel are frothing over this.
- Control over women and minorities.
- More power to the theists.
Looks like "comparing American society with one of the Middle East does not resonate with me." will soon become apparent as the parallels start to be clearer.
https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-...
Many people raised in democratic societies don't fully understand the intricacies of the relationship between the military and dictatorships; they see the military as a tool in the dictator's hand to wield at will. This couldn't be further from the truth. A (strong) military in a dictatorship is its own institution, largely isolated from the rest of society and granted its own perks and benefits. The dictator can wield the military only to the extent that it aligns with the institution's goals. Competent ones try to align the military's goals with their own; incompetent ones get overthrown.
Because of this isolation from broader society, the officers and soldiers believe that what is good for the institution is good for the country. They're not suppressing their citizens; they believe they are protecting the republic.
The U.S. Army is already operating as an isolated entity from broader U.S. society. Monetary corruption is quite substantial—consider the medium- to high-ranking officers and their relationships and revolving doors with defense contractors.
I'm not saying the U.S. is going to become -insert non-democratic country here-, but if we ignore the usual Western caricature of Stalinist-style dictatorships and realize that there are multiple forms of eroding democracy, you'll start to understand why it's not such a far-fetched idea.
This doesn't resonate to me. The conditions in the US are so different than the German Weimar Republic. I mean sure it's possible but without a compelling reason I kind of discard those arguments. The US has had lots of charismatic leaders screwing stuff up and yet still survived.
More importantly, American Exceptionalism is deeply ingrained in our philosophy. I think we're wrong, but it exists. So the general populace doesn't believe this stuff and just makes people sound out of touch. I think when someone is thinking about inflation and rent and mortgages, the idea that they should care about an existential threat to democracy doesn't seem to matter much. That's a rich person's worry.
On the one hand you have a once-proud and powerful state recovering from the most devastating war humanity has ever waged (by that point) that it lost in, which subsequently forced them into paying back massive reparations, sanctions and economic and military limits imposed on it by the victors of said war. Of course a charismatic, populist leader who gives the resentful nation a boogeyman to fight against is going to win.
On the other you have the de facto #1 world power with the most cartoonishly powerful military on the planet that has their fingers involved in every single pie on the planet, which was founded on the principle of democracy some 200 years ago, with strong safeguards put in place to prevent the exact thing that happened with the Weimar republic.
Even pretending like the Weimer Republic's military was anything even resembling what the US military is is ridiculous.
Wasn't always the case, and honestly it's hard to tell where China stands right now, and it seems like it's not slowing down... if you look at e.g. robotics or drones...
> which was founded on the principle of democracy some 200 years ago
Didn't it need a civil war to actually become a democracy? My understanding was that it was not exactly founded as a democracy. But maybe I'm being pedantic there.
> with strong safeguards put in place to prevent the exact thing that happened with the Weimar republic.
Genuinely interested! What are those safeguards and what do they prevent that happened with the Weimar republic?
Sure, but it has been for the better part of a few decades. The whole reason US hegemony has spread so far and wide is due to this.
> Genuinely interested! What are those safeguards and what do they prevent that happened with the Weimar republic?
I'm not American so I'm probably getting the tiny details wrong here so please correct me if I'm wrong on any points. A lot of this is going off my memory, so I'm probably getting some dates and such details wrong as well. I'm definitely not including a very comprehensive answer here, as it's a complex topic with a lot of history attached that I don't know too much myself. I'm mostly just a nerd who finds this kinda stuff fascinating, not any kind of expert :)
The big sticking points for the Weimar were that the president wielded much more legislative and executive power than US presidents do. Article 48 let the Reichspresident call a state of emergency without ever involving the Reichstag (Parliament) which basically enabled them to become dictators whenever they wanted. Article 48 was one of the early keys Hitler used to seize power, as a fire in the Reichstag parliament house gave him an excuse to call a state of emergency because of a supposed Communist uprising. He used Article 48 to arrest Communists en-masse on the basis of the Reichstag Fire Decree which was signed shortly after the fire, which also included many provisions that restricted free speech, movement and other similar civil liberties. I'd recommend further reading up on the Fire Decree yourself, as it's quite interesting as a key turning point in the Weimar turning into Nazi Germany.
In contrast, US presidents cannot supersede congress and decrees are subject to congressional oversight (there probably exist exceptions, so take my words here with a grain of salt). Even emergency powers (such as the ones Hitler used) are much weaker for US presidents and have to go through congressional approval. Even if every single member of congress is a republican, republicans are not a completely united party. A lot of them dislike Trump and have their own agendas they'd prefer to be pushed, and ultimately they have no real reason to bow to the president since they are elected in completely different timeframes, wield different but almost equal power and are also competing with every other member of congress. For example the fear mongering about leaving NATO, there's basically a 0% chance of that happening because it requires a supermajority from congress, despite whatever the President might want. It's a pretty common reason why things like the recently proposed student loan debt forgiveness never end up happening, the president can't just will it to happen.
Another big one is that the militaries work under different philosophies and circumstances between the two, and you can't have a takeover without military backing. The Weimar military was still pretty loyal to the old monarchists and viewed Weimar as a forced state that they were put into under pressure after losing WW1. You have to understand that the whole "democracy" idea was a pretty fresh one at that time for Germany, they only switched from monarchism to republicanism in 1918 after the November revolution.
By contrast, US military as far as I understand it isn't really all that loyal to whoever the current president is, but rather to the constitution. The president might be commander-in-chief, but that doesn't mean he can tell the military to do whatever they want. They still wield power over the military of course, but it's a lot less pronounced than it was in Germany, because the military were loyal to Hitler. If the military leaders who are ultimately the ones commanding the troops don't like the president, there isn't much they can do. Even the national guard is interesting, since it's a split responsibility between states and the federal government. And, again, congress also has a say in many military things, though my knowledge there is for sure lacking so I'd recommend you do your own reading up there.
An example there of the limited power of the president was when Nixon was getting the boot, the secretary of defence James Schlesinger at the time instructed military leaders to run Nixon's order by either him or the secretary of state, because he was worried about Nixon's reaction.
And again, the economic and social situation in Germany at the time cannot be overstated. People were miserable, the country was massively poor and were in a major demographic problem due to the war. Their industry was quickly stagnating due to the aftermath of WW1 and there was a lot of resentment building up in Germany for what they considered to be unfair and harsh treatment from the Allies. They were, to put it charitably, extremely unstable times and it was a matter of time before all of it exploded like it did. If it wasn't Hitler, it would've been the next charismatic leader promising to take revenge on the people who ruined the country (which is massively oversimplifying things of course, but you get the gist)
Definitely think you are being pedantic. By that standard, we're not a "real" democracy right now with felons not being able to vote in many states. That's a valid position to have, but imo not really useful for this discussion.
Which I found interesting, but admittedly not necessarily useful here.
However the explanation for the rise of Hitler you allude to is woefully incomplete. Hitler and his party didn't get into power by winning the majory popular vote. Instead the Hitler and the Nazis formed a coalition with the monarchists and convinced Hindenburg that they would help restore the Monarchy if Hindenburg helped them take power and granted them new powers.
I'm not going to claim we are necessarily in the same situation today, but I do think it is worth being aware of how this kind of thing can happen.
We should be extremely wary about giving a charismatic leader extraordinary powers, even if that leader promises that power will only be used to accomplish your goals.
However the way I see it, people (not you, I just mean in general people who seem to believe Trump will bring about the 5th Reich) are probably out of ignorance of the history there also massively oversimplifying and overestimating how much power the president ultimately wields, especially when compared to Weimer-era Germany. People aren't aware that there are safety mechanisms in the US that didn't exist in the Weimar Republic, and as such simply bringing up that "This is exactly what happened with Nazi Germany!" is massively oversimplifying things as well from the other side.
The comment my comment was replying to did this exact thing, in fact, where they equated the election of a charismatic leader to what happened with the Nazis.
I do agree with you though, I personally tend to align with Frank Herbert when it comes to people who want to wield power and rule over others, in that they should be studied and watched closely and carefully and disposed of swiftly if they pull any Hitler-tier shenanigans
We all lived through 2020-22, yes.
Also even going by his own words, what about his "dictator on day one" comments?
This also goes hand-in-hand with the black-white thinking of a two-party-system.
There is a President of the European Council (Charles Michel, elected by member countries' heads of state), there is a President of the European Commission (Ursula von der Leyen, elected by the European Parliament), and there is a President of the European Parliament (Roberta Metsola, elected by the members of the parliament).
Seats in the European Parliament are not proportionally allocated (small countries have more seats per capita), and member countries have different systems for allocating their seats among representatives, but nobody uses first-past-the-post, maybe except Hungary (debatably - their system is weird).
So, no, none of the "EU presidents" are elected by popular vote strictly speaking, and none of them have a role that is even remotely similar to the US presidency.
In other words the US leans left and Reps only win because of the electoral system.
But yes, the system is not great. This matters even more in the senate elections by the way, where every state gets two senators regardless of population size. I get the argument that you don't want densely populated cities dominating large swaths of rural areas, but 1) elections are about people and not trees, and 2) now it's the reverse where sparsely populated rural areas dominate. So...
I think the takes that this is the right taking over America etc are super doomerist. The more accurate story is: The left put up a really boring, bad candidate. The only campaign the left has figured out how to run for literally the past three elections is "stop Trump", and its not even resonating with their own voters anymore. What are they going to run on in 2028 when there isn't a Trump to stop anymore?
The left needs to wake up and have a Trump moment of their own.
That really is the problem: one side runs a nihilistic campaign completely unencumbered by any truth, morality, or any sense of decency, and the side, well, doesn't. There are two sets of rules and two games being played here. That much has been obvious for almost a decade now. So how do you counter that? Well, no one really knows.
For example, the ACA is very popular. Obamacare is not. It's all about the messaging.
Definitely not, where did you get that?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presiden...
The no ID culture and everything around it... I honestly can't understand it.
There is no reason why all ballots can't be counted it a few hours. If more people are needed to do it, then so be it.
I'm sure everyone from every side can come up with their own list. How about we solve it all once and for all.
It's going to happen in EU in some form as well (assuming EU goes into closer integration direction) because there is no way small countries accept closer union without a mechanism similar to electoral college.
The US voting system doesn't even solve that one "problem" you are presenting. The number of districts and votes are constantly adjusted to population.
That's not how the electoral college works. The electoral college equivalent would be one village with 1000 people, the second with 2000, and the third with 4000, and each village getting "electoral votes" proportional to their population that gets awarded entirely to the candidate with the majority vote in that village. The entirety of the first two villages vote for candidate A, which awards 1 electoral vote for the first village and 2 electoral votes for the second. In the third village, which has 4 electoral votes, candidate A only gets 1999 votes, whereas candidate B gets 2001 votes, so they win the electoral vote 4-3 and become the leader despite only winning 2001 votes overall out of 7000.
The reason that the analogy needs to be this complicated is because the electoral college isn't some sort of common-sense system that happens to occasionally produce quirky results; it's an extremely contrived system that produces equally contrived results, which shouldn't be remotely surprising.
>>that gets awarded entirely to the candidate with the majority vote in that village
is not correct. It's up to the states to decide how they split their electoral votes.
It seems natural to me. States gets electoral votes based on census and then they decide how to split them.
> States gets electoral votes based on census and then they decide how to split them.
How is this any different than the original problem you cited before? The majority of a state deciding to allot the entirety of its votes to a single candidate based on a majority of the internal vote is pretty much exactly what you described. That makes sense for a state-wide office like a senator or governor, but there's absolutely no reason that it should work like that for a national election. The only possible argument I could imagine is that it's an attempt to make sure that people in each state have their priorities represented, but it does the _opposite_ of that by rendering what's usually over 40% of the votes in each state entirely meaningless, and that's not even mentioning the fact that states aren't monolithic entities with uniform concerns but populations of individuals who might care about different things.
There's no point in mincing words here; the electoral collage is a construct designed to give states the power at the expense of the individuals in the state. I'm sure there are people who would argue that's a good thing, but I'd argue it's an anachronism from a time when most people had far less access to education and far fewer concerns that ranged beyond their local area. Granted, at the time I'm writing this it's not clear which way the popular vote went in 2024, but that doesn't change the fact that in the presidential elections preceding this one, the "winner" lost the popular vote a third of the time across two decades, so this isn't a theoretical concern.
Florida is particularly bitter because Floridians voted to give back felon voting rights and DeSantis and the judicial branch he controls just declared it unconstitutional
You can't "save" someone without understanding what their day to day problems are.
[1] https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2019-06-04/gallu...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/us/politics/john-kelly-tr...
People like me won’t. You not being able to resonate is what makes you and I different - and one of us capable of defending freedom and the other not.
Did you just imply that these high ranking military officers are not the ones actually defending everyone's freedoms?
Please stop with the talking points and actually think about what you are repeating again and again.
And it's really not hard to find more veterans supporting Harris; just the top two search results:
https://commondefense.us/vets-for-harris
https://votevets.org/press-releases/votevets-makes-historic-...
Trump has explicitly and clearly stated he plans to fill the supreme court with cronies, and then dissolve massive parts of the bureaucracy to instead divert that power to the president. Keep in mind, on top of this, he is also now completely immune from all crimes.
This new-found concentration of power in the president has never before been seen in American politics. It is genuinely worrying, even if you believe Trump will use his new powers in benevolent ways.
I mean the mid-terms are in 2 years and if the dems (hopefully) learn from this, they have a chance to bring it back somewhat.
Seriously, if you go look at the numbers, which are still being counted, Harris clawed back quite a lot. It really was close in the end, similar to how the polls predicted.
I was in denial about it, but I do think the dems lost their own election, the more I look at it, and listen to people who voted Trump, the more I have to admit, they screwed up in many ways, and we all paid for it. Biden calling his supporters garbage was the nail in the coffin IMO. That comment potentially lost them the election if you go look at how close some of the swing states were.
People assume that there's going to be some grand take-over event, a third-world coup d'état if you will.
In reality, modern democracies die slowly. Russia was once a democracy, now it's democracy on paper only. What will Americans do, when their courts are infringing their freedom?
Again, it happens slowly. Bit by bit, in the boring court rooms.
The brief highly instable 1990s after the Soviet collapse that was followed by Putin’s rapid consolidation of power?
Russia was barely a functioning democracy in the 1990s and had no democratic tradition before that, just different flavors of authoritarianism for centuries.
At the time of founding the USA was probably still the most liberal and democratic government in history of the world.
I'm shocked that you would use Russia as an example of a slowly dying democracy.
1. Abraham Lincoln said "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." Whether you agree or not, some people think we may be at that inflection point right now. If you think American citizens haven’t lost substantial freedoms in the recent past, then you haven’t been paying attention. Is it at the level of “destroying ourselves”? To be determined, but the potential is there, and some folks really aren’t shy about trying to implement that a policy of reduced freedoms.
2. There are many cases in the last 100 years or so of authoritarian regimes rising because people want order during a time of distress — Saddam, Hitler, Mao, Lenin, and others rose to authoritarian power by offering stability during unstable times. They were welcomed with open arms, and often times people (including and especially the military) were willing to give up their freedoms for this potential for stability. Some folks think that the US is one big destabilizing event from welcoming an authoritarian. You may think this way of thinking is hubris, but none of us will know that it happened until after it has occurred.
I’m glad things have worked out for you, but I hope you have open eyes about how things can go south, as they have in the past.
I’d question which party would bring us closer to something such as the cultural revolution or government-ran industries.
Still, what most fail to understand is the core values instilled in places like our military as the ultimate check/balance.
I'm left leaning, but I think jobs in rural areas, inflation, cost of living are all valid concerns that should be addressed regardless of who is in power. I disagree to varying extents with Trump's stance on abortion, immigration and gun control. But I also understand why people have a different opinion to me.
What I see online is a continuing anger towards the left and a determination to not only discredit their opinions, but also punish them for their dissenting views. There is this gleeful perception that it's time for payback.
I AM the type of people that built and fought for democracy. My people donate to the ACLU and drive people to the polls. We marched for civil rights and women's rights. We fight voter disenfranchisement and poll intimidators and insurrections.
This is EXACLY why I'm concerned for Democracy.
As somebody not living in US, that's surprising. My opinion is that Democrats did a really shit job - focusing on wrong problems, promoting stuff nobody cares about etc. Trump / Musk did appeal to a lot of people for different reasons, some of which I can understand. But both are grifters and very dangerous in my view.
But I do look forward to February 2025, when journalists will once again travel to rural Pennsylvania to interview Trump voters in diners who will say that the economy is amazing now that the Great Man has been in power for a whole week. The magic of recovery!
Except for all metrics that matter. People are on average much poorer.
"He said he'll decrease inflation!"
"But his plans for tariffs will make inflation much much worse!"
".... but he said he'll decrease inflation"