> A poll from January shows that only 6% of Greenlanders are in favor of joining the U.S., with 85% against it.
Say what you want but presidential democracies where presidents are elected by popular vote are a disaster for stability and democracy.
What's happening with this doing and undoing in the US (or Russia, Belarus, Hungary and countless other presidential republics) fully displays why this is a terrible political system:
1. Winner takes all. You may have been voted by 50% + 1 (even less) citizens but the other half is totally not represented like in a parliament.
2. No parliament/party that you need to have backing of. In a parliamentary democracy the prime minister won't just lose opposition's votes, but has to govern in a way that its own party won't boot you.
3. Single person can claim popular mandate. Often in opposition to the parliament/senate whatever. So you end up in situations like the disaster in Poland where government and president are from different parties and the government gets vetoed everything.
4. Extremely hard to remove. A prime minister is a vote of no confidence away from losing its seat. The president can ask them to resign in extreme situations. A president? Removing them is beyond difficult.
Honestly this is such an obvious disaster to have people vote for a president rather than a parliamentary prime minister.
The last parliamentary democracy to turn authoritarian has been Sri Lanka 50+ years ago. It's very hard to get so bad so fast in parliamentary republics.
Honestly I can't comprehend Americans thinking their constitution is some holy grail. It's old and has been written centuries ago without all the experience we have in modern democracies. Eastern Europe too has made very bad choices with similar setups and democratically elected presidents.
Say what you want but Germany or Italy have built in way more resilience to these absurdities by having the parliament elect the president which forces them to elect mostly neutral unbiased figures that will support and oversee whoever ends up being in government.
The Westminster system "solves" this problem by having an actual king but giving them zero powers. The German system I think you're right is superior. Ireland also seems to have a nice system.
Americans are very enamoured with their constitution, and it has some good words in it. Too bad they don't seem like they want to actually defend it with the real source of power .. which is not words, or "well-armed militias" [almost always the wrong kind], but feet in the street.
And that's not even getting into the complete and total dysfunction of their two party structure.
It's strange how much reverence Americans place in the presidential role as if it were actually a king.
The blurring of the executive and the military, the adoration of troops and war, etc. All very strange(?) for a country whose military has only ever been really involved in outside interference and war and not defense of homeland.
"Thank you for your service" is an odd phrase to hear to non-Americans -- service for what? The US is at no risk of invasion.
Hegseth is a low-IQ fascist fool, but renaming to Department of War is at least acknowledging reality.
The Trump government just mostly says the formerly quiet part out loud.
Well they are serving the US military, which is generally used for the benefit of the US people. Does not mean it's defending their territory.
Now to be fair, when the US people thanks their soldiers for their service, I don't think they are necessarily thankful for the US threatening to invade what used to be considered as allies (like Canada or Europe).
But I do agree that it is an odd phrase to hear to non-Americans.
So usually it’s said even if the nation isn’t at war because it’s not an easy job. You’ll hear Americans say it to first responders, nurses, fire fighters, police officers, &c.
Idk why it’s being characterized as weird though instead of what it is which is just an aspect of our culture to say thanks to others who are doing jobs you perceive to be dangerous or difficult.
As a veteran of the US armed forces I hate it because I never know what to say…”thanks for your service’ …uh you’re welcome? But it comes from a good place. Though I try to remind folks that saying thanks isn’t enough, spend time and money helping others, vote, keep your community clean, have high standards for yourself and others, because otherwise your fellow citizens are doing all this for nothing.
But the "service" is more likely to be "invading another country" than "defending the US territory from an invasion", so when you are not a US citizen, it may feel odd.
Again, the US have threatened to invade quite a few democracies in the last year. Not sure how happy the people living there are about that "service"...
I'd go further: I am not convinced the actions of the US military -- which are primarily abroad -- are always advancing the interests for all Americans. In fact they sometimes are directly undermining the interests of some of the poorest members of society. The US's imperial interests abroad can suppress global labour prices, it can contribute to climate change (by advancing and encouraging more fossil fuel exploration), among other things. It can indirectly or even directly harm the interests of some working people in the United States. While at the same time recruiting directly from those people.
So while I feel for armed forces members individually as people, the product of their service in their forces I don't think is some universal good. In fact, for much of the 20th century outside of WWII it's been mostly malevolent and imperial. And I'd argue not just to the world outside the US, but to many of its own broader population.
You're right that US military action sometimes cause harm even for people that are supposedly represented, but the military is just another tool leveraged by governments which do good or bad things all the time. It's really as simple as the US spending taxpayer dollars on initiative X with spending taxpayer dollars on initiative Y just with a bomb. You could argue that bombs kill people so the military is different, but so do rising interest rates and civil wars and famines. Even saying that some actions taken by the US might not be good for non-Americans it's kind of a weird criticism. It's true, but that applies to all countries and all peoples, and the United States has no moral obligation to take actions that are specifically good for other people while advancing American interests. Hopefully we do, and I think we should, but it's unfair to characterize the US as having a moral failure for not doing so unless you're going to apply those standards to everyone else. For example, if you are going to criticize the United States in this way, I'll criticize China for taking actions that harmed Americans by manufacturing products so cheaply and efficiently that it put American workers out of jobs. Many people died because of that over the years. Maybe China should do better and not undermine the interests of poor Americans for whom a manufacturing job is the gateway to as good of a life as they can expect?
I was one of those folks "recruited". The 4 years I put in including a tour taught me a lot not just about myself but about the countries I was stationed in, and eventually paid for me to college through a semester or two of grad school and allowed me to take college courses while I was in. I learned how to work out, learned about nutrition, and learned a lot about working with other people from different backgrounds, handling conflict, teamwork, all of those things. Many people make the military a career, too, or they're able to land jobs after their time in working as contractors helping to fix or maintain equipment. It's not all bad, and I think your characterization which is effectively: "the US takes actions that harm poor people and then recruits them to further harm those same people" is, well, to put it politely rather uncharitable.
I also don't think we should over-index on actions taken by a country undermining the interests of some of the poorest members of society. I think we should do what we can to help those who are the least well off at least here in the US. Healthcare, education, you name it. But we should not have a dogmatic approach toward helping one group at the expense of everyone else. If the US took an action that didn't benefit the poorest members of society but benefited everyone else at their expense, maybe it's still a good action and maybe we should continue to do it. It depends on the action and the effects. Was bombing Iraq good? Idk, maybe over the long term, but Americans including the poorest sure do like cheap gas prices.
Who says we aren't? There is always criticism against countries that invade other countries. Be it the US, Russia, China, you name it.
But it's not as if Greenland (or the EU, or Canada) was threatening to invade the US, is it?
> Was bombing Iraq good? Idk, maybe over the long term, but Americans including the poorest sure do like cheap gas prices.
I think this is an interesting point: people in many countries would not be grateful if their military invaded other countries. So they wouldn't "thank the military for their service". That the Americans do it may sound weird to non-Americans, given that the US are generally more invading than defending their own territory. "Thanks for destroying an entire country and disrupting millions of life, because I like cheap gas".
Because while I recognize the OP being about the US, the vast majority of the criticism and discussion takes place regarding the United States. But even in criticizing the US here one could in good faith argue a caveat is required saying "but this is done by all countries" or something along those lines.
> But it's not as if Greenland (or the EU, or Canada) was threatening to invade the US, is it?
No, but I don't think that's particularly relevant in this context? You're just venting.
> I think this is an interesting point: people in many countries would not be grateful if their military invaded other countries. So they wouldn't "thank the military for their service". That the Americans do it may sound weird to non-Americans, given that the US are generally more invading than defending their own territory. "Thanks for destroying an entire country and disrupting millions of life, because I like cheap gas".
Well my point here was just that the Iraq war is widely criticized, and in this context I think it's safe to assume that it would also have been criticized as not being good for the poorer folks in the United States, and I just wanted to point out that they want their cheap gas prices too, and they're also thanking the US military for bombing Iraq. Some want to try and say America is bad but not the poor people because of an internal juxtaposition they hold in their mind. The poor Americans are just as complicit and benefit too. In fact, they're typically more supportive of these endeavors than the wealthy elites regardless of who benefits.
> people in many countries would not be grateful if their military invaded other countries
Well most countries lack a military that is capable of doing much of anything so they don't really experience this happening, and if their country does try to invade another one it is usually facing repercussions from the United States, so your sample size is small.
But I also don't think this is quite true and you can broaden it to general military activity.
Iranians for example were celebrating in the streets over bombings of Israel. Israelis were celebrating the bombing of Iran's military and leadership. Do I need to even get in to Russia and Z? Nevermind Pakistan and India, even internally in countries like India you have religious or ethnic minorities murdered and it is celebrated. Do you think there is a lack of patriotic Chinese who are eagerly awaiting the bombing and invasion of Taiwan? You're thinking about this in an American-centric way. Americans aren't special, all countries like and do these things and have done so historically and will continue to do so in the future provided they have the means and internal justification.
Okay let me take a step back. The discussion starts with:
> The blurring of the executive and the military, the adoration of troops and war, etc. All very strange(?) for a country whose military has only ever been really involved in outside interference and war and not defense of homeland. "Thank you for your service" is an odd phrase to hear to non-Americans -- service for what? The US is at no risk of invasion.
And you say that it's unfair because all countries who have a powerful enough military also invade other countries, and their people also thank them for doing it". Sounds like I am not the only one venting, to be honest.
Over time the symbolism has evolved - the American people tend to want more pomp and ceremony than the presidents themselves.
We are looking for something like the Venetian Doge - a very showy anti-monarch.
There exists a concept of "American exceptionalism" [1], which describes this popular belief that the US are superior. It also probably goes with the fact that it is a very big country sharing one culture, and it is easy to not spend too much time looking at what other countries are doing.
> presidential democracies where presidents are elected by popular vote are a disaster
I would like to add France to the examples supporting your case: in the first round, Macron got less than 20% of the votes, and a non-negligible part of those was already trying to be "efficient". As in, the people would have voted for someone else, but they voted for Macron because it seemed more likely that he could win against Le Pen, the far-right candidate.
This means that less than 20% of the people (those who voted of course) wanted Macron. On his first day, more than 80% didn't want him. Still he behaves like if the French people wanted him.
> by having the parliament elect the president
An example I like is Switzerland: they don't have a president at all. They elect their parliament, and the parliament elects the Federal Council made of 7 people from the main parties.
What this means is that the executive power is a consensus by construction, and most of the people is represented (because the Federal Council is made of the major parties, which represent the majority of the people and go from left to right).
Feeling represented is very important: when the people does not feel represented, they take out to the street and protest. I don't think it happens as much in the countries you described (Germany, Italy) or Switzerland.
That’s not true. “I want someone else more than X” isn’t the same as “I don’t want X”. That’s the advantage of Approval voting and Ranked Choice voting—you can make those things clear.
If you look at the situation in France, I think it's pretty damn obvious that the people don't feel represented by their government.
My point was not to nitpick on the numbers, but rather to say that having a president elected by the people and having as much executive power as the president has in France doesn't seem to work really well. As opposed to countries that enforce a consensus.
Well he's the closest to that benchmark no?
You can hardly regulate how emboldened a person feels, especially after having obtained such a big result.
He is the most liked person in France , as if you just take into consideration the raw number of people who like him and ignore those who dislike , his number would be higher than the everybody else.
It's always like that with elections, once the polls are closed and the votes counted someone will have a mandate and a mandate is determined by number of preferences expressed. Those who stayed home or the raw number of "dislikes" doesn't count.
A thing that would somewhat diminish the power of the elected person is an election where just 15-20% of the population who has the right to vote decided to cast their vote
My point was that instead of having one person trying to "represent" the people, you can split that role.
Some Americans, even here on HN, genuinely believe that different states have different cultures in the same way different countries in Europe have different cultures cultures.
Still, Americans from everywhere in the US have this tendency to genuinely believe that the whole world believes the US are the best country in the world. That seems like a cultural trait in the US.
I don't think it's the Constitution in of itself that's a holy grail. Just look at how hotly debated the 2nd Amendment is, especially among Americans.
I think the true holy grail is the process to amend it, because that requires a relatively clear majority of Americans to agree to change it; well beyond 50% if I remember American civics correctly. It's a living document, changed as needed. It just hasn't as of late because the process is arduous on purpose to prevent heated decisions from being rushed through.
This sounds like the system failing as designed.
I agree with your argument in general, but couldn't this still happen with a parliament? If a party controls 50% + 1 of the parliament, then they're in control. Still, it's better than that control being given to a single person of course.
Typically the parliament is fractured in multiple parties, because in parliamentarism there is not automatic incentive to vote for one of the big parties otherwise you are wasting your vote. If the party you vote for has 5% of the representation in the parliament, it can still be part of a coalition to form the government and influence decisions.
However, the big parties often consist of sub-factions.
However, it seems there are mechanisms that turn parties into dictatorships with one person ruling everything in the entire party, as well as people get carried away with negative emotions and vote against, polarizing the politics into just 2 parties alternating in power.
( Labor Vs. Liberal+Nationals OR (cartoonishly) "Masses" Vs Urban-Capital+Rural-LandOwners (comically grotesque oversimplification) )
There are, however, many smaller parties that a great many people vote on first in proportional run-offs.
Australians are well aware that the smaller parties often don't get a seat but they're also well aware that the voltes are tallied to reveal the issues championed by smaller parties and how the secondary preferences "run off" to the majors.
eg: (say) Labor only squeaked in ahead of the Liberals because people that care about issue {X} first then preferenced Labor second .. expecting Labor to address that issue.
Fail to address an issue and the margin votes switch secondary preferences.
( That said, a number of small parties do hold independant seats )
Much of this small party preference voting kicked off from The Australian Democrats, a centrist political party founded in 1977 with the slogan
Keep the Bastards Honest.
Those smaller parties end up having an important role, because typically the Major parties cannot form a government otherwise. So the major parties end up having to make some concessions to get a coalition going.
It is a stabilizing force.
This might be off-topic for the main discussion, but worth to point out: Greenland is not a part of EU.
Greenland has never been in the European Union, even though it is effectively a Danish colony. It left its predecessor, the EEC, many years ago. Its interaction with the other EU member states is minimal.