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.
The Constitution assumes the people through the ballot box or through protest would clean up any issues like that
It has impeachment. The list of reasons for impeachment are (quite possibly intentionally) vague. But it has to be done through Congress.
And when the nazi controls Congress you know how far that’ll go.
You mean for the guy who was already impeached twice… And still voted for to be president?
Well the mechanism for preventing criminals who shit all over the constitution from getting reelected is supposed to be people not voting for him. There’s not really much a constitutional democracy can do about voters being fucking morons. Kind of an inherent flaw in the system.
How do you build a system that doesn’t depend on voters not being morons? Everything I can think of, up to and including full-on authoritarianism, has human shittiness as a glaring weak point. The founding fathers assumed that people would, for the most part, act in good faith, and it kept us going for a couple hundred years, but all that is starting to fall apart.
Well the only vast ocean we have left is space… Time to build some ships and make a new country free from all the bullshit… We can do it better this time!!!
The problem is he won the election.
The vote is the final check and balance.
49% of Voters are either sympatico or stupid.
And that’s the problem with the US election system. In basically any other developed democracy, there are ways to call a new special election. The four years are often the max between elections, not the minimum.
If a new leader proves unpopular, you toss them out and install a new one.
But Trump hasn’t proven unpopular; that’s why he won reelection. If the ruling party has a majority and the PM has their party’s support, nothing would happen in most other systems either.
Didn’t say he was. Just saying if he did such crazy things that even the crazies drop out, he could be removed. That’s extremely hard in the US. You’re basically stuck with the moron for four years.
In theory, if he went so far over the line that he became very unpopular, then Congress members would fear for their reelection chances if they didn’t publicly break with him. But with him attacking democracy itself, Congress may be more afraid of him than they are of voters. It’s a deeply troubling time.
The problem is also that the Republican party is a fascist party, so the other check, impeachment, is thoroughly useless.
Fifth columnists love FPTP. It minimises their workload.
Ironically, these are the times the electoral college was supposed to avoid. Also denounced political parties as corrupting. Still likely to have been coopted by now, but the design was to combat lack of education, lack of information, and/or propaganda.
We really only have the Second Amendment. I am now on a list.
Yeah, with every other cool person.
Only losers use guns.
Yea well last time I tried using my dick instead and now I’m on a list and a burglar needs therapy.
You must have a scary dick when I whip mine out the burglar laughs!
I used mine and the fucker came back!
Okay buddy degen account, when the Bureau of Moral Certitude comes for you throw a dildo at them at see how that works out.
Degen is a village in Switzerland and I’ve never been.
Well iirc, most adults have a submachine gun in the closet there.
But the bullets are in a sealed can.
So they don’t spoil?
I’d never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile
Ignore the political system and look at the economic system. The US is capitalist and as it turns out- capitalism is not mutually exclusive with fascism.
If a human being lives long enough, he will eventually develop cancer. It’s simply a natural physical consequence of repeated cell division. Eventually there’s some mutation that leads to a chain reaction. The cancer spreads enough and there’s no going back. Capitalism, similarly, will always inevitably embrace fascism.
Marx got it wrong. He believed that the workers, realizing their position as class consciousness increases, would inevitably revolt against the power structure. The reality is more depressing.
Capitalism has cycles of crisis. Sometimes the economy is doing good which leaves the workers content. Sometimes the economy is doing bad. The problem is when the economy is doing bad coincides with some other set of crisis, the combination of events radicalizes the workers. This part Marx predicted. However he was mistaken about human nature.
Really, our problem started back in 2008. The global economy never fully recovered. Interest rates were kept low in a desperate attempt to increase spending to keep the boat from tipping. Then COVID pumped up inflation to historic levels- supply chain shortages wrecked chaos. After that, the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed up inflation even higher. Prices go up but wages lag behind.
Workers, naturally, become more radicalized- as Marx predicted. The issue is Marx was too optimistic about human nature. Humans as a whole are fearful herd animals. They need a shepherd to point somewhere. And eventually, inevitably, some megalomaniac with a vision will take advantage of a vulnerable system and point somewhere. In the 1930s it was to the Jews and the communists. Today, it’s the illegals and “wokeism”.
All this to say that this shouldn’t be surprising. Left wing voices have been warning about this for a long time.
Hitler didn’t take power democratically. Neither did Mussolini or Franco. They each found cracks in how liberal democracy worked in their respective countries. Those cracks were usually the places where the system was decidedly undemocratic, which in those three cases, was generally something where the old nobles still had some power and they lined up behind fascists to save them from leftists.
America never had nobles, but it does have plenty of cracks in its liberal democracy to be exploited by fascists.
So to answer your question simply, no, there are no instruments to fix this. Congress can potentially either reign Trump in with legislation, or even impeach him, but I don’t expect either one to happen. If the GOP can be swept out of Congress in 2026, then we can maybe start to fix some things without resorting to extralegal methods. Even that is only a starting point.
I do know for sure that we can’t go back to the old trajectory as if Trump was just an outlier.
LOL give me a break. This (undemocratic) state was literally founded by slavemasters, the original proto-nazis, so they could violently maintain their racist privilege. Ofc there’s no law against it.
America’s vaunted “checks and balances” are, in the end, just smoke and mirrors to lie to the population and hide the fact that American institutions give way too much power to the president and there are no institutional controls to make the president behave.
not true. congress could definitely remove the president… they just won’t do it because they’re too fascist themselves….
Second amendment
a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players
Your proof of this is… what?
For real. US history is replete with supporting dictators, military coups, and so on.
Upkeeping our own democracy. For a certain value of “Dem”
Everyone has been bought and paid for https://lemmy.world/comment/13431373
It’s funny that Germany has safeguards against nazis in power in it’s constitution which was designed
byin cooperation with the USA, France and GB, yet afaik all three don’t have similar mechanics in their own constitutions because they never belived to have to deal with the next hitler themselfs.Germany has a modern constitution created in response to nazis.
USA has extremely outdated constitution created by proto-nazis.
Those same safeguards that banned AfD years ago, thank god they exist!
Lets take out the politics for a moment, and just look at railroads
This is what I call the “Old Railroad Theory”:
The US build the railroad/subways so long ago, that most of it is now in decay and as far as I know, none of the US has any Platform Safety Barriers, and people could just fall on the tracks (see NYC)
In constrast, in China (PRC), because most subways are only recently built, they are much more modern, air-conditioned, and have Platform Safety Barriers, preventing any “fall on tracks” incidents. (I’ve seen first hand the subway in GuangZhou, they look much nicer than NYC, when I first got to NYC, the tracks were terrifying for me, I always have intrusive thoughts about falling in)
Its because once you build a system, its unlikely to get replaced even when better technology comes along. Too much cost to replace, politicians don’t care.
Same thing with Constitutions.
It was written so long ago, now its too late to add new ideas like Defensive Democracy. 3/4 of US legislature means its almost impossible to add it as an amendment.
(Btw, Germany has a AfD problem, that they still haven’t banned yet… 👀)
Edit: typos
PS.: With the current trend we will find out in about the next decade if the safeguards work …
Decade? More like 3 months. He’s already doing wildly unconstitutional things. If the Supreme Court refuses to take on challenges to it or outright approves it, well, they didn’t work.
Ich sage: nieder mit diesen Gesetzen!
Macht Deutschland wieder Groß
You mean that way, approximately?
If you really believe that the USA has “100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players” you are in delusion.
The US empire chooses to ally with any group who opposes Russia or uses mineral/oil wealth as significant public welfare enhancement instead of enriching their rulership or privatizing for cheap bribes to US national champions, and not being a US weapons customer. This already makes the US empire a demonic evil fascist force. It calling apartheid ethnostates of Ukraine and Israel “great democracies”, and all elections that go against it “rigged” is an ultra fascist view. Control over colonies media is control over their democracy, and control over their people to ensure subservience of allies. Internally, to US, there is always money for the empire and the oligarchy, never for people.
The veneer of democracy and “rules based world order allies” is a BS that helps with its demonism. But removing the veneer to demand more tribute from colonies, and Americans is not change. It simply removes the emperor’s veil/clothing. If voting could change anything, it would be illegal.
Trump can help Americans realize this. But if you were praising US democracy/values before this, you simply were not paying attention closely enough.
Is the army really not constitutionally obliged to step in and save the day?
The constitution is no protection against the Army. A military coup does not necessarily mean a more militarist US, or anti-American, anti-pluralist/liberty government. Asking/supporting the military to depose corrupt leaders should be based on that corruption, not looking up whether a nation’s constitution permits it (they never do).
That’s what 2a is supposed to be for
2A is for attacking minorities, maintaining jim crowe, etc. Grow up.
2A is supposed to facilitate millitias in case England attacks again.
… in case England attacks again.
I have been thinking about coming over there with a cricket bat.
And the benefit is most yanks won’t even be able to make a cheeky single if you flat it past the square leg
Guns can have multiple uses.
The American Revolutionary War literally started over the attempted seizure of guns by a government that feared its subjects could use them in an uprising.
