I’ve seen a number of people trying to deny the truth, and it’s honestly sickening at this point. How bad do things have to get for people to acknowledge what I recognized on the night of November 5th? People really cannot handle reality as it is.
Fellow lemmings… What do you actually consider to be “democracy”? What does it look like, how does it work?
To me, the word seems meaningless in the context of nation state society. There seems to be a dissonant gulf between it’s notion and it’s practice. Or is there no dissonance at all - Is it still the direct consensus of a small collection of propertied men at the top of a hierarchical slave-holding society, just as it was in ancient Athens where they coined the term, and that is still the exact ideal we worship?
In this context, it was a system of the latter which promised it could change into more. It’s really spanned the spectrum over the years, with more or less input from peasants within the last century, but now even that system is gone, and only those with the power of feudal lords have any meaningful influence.
We have a temporary dictatorship that will devolve into feudal infighting after the king’s death. Not really a good situation unless we can weaken the entire system enough to carve out localized independence.
i VoTeD oNcE tWeNtY yEaRs AgO aNd NoThInG hApPeNeD!
Say super geniuses who’ve figured out how not to blame their own mediocre self-centered inertia.If Democracy has indeed failed in the US, it is because of soundbite-driven, intellectually lazy and dishonest about it, holier than thou, lazy, impatient and easily-angered nonvoters, as easily manipulable as the rabid, bigoted right wing.
Voting is not democratic.
My preferred system is a combination of lottery-based representative governance, where the lottery is selected from a pool of potentials with enough support. Support is tallied via a liquid democracy. This system is relatively incorruptible and offers actual representation.
Is this a system you’ve ever heard of, or is it one used anywhere?
No?
Then I am not represented. I won’t smear my head in shit because everyone else is. Your “democratic government” was destroyed well over 50 years ago when the business plot succeeded. Your “voting” is submission to tyranny. When a mechanism is corrupt and your options are invalidated, the only option is to stop using it.
How well has your voting gone? What about when democrats had control of all branches of government?
How many drone strikes stopped?
Did single payer healthcare get passed?
Was tax law actually enforced on billionaires?
What happened when the “good guys” in your mind won?
What will it take for you to realize where you are? You were never in a democracy.
Nonvoters are casting a vote. It is a vote out of a shit system that doesn’t work. Pull your head out of your corporate captured ass. As soon as true rebellion is ablaze, those “nonvoters” will show you where their vote is.
But go ahead. Keep screaming into the void, just like your wasted vote. Blame the nonvoters. Hell, blame them MORE than those actively supporting fascism. That sure makes sense. Don’t even think of blaming lobbyists, rigged voting machines, gerrymandering, judicial capture, media capture, analytical brainwashing, first-past-the-pole voting, and absolutely tiny representative pools (easier to bribe)…
No, don’t blame that. Instead, put your energy into the people so disillusioned by the system they opt out. THAT’LL show them. Maybe it will get them to vote for your team? Yeah! Bully them until they vote!!
Maybe people who chose to not vote are a bigger problem than I realize, but I think the real issue is the masses who are prevented from voting in the first place, and the gerrymandering and electoral college designed to suppress the votes that do get cast.
It’s a good thing literally every critic of yours sounds like that ridiculous strawman or else you might have to think critically about your worldview.
Non-voters never helped, but in this latest election, the responsibility really is on the party who had a strawman of an enemy to run against, yet couldn’t support popular positions due to corruption of special interests. They made so many tactical blunders it’s like they wanted to lose. Simple corruption cannot be understated as a cause for our current fascist era.
Me opening the comments
We’re coming to the end of the “post-war” period and will return (at best) to historical norms.
“historical norms”
roll my eyes.
nothing goes backwards the cat never goes back in the bag and roughly humanity has always tried to trudge forward but life has always persevered.
Fight for your rights definitely, be aware of today but nothing is permanent and we’ve only ever gained rights and power.
No, we literally just lost every institutional right. The only right we have is the right of nature to do what we want. Not even oligarchs can rely on private ownership beyond the knights they can employ, and that can always be overridden by fascist state.
Nothing is permanent, which is why we can and have always lost freedom. People will live on, but there is no guarantee you or everyone that matters to you won’t be systemically exterminated through genocide.
History is not a tale of “progress,” but evolution in new directions. That evolution can be towards chattel slavery when you had freedom, or out of it towards an equitable coexistence. We’re heading into slavery and genocide rn, so buckle up buttercup.
I disagree.
Nothing is permanent, which is why we can and have always lost freedom.
I think that is a rather absurd notion. Freedom was never there, what people called freedom was the freedom to stand atop the bloody backs of others and we’ve always been okay with that. That’s the society we live in and that will always continue, just today this time it is on your front lawn.
Freedom was never there, what people called freedom was the freedom to stand atop the bloody backs of others and we’ve always been okay with that. That’s the society we live in and that will always continue, just today this time it is on your front lawn.
Elaborate. There are a couple things I think you could be saying, but I’m not sure which if any it might be.
I will also say that I was very imprecise with that sentence. I should’ve said “… which is why we have always lost or gained freedom.” There are many ways to understand freedom, but regardless of the specifics, people have had more or less of it at different points in time.
The freedom to exert state control on society through voting, or the enforcement by anyone of informal social agreements in a non state system are restrictions on absolute freedom. That absolute freedom to our self determination. Societies can and have restricted some freedom to prevent it from taking freedom from others, but they often only maximize the freedom of very few at the expense of everyone else’s.
Your understanding of freedom is unclear to me, so I can’t really agree or disagree.
Hurray, this world is ending! Translations later in the video.
US democracy being dead isn’t a problem because it never worked by design. It’s not lost on me that while danger is more real, at least we aren’t bound to controlled opposition anymore. I really want people to realize that.
Democracy is fundamentally incompatible with capitalism
The liberal experiment failed
Nope. The liberal experiment in the US has succeeded beyond their wildest expectations. Racism and settler colonialism are alive and well, capitalists run the country, change is impossible for ordinary people to enact, and the government is slowly transitioning into the streamlined violence-only institution it was designed to be.
The Founding Fathers were monsters too, but they were monsters with decorum and a slightly larger base of support (capitalist class) than the feudalism of yesteryear (royals and the Church).
America was trash and is trash and always will be trash as long as it exists, and Americans need to mobilize against the American government, police, and army as if they were an occupying military presence, because they are a military presence occupying our public spaces.
America != U.S.
Even still, there is no good version of America as a piece of culture or ideal worth living up to. In all its forms, America is a vessel for white supremacy and settler colonialism. Even when distinguishing between the current US government and any other moment in American history, the reality is that at no point has America ever been a good project for the people it lords over.
As Americans, we need to make a clean break from the “America” brand at all levels if we ever want the rest of the world to trust us ever again. “Liberal” patriotism is still patriotism and needs to be smashed.
Pssst I think they were referring to Canada as well as Central and South America.
The liberal system has proven to be too unstable for those elites to maintain it. Populism will always rear its head in this system, and that requires you either pass popular reforms, or redirect towards bigotry. Rich fascists thought this wasn’t good enough, so they decided to bring us back into feudalism.
on the night of November 5th? Democracy died in the U.S. long, long before that. We’ve been a plutocracy for so long that Americans believe there are different laws for the wealthy. We’re just “lucky” enough to be witnessing the consequences.
Democracy in the US never really existed. It’s just the “democracy” we had that no longer exists. The system is fully mask off now.
Democracy in the US might be dying, but IMO it’s still the best way to manage a country filled with well everything from crazy people to psycopaths.
You’re not wrong, but the American liberal incarnation is done for. If anything similar will ever arise, it’ll be a near complete rebuild.
The American experiment isn’t done, because a complete rebuild was always going to be necessary.
The founders themselves saw the flaws, and fought tooth and nail over the “right” ways to fix them, but eventually compromised on short-term solutions that they knew would eventually fail. They themselves were just as flawed, but they were still radical.
Their constitution and government was nothing more than a model for future generations, a design for an experiment that was ongoing. It never should have been a long-lived foundation which would undergo centuries of institutional rot, let alone deified into the false idol that it is today.
No matter what they built, it was unfortunately always up to the next generations to rebuild it and figure things out for themselves. You can’t build a system - any system - that someone else can’t break down after you leave.
Jefferson - The Earth belongs always to the living generation. Any law or constitution expires, and if it is enforced longer than a generation, it is 'an act of force.' (paraphrased)
We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independant nation to another…
On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation…
Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right.
Washington - But the Constitution which at any time exists, ’till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole People, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the People to establish Government presupposes the duty of every Individual to obey the established Government.
All obstructions to the execution of the Laws, all combinations and associations, under whatever plausible character, with the real design to direct, controul counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the Constituted authorities are distructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction, to give it an artificial and extraordinary force—to put in the place of the delegated will of the Nation, the will of a party; often a small but artful and enterprizing minority of the Community
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissention, which in different ages & countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.
Madison - A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty.
The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people…
Franklin - “[the constitution founded] a Republic, if you can keep it.”
The truth is they didn’t keep it. We don’t have a democracy, or any system of self-rule. The first trial failed. But the experiment isn’t over. As long as people are willing to overthrow tyrants and rebuild something better, then the experiment can continue.
And that is IMO a good thing, I’m so tired of their stupid “get rich equals get happy & work yourself to death” culture they bring everywhere, where everything have yo be monetized and force fed to the masses like cheap fast food.
liberals have always been a joke that used “democracy” as a tool to empower select individuals, the whole system was corrupt from the beginning and im glad that something is happening, even if its a shit situation for anybody to be in :(
This is a little bit like having AIDS, getting a flare-up, and then saying “well I’m glad at least something is happeing”.
I understand the frustration at the general political ambivalence following “the end of history” in the 90s and the endless wars in the 2000s, but a flare-up isn’t going to make the aids go away. In the absolute best case impossible scenario where everything that’s been going on miraculously stops tomorrow we’re still locked into another 50+ years of consequences from this administration, just like we have problems decades afterwards that can be traced back to the Reagan administration.
In a worse case scenario, well, let’s just say that neither Germany nor Italy today are particularly better off or highly progressive compared to their neighbors. Like I said, having a flare-up does not cure your AIDS.
If someone has a counter example from history I would unironically genuinely love to hear it, because at this point I’ve given up hope of the world becoming a socially better place in my lifetime.
I wish liberalism failed on its own without descending into fascism. People are already calling for a return to the system that got us here in the first place.
Not to minimise this, I think it’s all the worse when considering that the rest of the world is facing VERY similar problems and some still refuse to see it. Hell, Romania narrowly avoided electing our own Trump. Poland wasn’t so lucky. Hungary’s Trump’s been active for years now, and so on, and so forth.
And while it’s understandable why some defend themselves by ignoring reality, ignoring a random douchebag on the bus is one thing, ignoring the rebirth of Fascism is something completely different.
We will get rid of Orbán for real next year for real for real
I genuinely hope you will! He’s runining a beautiful country, I miss Budapest:-<
wait water u talkn bout - lik - im genuinli askin -
is itttttt
- the capitalist nazi with the black hair
- the general uncomf n evil peeps
- the capitalist nazi with the blond hair
- the view towards futur
or is it somthn els.,?
Many people aren’t willing accept that America is already a fascist dictatorship; acting like I’ve “given up” when all I want is for us to get past fantasies so the real work can begin.
Even if we vote the Republicans out in the next election, the Democratic party as it stands has been complicit in the fascist takeover, with the corporate owned media manufacturing consent the whole way. Billionaires have bought the institutions of power in this country.
The cancer has infected our politics and public institutions. It will take a fundamental shift in public understanding, and a lot of people fighting for change before America will truly be a democracy again.
It doesn’t need to become a democracy again, but a democracy at last. The Democrats are as much an enemy as the Republicans, the "good cop/bad cop* strategy. We don’t need to vote out Republicans, but ignore the Democrats as allies and build something new.
Democracy has it’s ups and downs. Countries tend to elect authoritarian regimes from time to time but as long as people care the pendulum always swings back. But only as long as people care.
Yeah, a temporary swing into concentration camps and unmitigated natural disasters. Knowing the fascist phase will end does not prevent thousands of real people from dying before that happens. I take no solace in the well being of a “country” beyond the well being of its people. The forest is not the trees, and these trees fucking matter.
Besides, this country has not had “Democracy” for most of it’s people for most of it’s history.
