About two-thirds of Canadians surveyed this month said American democracy cannot survive another four years of Donald Trump in the White House, and about half said the United States is on the way to becoming an authoritarian state, a poll released on Monday said.
The November U.S. election is likely to pit President Joe Biden against Trump, who is the clear frontrunner to win the Republican nomination as voting in the presidential primary race kicks off in Iowa on Monday.
Sixty-four percent of respondents in the Angus Reid Institute poll of 1,510 Canadians said they agreed with the statement: “U.S. democracy cannot survive another four years of Donald Trump.” Twenty-eight percent disagreed.
The Jan. 6, 2021 attack on Capitol Hill by Trump supporters seeking to block certification of Biden’s 2020 election win shocked many Canadians, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly blamed Trump for inciting the mob.
Yes Trump will annihilate whatever semblance of democracy we have left in the United States. He plans on suspending congress, consolidating the courts, and expanding his ability of the executive branch without any checks and balances. He will begin to supercede democratic state governments, and the courts will rule in his favor or he will make them. He will sack any military official that doesn’t align with his agenda, and deploy them domestically, even if just to instill fear in dissidents. Furthermore he’ll transfer full control of the federal reserve to his office. Slowly eroding our constitutional rights and then he’ll even extend his presidential term by another ten years.
This is what you will get if you vote for Trump.
It’s not doing very well without him, definitely won’t survive with him. Tired of voting for slower erosion of democracy rather than having the option to vote for expansion of democracy. The US is not long for this world as a democracy. We’ll soon have Putin style “Democracy”.
Mind your own business Canada. You’ve got way bigger problems to deal with than worrying about us
Trudeau talking about democracy?
Lol
Poor yanks, having to choose between trump and biden
We need electoral reform. Conservatives and neo Liberals are a minority. Anything but first past the post would be better.
We were promised that a while back. Too bad Trudeau capitulated to the backroom-old-boys’-club and scuttled it with exactly zero repercussions. :/
It’s a pretty obvious choice though. I’d really rather that the giant economy we’re involuntarily tied to at the hip doesn’t elect an authoritarian criminal.
That’s like saying you’d rather have a senile criminal over a criminal troll
It’s not an obvious choice
It’s equally shit both ways
Canadians are also more clear than Americans that this isn’t a Trump problem. He’s just the symptom.
Canadians who are old enough remember the Bush II presidency, where Canada decided it wasn’t going to join the US on its adventure in Iraq, and Americans freaked out. Americans started boycotting Canadian goods, and saying that if Canada wasn’t siding with the US it was siding with the “terrists”.
The election of Obama restored some hope that maybe things were getting better, but the reaction to that with the whole Tea Party thing, and then the Trump presidency showed it wasn’t a blip, and that almost 50% of Americans were not rational people. Then there are things like the frequent government shutdowns, the constant gun massacres, the overtly political Supreme Court and its recent stance that precedent doesn’t matter.
Back when Reagan was in power, the US conservatives were making terrible decisions, but at least they had a coherent philosophy, they believed in democracy, and the conservative ideals were more or less shared by other conservatives around the world (Thatcher, Mulroney, etc.)
These days, the US right wing is an incoherent mess of conspiracy theories, religious extremism, and chaos. Conservatives want to ban or burn books, but they still claim to stand for freedom of expression and speech. They talk about passing laws banning non-heterosexuals from everything, while simultaneously wanting the government to get out of their lives.
And, with a nearly 9000 km shared border and massive social and economic ties between the two, whatever happens in the US will affect Canada. There’s no escaping that fact. Canadian democracy is almost irrelevant. If Trump comes to power again, there are no votes that Canadians can cast that will shield them from the chaos.
As a fellow terrist, what’s the problem with us? 🌎
I dunno, some people are just loony.
Now I want to rewatch Legend of the Galactic Heroes. (Reference)
All yer nucular power and *pauses for camera closeup* weapons of mass destruction.
*ducks to dodge a shoe*
well trump has shown to be a staunch enemy of democracy, the constitution and the rule of law
Yeah so do like half of Americans myself included.
Turns out, explicitly shutting out any options other than mid-but-increasingly further right or furthest-and-now-saying-the-quiet-part-out-loud right wasn’t the healthiest decision for voters to be have a say in policy.
Everyone keeps telling me it’s my lefty ass’ fault we get fascism, but dems already did their fascism on me when Bernie won a primary and got told to eat a dick, then the dems went to court and told their voters to eat a dick.
But yep it’s MY fault I don’t vote dem.
They aren’t alone
US “democracy” will be fine. Russia is still technically a democracy. US can also have it both ways: have some sort of life long president staging sham elections and locking up political rivals at the same time. It will still be a ‘democracy’. Of course Supreme Court would not let that… oh wait, they’re all hand picked by the dictator, never mind. I wander if an average American would even notice any difference.
The Supreme Court wouldn’t even need to be stacked. They have made it clear that the law means nothing. There will be some ruling that I dunno know someone didn’t say the magic words when the two term limit was put in place and hence it doesn’t apply.
Exactly, most of them would already 100% support the dictator. That was my point, US democracy is really fucking close to oligarchy already and it would be easy to take it over the edge.
Right, but if it’s a sham democracy, it’s not a democracy. That’s the thing about Russia - it’s not actually a democracy. The layer of “democracy” is just a layer of authoritarian control with a very thin coat of paint.
Yes and what I’m saying is that US is not really that far away from this system. It doesn’t have strong constitutional defences (Supreme Court is extremely politicised, corrupt and can just change it’s interpretations of the constitution on a whim), the two party system is pretty much one capitalist party switching power between more extreme and less extreme wings every couple of years and it’s all run but 70+ year old millionaires. US could very easily keep the thin layer of “democracy” and turn into dictatorship beneath it.
Yep, I think we agree on the danger - I think the quotation marks might be throwing people off. If we agree Russia is not a democracy and the US is risking becoming that, not sure why you’re getting downvoted.
Russia isn’t technically nor consequently a democracy. They never have been either.
And the Emperor, who has not left the golden throne in 10,000 years, is still technically alive
The amount of MAGA dipshits we have in alberta is uncomfortably high
What happened in the US could very easily happen here too. We’re not as immune from the misinformation as we think.
What happened in the US could very easily happen here too.
Given the current polls, it’s about to.
:'(
Like the Premier of Alberta.
I’m guessing the 36% that didn’t see a problem with Trump were Conservatives who had to much lead paint in their diet as children.
Many Americans worry too, Canada.
I worry how fucked we are. Like are we all gonna get a slim and slender dill pickle unfavorably shoved up our poop cutters OR are we going to get a giant prickly cactus shoved brazenly right up to our colons?
I think that will depend on how wealthy, white, straight, and male you are. Mostly in that order, but not always.
Not enough.
Tens of millions of Americans look at the choice between Biden and Trump and choose Trump. That’s insane.
It’s nearly half the US population that wants Trump in charge. That’s terrifying.
It’s also scary that a lot of the Americans who live in left-leaning states aren’t all that concerned. They somehow think that because their state is left-leaning and their neighbours share their political views, that somehow a second Trump presidency wouldn’t affect them much.
This is the death rattle of the most entitled, largest, generation in America. They do not care where America will be in 10 years because they won’t be alive and they think it’s hilarious. It’s a geriatric tantrum.
45-64 year olds only went for Biden by 1 percentage point in 2020, 49% for Trump, 50% for Biden. And for 30-44 year olds it was only 45% for Trump, 52% for Biden.
This isn’t just a problem with old people, even though they’re the only group that went for Trump overall. There are still a lot of younger people voting for Trump who won’t be dying off for decades. The people who voted for Trump are a slight minority and the minority will be getting smaller over time. But, many of them are hoping that the GOP will break the system so the minority can rule over the majority, even if that means no more democracy.
I think as long as there are two parties, elections in America will always be close. Add gerrymandering and violently polarizing rhetoric into the mix and you have our current situation. In regards to a solution, I don’t think there is one. America is a country founded on an unwavering belief in individualism. We often overlook the obviously correct decision instead deciding to take the “road less traveled” even if it makes zero sense to do so. Anything to be different! Americans also love to gamble and we view the obvious decision as having worse odds.
Hopefully enough of them…
In case you’re here for the first time, reading this comment, and you blacked out from 2016-2020, Donald J. Trump is a fascist demagogue, who speaks directly to Russians about internal US affairs including classified info and has said that if re-elected, he will become a dictator. The GOP’s plan to dismantle the executive branch and replace staffers with Trump loyalists has been laid out and available for all to read, entitled “Project 2025”. His children admitted to meeting with Russian intelligence officials in Trump Tower to discuss undermining the 2016 election. He called Mexicans rapists and drug dealers, was best friends with the world’s most famous pedophile, mocked a disabled reporter in front of thousands of people (and on national TV), he lied that he would lower taxes on the working class and instead raised them, he illegally demanded clandestine investigations into the Biden’s as blackmail for military aid to Ukraine (hmmmm I wonder what Donald learned from Putin during their hangouts…), and he let millions of Americans die of COVID by repeating lies that contradicted the real science of the pandemic. The laundry list is massive. He’s not fit to be president of anything and he belongs in jail.
“This could be our last election” is something I’ve been hearing since Republicans were freaking out of Clinton in 1996. We do it literally every four years, depending on who is coming and going.
Trump’s deplorable were going to dominate the country after '16. Obama’s ACORN was going to take over the election system if he won in 2010. Bush was going to send all the Democrats to Gitmo back in 2006. The SCOTUS guaranteed a Democrat would never win again, after 2000.
His children admitted to meeting with Russian intelligence officials in Trump Tower to discuss undermining the 2016 election.
I am so tired of hearing how Russia stole the '16 election, when you had governors in Florida and Texas and New York and Ohio and Georgia and Arizona and Wisconsin and Colorado dumping people off the voter rolls as fast as they could find an excuse. If you want to talk about stolen elections, go look up Operation Eagle Eye) which guaranteed Arizona’s growing Hispanic community would be denied a seat at the table for decades thanks to future Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist.
Or ask what happened to Don Siegelman, the last Democrat to serve as governor in Alabama.
Or just look up the Brooks Brother’s Riot
Pinning this shit on The Evil Foreigner when we’re perfectly willing and capable of stealing elections right here at home is asinine.
My grandfather drove a tank in WW2, a cousin of my grandmother went down on the HMS Hood. My family survived the blitz.
Now I’m sitting in Canada watching America gleefully become the new nazi fatherland and it’s terrifying. Watching your neighbour embrace fascism with open arms… words cannot describe the amount of disappointment I have right now.
