What is your line in the sand?
Edit: thank you all for your responses. I think it’s important as an American we take your view points seriously. I think of a North Korean living inside of North Korea. They don’t really know how bad it is because that is all hidden from them and they’ve never had anything else. As things get worse for Americans it’s important to have your voices because we will become more and more isolated.
Even the guy who said, “lol.” Some people need that sort of sobering reaction.
No but this isn’t recent. My line in the sand was Russian interference in the 2016 US election that came to light in 2018.
*United States Democracy Index
No. I also don’t consider the United States to be a democracy.
Yes. But becoming more flawed by the day
Nope. I see it as an autocracy run by an elite oligarchy.
See, as a German, when I see a country go down the same route as the Weimar Republic after handing over the power to the Nazi party, I think it’s just very obvious. Hitler took some two months to completely destroy democracy, and the US are juuust in the middle of that. History doesn’t repeat, but sometimes it rhymes, and the similarities are just remarkable.
So yeah, I guess that would be a big fat trench in the sand.
As a German also I agree with this statement. Ostensibly it is a democracy but in reality it’s not. And yes, there is a lot of rhyming going on
I still believe there are democracies in America but the US of A aren’t one of them.
I don’t recognise the current American regime as a valid government. Just like I don’t recognise the Israeli occupation force as a valid state.
It’s not remotely binding or even meaningful to anyone but myself of course. But hey, nothing matters these days.
Not for quite some time now. Not since I learned about the electoral college.
No and it hasn’t been for a long time. As long as you can buy influence via lobbying then the playing field is not level.
The difference this time is they are not trying to hide it anymore
I barely considered it a democracy as a two party system as the elites controlled it all, but now it’s just even more messed up. They need to hold people accountable and not elect criminals to office.
I fear for the future of America as a country.
No, unfortunately.
still consider
It has only two political parties, and a weird system where all votes are not equal and the actual vote majority doesn’t always win.
It has frequently had multiple people from the same families running for office, and only wealthy people have a shot. Corporations get to lobby for laws in their favour.
It also spies on its own citizens, holds people indefinitely without trial, has a huge prison population, a militarized police with a high homicide rate, and is the only western nation with the death penalty.
Trump and Musk are laying bare how fragile the veneer of “democracy” really is in that country.
To be honest, not even from the start was it a true democracy, the Electoral College is a layer on top of democracy to give different weight to each vote.
Unfortunately, it’s still a democracy. The electorate wanted what’s now going on. That could rapidly change at this point, but for now not yet.
Democracy is a sliding scale and the US is still on it. Could the people choose something different without resorting to violent revolution and protest? Yes
I’m a bit skeptical about this argument because autocratic states love to hold practically fake and forced elections with 90 or 99 % approval and use that as justification.
I think the possibly final test for American democracy will be the midterm elections in two years. By then, I think that either trump will have broken the system enough to get a sham election, or we’ll see real, verifiable push-back against him. International organisations that monitor elections will probably take part in shaping my opinion on whether the election is fair or not. I think it’s worth remembering that whenever countries hold “fake and forced elections” there are plenty of international observers that point out the major rigging going on.
Sure, but that’s not the case in the US
Unfortunately yes. People wanted this. They still want this. But people were also cheering for like, Mao even after he put millions of his own citizens into the ground, so who knows
It’s what they call a “flawed democracy” now. It’s not at the point where thousands of people simply disappear and every aspect of political life is dictated by one party’s leadership.
But it’s sliding downward.Am Dutch. I have considered the US an incomplete democracy since I learned about voting in school. It’s not one person one vote, which to me is crucial for a democracy. The US right now is still a nation of laws, but democracy is sharply in decline. The voter-roll issues and Gerrymandering come to mind immediately. Not to mention the fact that guaranteed access to polls has been pulled by the courts. Which is insane to me.
$ is votes, who could have seen where that would go.
Also president having so much power was clearly never democratic to begin with as we can see it all play out now.
The power of the president did not start out like this. Congress kept giving their power to the executive for political reasons.
It happened over centuries.
