Pretty sure technically it was never a democracy in the textbook definition meaning. It is/was a republic.
Was it a democracy when women and people of color couldn’t vote?
Was it a democracy when the two party system artificially limited your options in the voting booth?
I don’t think it was ever a democracy.
Nearly 1.5 million people can’t vote in Florida because they’ve been to prison.
Guess how many votes Trump won Florida by in 2024?
Was it a democracy
Well, yes. Both the ancient forms of governance resembling what we call democracy and the Greek system that gives us the word Democracy typically excluded people to various degrees. Don’t take that as a value judgement, I support anything that enfranchises more people, not less but I won’t try to redefine words
I mean, Princeton released a study over a decade that the U.S. was no longer a democracy but an oligarchy. I understand that the author means where descending into authoritarianism, but this didn’t start with Trump, and we left democracy behind a long time ago.
The timing is worse than that. The study was only released in 2014, but it used data from 1981-2002, nearly 3 decades ago.
Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens | Perspectives on Politics | Cambridge Core - https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/abs/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
Shit, I assumed that data was relatively recent to the study’s publication. It doesn’t even cover Citizens United!
Since when was it ever a democracy ?
Yeah, ask the countries invaded and meddled by the US if they think the country is a democracy. What’s happening is imperial boomerang. The quote below is very prescient and literally applicable to the US right now, emphasis is mine:
And then one fine day the bourgeoisie is awakened by a terrific boomerang effect: the gestapos are busy, the prisons fill up, the torturers standing around the racks invent, refine, discuss. People are surprised, they become indignant. They say: “How strange! But never mind—it’s Nazism, it will pass!” And they wait, and they hope; and they hide the truth from themselves, that it is barbarism, the supreme barbarism, the crowning barbarism that sums up all the daily barbarisms; that it is Nazism, yes, but that before they were its victims, they were its accomplices; that they tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them, that they absolved it, shut their eyes to it, legitimized it, because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples; that they have cultivated that Nazism, that they are responsible for it, and that before engulfing the whole edifice of Western, Christian civilization in its reddened waters, it oozes, seeps, and trickles from every crack.
— Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism
I don’t want to sound gleeful at what is happening to the US as someone who is from a post-colonial country, but it is inevitable in the US as an imperial power that the corruption and brutality imposed on others had run out of space outside and then came back home. Imperialism, when there is no longer anywhere to conquer, conquers itself. This is what happened to many great powers of the past.
I am gleeful. Fuck USA, they tariffed my country for fun.
I don’t wish harm to the everyday, honest working Americans, but of course I wish the worst on the bigots who must suffer the consequences of their actions for allowing Trump.
You’d be surprised that the reason why Trump won was not just because of conservatives. But also Liberals as well.
This is only news for brain-damaged americans.
Land of the $2-trillion military budget, and the biggest prison population. and in the last two years, your elected policitians sent $30 billions from your taxes to a genocidal aparthied because they represent and serve the interests of another country
Yeah the billionaires run that country
Never has been
It has been a uniparty for decades.
Okay, but you need to admit that one party was Violently Fascist while the other party was merely Controlled Opposition.
I definitely prefer the empty vistage of democracy to the vulgar dismemberment of it. So you need to admit Democrats are better. And then you need to say you voted for them. And donated. And campaigned. And proselytized on their behalf.
Otherwise, I’m going to call you a Russian bot
Democrats lived in denial that they could ride being “the lesser of two evils” forever but eventually as things got worse and worse people started becoming numb to it
The lobbying, corporatism and military industries are the same under both. Admit that they are in power whoever the population votes for.
No, it hasn’t. Both parties are not the same, and saying as such is simply pro republican propaganda
Chuck Schumer allowed the big beautiful bil, which guts Medicare and social welfare, to pass without resistance; a resistance expected for a fucking opposition. That does not make the Democrats different, don’t you think? In other countries, the opposition are actually, you know, being opposition. I am amazed that Americans are made docile to pick lesser evil that only throw breadcrumbs, instead of holding their politicians accountable more fiercely, as expected in a democracy and which other countries do. What happened to the Americans that ended the Gilded age? I’m sorry but the other person is right that Americans are being frustrated and bewildered without realising it.
Yes and no. The two parties are different but they’re both politically Right Wing. So cut from the same cloth but made into different outfits. They both believe at their core that a societal elite is best suited to rule but the Democrats believe in a bigger more inclusive elite than Republicans.
Kamala “Do Not Come” Harris
Joe “Nothing Will Fundamentally Change” Biden
Nancy “Insider Trading is Fine, Actually” Pelosi
They both serve capital first, all the rest is rhetoric to keep you frustrated and bewildered - unable to realize it. You’ll spend the rest of eternity focusing on the outrage of the week, blind to the fact that the economics of the day dictate how they steer your thought and energy. When the chips are down, none of them worry about your poor non-capital-having ass.
Joe “We need a Republican party that is principled and strong” Biden
Democrats love the republican party. They protect them and keep them safe. thus trump remaining free, and all the previous “looking forward” bullshit that comes after the republicans get busted.
How else would democrats ever look good if they had to actually compete with a political party that wasn’t a complete clown show?
Yep. This is it. They are minions of money. Genocide? It’s profit. That’s why neither side cares.
So you want me and others to vote for a fascist just because dems are bad? It doesn’t stop with voting against fascism. First you vote against it, and then you start trying the grassroots campaigns to kick out the worthless democrats, which is a lot easier when there isn’t a literal fascist.
Dems give me a lot more trains and bike paths and social services than Republicans ever will.
This might just blow your mind, but there is a way to have more then two political parties to participate in elections without a spoiler effect.
One has to wonder why the self proclaimed democracy advocates in the democratic party haven’t pushed for these critical electoral reforms in states they control.
Democrats most certainly understand the flaws in First Past the Post voting. Feel free to go to the comments on any news articles on third parties/candidates during the previous election season to see it on full display.
So why do Democrats howl and scream about 3rd parties, yet do nothing to replace First past the post voting?
Informative videos below.
Electoral Reform Videos
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems
Yeah, sure, but this math is simple enough for anyone with two cents to rub together. If youre interacting with them on a web forum about politics chances are they arent the people who need to hear it.
So, stay vigilant.
I mean, both parties are objectively crap. One of them is just more objectively crap.
Yea, and the distinction matters
The distinction keeps the voters happy. The parties are only superficially different.
It does and it doesn’t. One is a slow fall into fascism, one is jumping off a cliff into it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ll pick the slow fall every time, but…doesn’t really make a difference in the end, does it
I’m in agreement --but I believe it’s a lot easier to fight the fall than fight them once they are in power. They in this case being Republican fascists. I don’t advocate for stopping at just voting. I encourage people to run for election and get involved with local and national politics
Being able to choose between slave owners or the only other option is totally a real choice…
Both parties are not the same, but it is still a uniparty. Worst of all, it is one where the other side of the country has been conditioned for the same: choose what they believe to be the depravity and downfall of their way of life, or the only other option.
This is why in other countries we have more than two parties, and why the ones that are Heritage Foundation funded influence operations want to change this.
I don’t think you know what the word “uniparty” means
Technically, I can see where you are right, but in practice, you have one single party to choose from all the same, with a heavy cultural divided determining which party that is for you.
I would focus more criticism as to why there aren’t more than two parties in the US government than fighting over a word definition that just absconds the real problem.
This statement is so american it makes my head hurt. Two parties is the reason you don’t have a democracy, and the instant “if not then you are anti my team” response shows how dead your democracy really is. Without even the ability to have a third option you don’t have a democracy, you have a red vs blue dictatorship.
If someone won’t vote against fascism they are against me, yes. If you think that’s an American take, I’ll accept the inaccurate compliment.
Without even the ability to have a third option you don’t have a democracy, you have a red vs blue dictatorship.
I mean, literally what primaries are for, but yes, our democracy is dead. Ranked choice voting is necessary. The senate flies in the face of proper representation.
you have a red vs blue dictatorship.
You don’t know what the word dictatorship means.
If someone won’t vote against fascism they are against me, yes.
What if you don’t recognise fascism?
If someone won’t vote against fascism they are against me, yes. If you think that’s an American take, I’ll accept the inaccurate compliment.
See that is the issue, not having a choice other then status quo or fascism is not a real choice and you doubling down on the team bullshit is just sad. Nether of the current parties should exist and in almost every other nation these parties would have been put out to pasture long ago. If you are just voting for the not fascist then you are voting for the ruling party, its not a hard concept.
I mean, literally what primaries are for, but yes, our democracy is dead. Ranked choice voting is necessary. The senate flies in the face of proper representation.
Primaries are run by the 2 parties and everyone in the world can see they are not fair and clearly fixed to some degree. We are in agreement that your democracy is dead, but I am stating that it has been dead for a long time and it’s been doing damage world wide (like a really bad weekend at Bernie’s).
You don’t know what the word dictatorship means.
A dictatorship is a form of government which is characterized by a leader, or a group of leaders, who hold absolute or near-absolute political power. Just because you have two groups take turns does not change the fact that the us is run by a group of leaders who hold near-absolute power (now with no checks or balances!).
There was a time when we considered countries where women couldn’t vote as a “democracy”
The goal posts shifted. As they should.
In the 21st century, I don’t think we can call a system without rank choice voting a democracy. The US has never met modern standards of a Democracy
In the 21st century, I don’t think we can call a system without rank choice voting a democracy. The US has never met modern standards of a Democracy
While I very much hope the goal posts can be shifted that far, I think we haven’t quite made it there yet
That eliminates pretty much the entire commonwealth except Australia, right?
I think clinging on to inherited royalty is another big point against “democracy”, no matter how vestigial.
In the 21st century, I don’t think we can call a system without rank choice voting a democracy
I’m not sure you can call a country a democracy if parties are fully outlawed.
They decided to wait and see if Trump won, and if Homan then accepted bribes. It would be a much more airtight case. So the Biden people handed the investigation off to the Trump people, no doubt holding out the vain hope that the career people would persuade the political people that someone taking a bag of cash was something that ought to be investigated.
The fucking ineptitude of the Liberal elites never ceases to amaze me.
Paid To Lose
The reality is that the democrats would much rather have a fascist dictatorship, than work in the interest of the people. The answer to “why?” has always, and will always be “money”. They sold out the american people to fascists, because openly taking bribes is more important than the lives of minorities.
The democrats have held a trifecta of power twice in the past 15 years, and both times they have managed to do absolutely fuck all. Why? Because they weren’t paid to actually do any of the things they promised their voters. They just used those talking points because people would vote for them.
More specifically, because they need to maintain the capitalist status quo that they sincerely believe in (on top of raking it in), so they believe fascism to be the lesser evil, and they think they can control fascism.
They’re not inept, they’re corrupt
Little bit of column A, little bit of column B
It’s not news. My personal date for the start of dictatorship in the United Stated is March 14, 2025: that’s the first instance of Trump and his henchmen disobeying a court decision.
My date is 2014 when a Princeton study concluded that the USA is not a democracy, but an oligarchy.
I think it was earlier, when the supreme Court ruled that the president could do what he wanted as long as it was part of his duties and THEY get to decide what is part of his duties.
Yes I did say duty. Grow up.
Imagine not being able to distinguish between the words duty and doody.
- The English Gang
Mans be getting his duties all over the constitution
Thank you for this because I wasn’t serious about growing up. Never grow up!
🤭
IMO it’s the day he took power the second time.
As he said plainly, “I’ll be a dictator from day one”. And then millions of Americans looked at his record, looked at all the crimes he’d been found guilty of, considered his promise, and voted for him anyway.
Real Darwin Award shit.
What amazes me is that no one says he cheated to win like he did the first time. I would be very surprised if we couldn’t find some trace years later that we didn’t notice.
That’s because MAGA claimed Biden cheated for so long and so loudly that people were tired of hearing it and wanted to show they were better than the MAGAs.
As always they accused their opponent of what they were going to do themselves, and it continues to work for them.
It’s just kind of a pointless thing to be mad about at this point, but it was definitely talked about.
I think in the first run it was discussed more frequently. That’s all.
There was that whole thing with Elon Musk and those “vote counting computers” in Pennsylvania.
I would trace it back to September 11, 2001 at least. Specifically, the highly authoritarian response to that. There’s a direct line from what the US government started doing then to what they’re doing now.
The patriot act was being prepared long before 9/11.
Yes indeed. Bin Laden can be proud, the terrorists won
It happened November 5th 2024 when he, Elon and Putin stole the election. We’ve been cooked ever since.
Shouldn’t you be busy putting your case together to show your evidence in court?
TBF, this shitball started way back when Reagan sculpted handfuls from his own crack and named it all “policy”.
That’s only because you haven’t been paying attention. The US has been on this path for decades.
1832 called and wants to remind you of Worcester v. Georgia. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Worcester-v-Georgia
Never had been
Correct. The US is now one of those shit hole countries Trump keeps talking about.
This headline is so fucking wrong it might as well be misinformation…
Like, it’s the same flawed thinking that says there can’t be a communist democracy.
We’re 100% an oligarchy, and a sham if a democracy…
But that’s not new at all, trump is just terrible at hiding shit.
Telling people “America isn’t a democracy” like some just changed isn’t helping anything
Quasi-democracy is probably the best way to put it. To be an outright oligarchy that would have to be a more explicit thing. Instead we have what masquerades as a democracy despite actually functioning as an oligarchy
Instead we have what masquerades as a democracy despite actually functioning as an oligarchy
Just like every other oligarchy…
I’ll never understand why people legitimate think people used to run around saying:
I’m evil, am doing evil things, everyone knows it, but no one will stop me.
Propaganda has been around since Og told everyone Grog just fell over for no reason and hit his head on that rock 5-10 times.
Even back to “real” oligarchs like medieval royalty, none of the peasants thought it was an oligarchy at the time. They thought royalty was chosen by God and who were they to argue with God?
By your metric of people needing to recognize in the moment, we’ve never had an oligarchy and never will, and you don’t even seem to understand that.
The only time the populace realizes they live under an oligarchy is the short time it takes them to have a revolution.
Right like “we have what masquerades as a democracy” so it’s am oligarchy, you’re just too chicken shit to call it that LOL. What’s under the MASK? Or did OP forget what “masquerade” meant ??
He may have cheated to win the last election and he’s at least somewhat likely to run a third time and cheat to win that too.
I don’t really give a fuck about your nuanced opinion on how things were before vs. now.
I’m just happy you and others finally woke the fuck up…
Silver linings and all.
But I don’t see how getting pissed at people who saw this coming will help you
Logically you should be apologizing instead and asking for advice…
But if logic was your strong suit, we’d have been having this conversation a decade ago
Lmao burned. The first thing that came to mind when I saw the headline was the experience of southern Blacks trying to vote between 1870 and 1965. The White terrorists made sure America was not a democracy. The thing now is that more of our White brothers and sisters are starting to find out this truth, and it is shocking.
The first thing that came to mind when I saw the headline was the experience of southern Blacks trying to vote between 1870 and 1965. The White terrorists made sure America was not a democracy. The thing now is that more of our White brothers and sisters are starting to find out this truth, and it is shocking.
Still streets behind I’m afraid…
“The Negro Holocaust: Lynching and Race Riots in the United States, 1880-1950” states that, contrary to present-day popular conception, lynching was not a crime committed exclusively against black people. Between the 1830s and the 1850s the majority of those lynched in the United States were whites. From 1882-1968, some 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States (not all lynchings were recorded). Of these, 3,446 or 73 percent were black and 1,297 (27 percent) were white. In other words, whites were the victims of more than one-fourth of all lynchings in the United States.
Now, the first Black man to vote in Alabama (maybe it was Georgia, going off memory) was shot in the back by the Klan. But before they used violence primarily against minorities, they first used it against any white person who was publicly against racism.
But if we’re talking about white people finally figuring this shit out, that was almost 200 years ago.
None of this shit is new, and the reason we’re still having to fight, is people refuse to learn how long we’ve been fighting.
I know this is a much later date (1946), but i figured i should share this Wikipedia page on The Battle of Athens
This is who we are as a nation.
That was just one of the most infamous too…
Copping was one of the few ways an “able bodied man” could get out of WW2, so those pigs got used to just bullying women and frail men, and didn’t want to stop when a bunch of war hardened locals showed back up.
One group thought they were tough, but the vets really were.
Maybe part of the reason there’s still fighting is that the guy just agreed with you and you were still an argumentative dick about it.
Have to stand up for the Whites in America. They’re the real victims here o7
Black lives matter. They always have. White lives matter, too. The truth is, lives matter.
Lmao all lives matter ok
Huh. Really thought we were making progress …
No worries
Hmm, you usually have pretty accurate takes on things so I’m going to take a second to reply to this.
When you respond to “Black Lives Matter” with “All Lives Matter”, you’re saying in effect that Black Lives Don’t Matter and we can continue with the status quo, which is White Supremacy. The article you linked described White on White violence throughout America in the 19th century, which has nothing to do with the structural racism Blacks face in America (and Whites do not) but instead is used as a distraction to discourage change. Talib Kweli explains it pretty well:
ELLIOTT: You said, of course all lives matter. But until black lives matter, all lives won’t matter. Can you expound on that a little bit?
KWELI: Yeah, well, the problem with a lot of social movements for change is that people who are on the opposite side of this change, people who don’t get to experience why we’re even protesting in the first place, they start to feel guilty and they start to feel like their relationship to the situation is more important than the actual situation. So right now, police brutality has not gotten worse in this country, we just have cell phones with cameras on them, now. So now the things that hip-hop has been saying for years, the things that activists have been saying for years, are now videotaped. The fact that the police disproportionately brutalize communities of color, now we can not just show you the stats, or just yell it from the mountaintops or just say it in a song. Now we can show you the videotape. And so it’s clear that the police are doing this disproportionately to us. To young people of color, to black people. And so that’s the issue. When you make it about all lives matter, you’re making it about yourself. When you’re saying what about white people, you make it about yourself. When you say what about black-on-black violence, you’re somehow saying because you personally believe that black people are more prone to violence that somehow that means we don’t have the right to exist. That’s a very slippery slope. It’s very dangerous to think that– You know, first of all, black-on-black violence is a myth. All races kill each other more than other races. Do black people kill each other disproportionately more than other races? Yes. Because disproportionately we have higher unemployment. Disproportionately we’re forced into poverty. We have, we don’t get to be educated. We get denied jobs. We get denied good housing, good healthcare. And that creates crime. So yes, poor people are going to murder each other more than rich people are, definitely. But that comes from white supremacy. That comes from Jim Crow. That comes from the prison-industrial complex. If you don’t add a historical context or historical perspective to your discussion, then you’re being selfish, you’re being a coward, and you’re making it about your personal feelings.
But even if we don’t agree on this point, we do agree on a lot of other things that we both agitate for (like such hot takes as “Genocide is Bad”). Kweli also spoke to your point about how now more people are seeing the footage of what the Black community has been undergoing for hundreds of years, which is fascism (and never was Democracy) so the truth is undeniable for more and more non-Blacks.
You are probably already familiar with this but the history of the Black Panther Party is illustrative of this theme. The BPP “represent[ed] the greatest threat to internal security of the country” according to the director of the FBI. One of the more troubling aspects of the BPP was their Free Breakfast for School Children Program. In the J. Edgar Hoover quote above, “internal security” was being used euphemistically for… you guessed it, White Supremacy.
I don’t really get the thinking that he’ll run for another term. In order to do that, he’d need to not just defy some court order, but throw the constitution out in a way so blatant that even the people not paying attention could see it (given that the two term limit is common knowledge). And if he does that, why would he do it in the form of “I’m running in another election”, even if rigged, rather than just declaring “my term no longer expires, I’m president for life”?
Stewart’s cast spoke with a professor who worked with our CIA to develop a predictive model for a country’s destabilization.
She speaks on this and calls us an anocracy. Basically the state of being between democracy and authoritarian which is, predictively, one of two key destabilizing factors.
She further states that by no one’s definition of democracy are we a democracy anymore.
Take that however you like.
Seriously. American liberals still acting totally unaware of what their country is is very on brand.
It’s like taking a submarine to look at the Titanic, spending all day exploring, come back up to the surface…
And with complete and utter sincerity saying:
I’m not sure if that ship really is unsinkable…
Like, progressives have been saying this for well over a decade everywhere.
Did people really forget about the 2016 primary already?
Liberals dismissed the 2016 primary as it was happening, that’s what I remember.
Did they ever stop? I don’t think I’ve ever seen liberals (party or base) grapple with how sinister that primary was.
No, they haven’t, and obviously never will. The narrative seems to have switched to “yeah it sucks but move on already!”
Why the fuck would I move on when the attitude that caused this hasn’t changed at all?The exact same shit could happen today and these guys would do the exact same rhetoric bullshit they did then, so how the fuck am I supposed to be just like “yeah you’re right it’s fine now.”
It’s because it is not an especially significant incident within the framework of the system. Parties are private entities with a long history of shenanigans going back to the very beginning. The parties are actually a lot more “democratic” than they have been at other points in history and the 2016 shenanigans were relatively minor. If Bernie were making a stink about it things would likely be different but he isn’t so only Republicans and their allies still care. What actually matters is state power, specifically how it is organized and wielded has changed in increasingly anti-democratic ways. Liberals are definitely starting to wake up to the reality facing the US, you can see them freaking out with some regularity in various opinion columns over the past several months. The situation hasn’t fully sunk in yet with all of them is all it is, there are many who are still in varying degrees of denial. There’s also a huge number who are somewhat naive, barely pay attention to politics, and are largely ignorant of reality until it becomes unavoidable. As reality becomes increasingly unavoidable we will see more and more of these liberals waking up and getting radicalized. They seem to historically be slow to recognize what is happening and have to be dragged into actually fighting fascism but they should get there eventually.
Parties are private entities with a long history of shenanigans going back to the very beginning.
If you think 2016-2025 was “normal” for a political party…
You either have no idea what that DNC was doing, or are so you g you never saw a DNC before the neoliberals corrupted it.
I don’t think that. If that is what you took away from my comment you may want to try reading it again.
If you want people to read a wall of text, you might want to start formatting your comments.
Have a nice life tho bud
Well maybe you should rewrite it then because calling the things the DNC did “relatively minor shenanigans” makes it seem like you don’t think it was a big deal when it very obviously was.
i’ve been hearing about how the electoral college means that the federal government is a sham democracy since 2002, and money as political influence means we live in an oligarchy since the 90s. this is not new, just no one has been listening to the warnings of marginalized people until now when the ruling class deploys fascism to crush dissent
Ross Perot would like to have a word with you, lol
like some just changed
Some what?
The US briefly experimented with democracy during Reconstruction but that was quickly defeated and it never happened again.
