Does the US really have no instruments in case a newly elected president immediatelly and openly exposes he's a nazi?
Does the US really have no instruments in case a newly elected president immediatelly and openly exposes he's a nazi?
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.
Oh nice, someone created a JavaScript-heavy website based on >100MB minimals.cc boilerplate to compose something that could well be made of a single HTML document.
Couldn't keep a:
34 count felon
Child rapist
Fraudster
Tax dodger
Draft dodger
Grifter
Deadbeat
Wife beater
Philanderer
Classified documents thief
Obstructionist
Out of office... so why would they be able to keep a Nazi out?
Tax dodger
and draft dodger lol
Forgot that. Added.
We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear's work, that is its affair. We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come.
Joseph Goebbels
The US government is not (and has never been) against fascism for ideological reasons. Fascism and American-style democracy go hand in hand quite well. Our government fought a war against fascists because they disrupted the global trade status quo and threatened US economic prosperity and that of our primary trade partners.
Technically even the time we did it only officially after the fascists declared war on us first. It was all lend lease, etc before that.
You're totally right, the US government and business elite were content to make money from both sides of the conflict right up until Dec 7, 1941 and the subsequent DoWs from Germany and Italy (once the US declared on Japan). They may have favored Britain and France in trade/indirect support somewhat before that, but that was more a result of historical diplomatic and economic ties, rather than any issue with the German political system.
It has impeachment. The list of reasons for impeachment are (quite possibly intentionally) vague. But it has to be done through Congress.
You mean for the guy who was already impeached twice... And still voted for to be president?
Assuming America is a democracy is the first mistake. killing the native population, viewing non land owners, poc and many more as lessors. Let's not forget who wrote the constitution.
The Constitution assumes the people through the ballot box or through protest would clean up any issues like that
Depends how you define "instruments". For example, there was a recent survey that we have something like 500 million, uh, instruments.
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.
The problem is also that the Republican party is a fascist party, so the other check, impeachment, is thoroughly useless.
If you have only one party on the ballot and it's a fascist party, you don't really have a democratic choice do you? You can either vote for fascism or not vote for it.
If you have a fascist party on the ballet In an ONLY TWO partys political system, you don't really have a democratic choice do you? You can either vote for fascism or not vote for it.
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.
Fifth columnists love FPTP. It minimises their workload.
This is the result of ever-expanding executive power.
2A
This x1000.
Few things frustrate more than a fellow leftist who still refuses to arm themselves in today's climate. I truly believe that the world needs fewer guns, but read the room for fuck's sake. There are far too many people in the US that want our kind dead, simply because we exist. All they need is for their God Emperor to say the word.
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.
Normally, it would be the electoral system that would act as the check. But otherwise, it doesn't put any other limits based on political belief and affiliation (other than having allegiances to other political powers). If the majority wanted to elect someone who wishes to abolish the democratic election system, then that is what they will get.
That's possibly for the better. Being able to bar given political alignments or affiliation from office would either need to be so specific so as to be useless (a modern nazi typically has little directly to do with the original), or be broad enough that it'd be a dangerous thing, since it could be used in either direction.
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.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
Those same safeguards that banned AfD years ago, thank god they exist!
Germany has a modern constitution created in response to nazis.
USA has extremely outdated constitution created by proto-nazis.
How were they proto nazi? That's a first.
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?
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….
If you really believe that the USA has "100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players" you are in delusion.
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"
Ah fuck you really going to make me infodump I hate you sm fr
Part 1: The Two Parties
In the 1960s Civil Rights movement a deep political polarization began which results in wealthy interests backing the Republican party more and more, President Ronald Reagan in return shifted the party away from unions and towards deregulated and low tax markets and industries, and when Democrats introduced a campaign finance reform to curb the issue in 1995 it failed but was reintroduced and passed in 2002 it furthered that divide yet again, that bill was then sued by Citizens United wealthy interests and the SCOTUS sided with Citizens United as a Partisan 5-4 decision. So now we live in a world where political divide has all of the wealthy interests backing one side whose policies are actually extremely unpopular but people are easily misled into not knowing the stances of people they are voting for, or misled on the repercussions of those actions.
Figure 1: Partisanship of Congressmen
Figure 2: Partisanship of citizens
Part 2: Legislative Requirements of the USA
The USA has steps to pass laws:
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It gets called to vote by majority leader and passes the House of Representatives, which is capped at 435 congressmen allotted very very roughly proportional to the state populations.
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It gets called to vote by majority leader and passes the Senate with a simple majority of 51 votes, unless a handful of senators decide to filibuster it to delay the vote indefinitely, in which case the bill gets amended with concessions and sent back to the House for yet another round of voting. Filibuster can be bypassed with 60 votes which is basically impossible due to aforementioned partisanship.
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The president signs it into law.
Now the problem here is that to remove a congressman, the president, or a supreme court judge: you need 60 votes following a successful impeachment inquiry. So it never happens.
Part 3: Foreign Interests
Influential media from the Murdochs, the Kochs, and the CCP are constantly pushing the USA further into the grave they've been digging for 50 years. China has always been a source of cheap labor and the relationship soured greatly following the Chinese influences on Korean and Japanese elections during the time those two nations were rebuilding following the World War era and were under the watchful eye of the US Military who were a central figure in the aforementioned conflict. This divide deepened with the 1984 Tienanmen Square Massacre where cities all over China were quelled by military forces being deployed on their own people. But far from being the end of it, the Pacific was still a prime trade route where the USA sought profits, and so Chinese influence continued to spread more as the days went by.
Part 4: Where We Are Now
President Obama was denied a lifelong SCOTUS nomination in an election year, giving the nomination to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump was granted yet another lifelong SCOTUS nomination in an election year. The SCOTUS was thusly deeply conservative.
His court nominations allowed him to run for office despite not qualifying under the insurrection clause, because if the courts choose not to reverse a lower court decision that he wasn't barred from office then nobody is enforcing the law.
Billionaires bought or operated their own home made social medias in the USA, the CCP deployed TikTok campaigns to elect a fascist.
This isn't just a thing that happened which we were unprepared for. It's a thing that has been happening for decades which so many of us have been desperately attempting to stop.
This is good information, a few follow up questions:
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what does China gain by influencing the US to elect a fascist? It's clear what us billionaires gain, less so for China
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where are the breaks on choo choo train to Nazi America, based on this trend?
USA military interventions in Asia have been a constant concern for a long time, and the USA allied Korea and Japan directly oppose Chinese expansion and Chinese allied North Korea. The USA military control of the pacific ocean is seen as a wall to be overcome. The Chinese deeply despise the existence of NATO; the world's largest mutual defence pact, and the US Government as barriers between them and their expansionist goals.
For examples, the takeover of Hong Kong and Taiwan almost failed due to US support, and their econimic use of Philippine and Australian seas have faced setbacks.
China is openly allied with other USA adversaries such as Iran and Russia.
It also helps that President Trump has repeatedly praised and admired Xi Jinping openly in public. The USA Tariffs will have no effect on Chinese trade profits at all as USA citizens will instead pay the fees. The less average faith a US Citizen has in their country and the more easily radicalized they are to harm their country, the better it is for China. They constantly predict the downfall of America and the rise of China in a single breath.
If you want evidence of all of this then look no further than the quotes of Chinese officials and the ideals of "communist parties" of the USA.
- The brakes would be electing 60 democrats to senate to pass campaign finance reform, public healthcare with no concessions, and tax reform. As they have repeatedly tried to do for many years but always come up short of votes. Bonus points if they expand the court, house, and senate but I dont know if its an achievable goal until after the campaign finance reform.
-
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He knew it from the beginning. People didn't listen.
He also didn't want to be president or have his face on money. They really just ignored the dude.
I guess ignoring Washington's wishes foreshadowed what the US would eventually become.
Who would have thought a government created in model of a constitutional monarchy would do this?
Oh right, all the people who opposed the US constitution. People forget the Anti Federalists every time.
That's what 2a is supposed to be for
2A is supposed to facilitate millitias in case England attacks again.
The 2A was so that the Federal gov't wouldn't have a standing army. That went out the window really quickly when a Federal force under the first president had to be raised to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. At the time, the 2A should have been repealed or rephrased at least. Don't forget that one of the jobs of the US gov't, as defined in The Constitution (which admittedly, doesn't mean much now when we have a president who is clearly does not qualify under the 14th Amendment), is to put down domestic violence.
2A is for attacking minorities, maintaining jim crowe, etc. Grow up.
you've got it backwards. gun control from the beginning has been about racists keeping guns out of the hands of uppity blacks.
The CIA can always assassinate a president who gets too far out of line,
like what happened to JFK,but they don't tend to mind the right so much as the left.Trump spent his first term selling classified documents to enemies of the state that revealed the identities of CIA operatives and got them killed and so far they have done nothing about it. I think it's safe to say the CIA is not as scary as hollywood wants us to believe.
The CIA is right
leaningwing globally and at homeThe CIA is not great at high profile assassination, their declassified documents are plenty scary though.
They have a long history of infiltrating foreign governments and assassinating world leaders, so what makes you think they'd have trouble doing the same in the US? Surely, during the height of the Cold War, they would've had contingencies for America electing a socialist. If they did back then, then who did what when to change that situation? Nobody's really said no to the CIA since, again, Kennedy fired Dulles and was assassinated shortly afterward.
Law enforcement tends to lean conservative...
There are many conservatives, who hold democratic values, freedom, and the US constitution in high regard. Those in government service have sworn an oath to protect it against enemies foreign and domestic. They have their red lines and breaking points. The ones in powerful positions draw their whole legitimacy from it.
Yes, the President can be impeached and removed by Congress. On the opposite side of the coin a President can veto laws passed by Congress, which Congress can override but it's harder than passing a law. The problem is when Congress also goes nazi at the same time. In that case we're fucked. In fact I think Article 97 sub-paragraph E13/W even says, "Such conditions and circumstances shall by Law constitute Fuckage."
If the US military goes Nazi, then the USA is beyond fucked.
I think the US is beyond fucked already. The fact that Bonespurs could get elected president not once but twice is a clear sign that America's collective intelligence has dropped below Idiocracy level. A complex society can withstand a lot of stupidity as long as there are enough people who can keep the opportunists in their place, but that's not true anymore. I'm not just talking about people who voted for him, I'm including the several million people who voted for Biden in 2020 but refused to vote for Harris in 2024. They were the safety net that decided to fold itself up and go home. We're done.
Cool, but half the country supports this shit. And no, people who don't vote don't matter in this context.
That is by design. If the "majority" of the country wants the US to be Nazis, that is the direction it will go. That is how a representative democracy works. The flaw was the founders assuming retarded puppets would not be elected by even an uneducated public. But, they also didn't plan for automatic weapons either. Well, they sort of did, they said we should be rewriting the constitution every so many years so it can evolve with the times, but we chose to enshrine and misinterpret it like a civic bible. Oops.
It turns out that a handful of young land-owning white men from the 1700s, born almost 200 years before the advent of game theory, didn't actually properly anticipate every way in which the political system they were designing could fail.
Is it really failure by their standards? How many of them owned slaves? How many of them viewed women as essentially property?
I mean, I think they'd have considered a civil war less than 100 years after the founding of the country to be a pretty good indication of failure.
As for the modern world, they explicitly talk about trying to design a system so that a tyrant doesn't become president. All the supposed checks and balances that were supposed to prevent that turned out to be as effective as wet tissue paper. The founders also cared a lot about the president not being corrupt, and drafted the emoluments clause(s) to prevent that, and Trump has just completely ignored those clauses. I think they'd have been pretty upset about that, and wondering why the law of the land was just being ignored.
Lol they fucked up real bad. I mean, Washington wanted 2 terms to be the norm. So why didn't he just advocate for that to be... ye know... written into the fucking constitution?
Also, they had a contingent election like just 4 years after his retirement, because checks notes Pres and VP are just 1st and second place? And electors cast 2 votes for the same office? NANI?!? What a bunch of mess. (Imagine if the Federalists just tell their electors to, instead of voting 65 for Adams and 65 for the VP, just vote all 130 for Adams, 0 for the VP candidate. Just win with a Federalist Pres and Democratic-Republican VP. Oh wait checks 1796 election that actually happened. They got a Federalist Pres and Democratic-Republican VP because of shenanigans. Imagine a trump-walz or harris-vance. What a dumb ass idea. It failed so bad, they had to write an entire amendment to fix this shit. 🤣
(When I read about that, my brain just had an aneurism, like WTF is that election system?!?)
The funny thing is that so much of it is based on the idea that everyone involved is going to be on their best behaviour, working for the good of the country, compromising with their opponents, and so-on. And, then it all falls apart as soon as one person realizes that they get an advantage as soon as they simply ignore the norms.
Also, don't forget that there was less than a century between the revolution and the civil war. If your brand new form of government is so poor that a significant fraction of your population thinks a civil war is preferable to resolving things through that system, your system isn't very good.
I mean, Washington wanted 2 terms to be the norm.
He didn't, that's just a whitewashed version we tell ourselves.
He just didn't want the President to be viewed as a monarch or a lifetime appointment. He turned down a third term because he feared he would die in office and the public would believe that's the norm.
The US was the first large scale modern democracy. Of course it has design flaws.
Parlamentarism, as we know it now, had only been recently established in the UK in the 17rh century.
Contemporary to US early democracy were absolutist monarchies based on aristocracy. Separation of powers envisioned by Montesquieu, Rousseau‘s social contract, were still new political ideas. The federalist papers and later US constitution were cutting edge political theory at the time.
It’s very impressive that the US has lasted so long actually and was able to adapt. The French established their first democratic republic later and were unable to create a stable state.
it's working as intended
What’s your definition of Nazi? I would think Andrew Jackson still a worse president than Trump. And not even the Supreme Court was able to stop him
Impeachment, but that starts with a 218 vote in the House and the House is on his side.
So you actually need majority to PREVENT the collapse of democracy, and if you don't have it, you're fucked? How the fuck did this country even manage not to succumb into dictatorship for such a long time?
The ruling class was able to get along well enough up until the US Civil War, at which point the slavers decided they were willing to tear the country apart to keep on slaving. I include this because the Nazis were inspired by Jim Crow and how we did things over here. Fascism started bubbling up in the early 20th century because industrialization and capitalism polluted everything and made people work awful hours and all that, and liberalism and conservatism hadn't fixed it. There was a serious coup attempt forming in the early 30s called the Business Plot, but they went to a war hero Marine general who told them to fuck off and told the federal government about it.
At least in the US, we're in this situation now because authoritarians have been working toward it since the 60s (the Powell Memo was written in 1971 I think) and they've taken advantage of how terribly the Constitution is written, along with consolidation of wealth and stoking backlash to all the civil rights movements to get people to back them. The worst part is that it's a feedback loop: since Reagan took power, Republicans campaign on "look how bad the government is!" and make the government worse once they're in office, which feeds their cause.
tl;dr capitalism makes living conditions terrible, people abandon liberalism and conservatism for socialism/communism/etc and fascism, liberals don't want much to change, fascism lives or dies based on how much conservatives sell out to/ally with them. The fact that we're doing this all again shows to me that liberalism is a dead ideology and capitalism is going to kill us if we don't kill it first.
Worse... The House makes the impeachment charge, that's a 50% majority vote.
THEN it goes to the Senate for conviction where you need a 2/3rds majority to remove them. 67/100.
That's the body which can't do anything because they're blocked by a 60 vote super majority to over-ride a filibuster.
So you get 218 in the House, goes to the Senate, needs 60 votes to end debate and proceed with charges, then 67 votes to convict and remove.
Trump's first impeachment got 48 and 47 votes.
His second was 57 votes.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_impeachment_trial_of_Donald_Trump
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_impeachment_of_Donald_Trump
If he had been convicted, he would have been inelligible to run in '24.
If enough people in a democracy decide that they want a dictatorship instead, then there is no stopping it, because rules don't matter at this point. The trick is to not let it get this far. Tough shit for the US, though.
I mean imagine if you could impeach the president without a majority. That would be the death of democracy. Just to put things in perspective: The GOP democratically won both houses of Congress and the presidency and because of DNC incompetence also has the Supreme Court. Them being able to do whatever the fuck they want is, in a way, democracy working as intended. It'd be weirder (and much more undemocratic) if there was a way to remove a sitting president without the Supreme Court or Congress.
Well the country didn't previously have a legion of mouth breathing retards screaming at the top of their lungs about micro-aggressions and declaring that the nation was illegitimate. I'd also question your metrics for deciding now that he's an openly Nazi dictator, other than parroting what you hear from other
peoplesocial media accounts.
We’re ignoring the constitution already.
14th Amendment. Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
The man is an adjudicated insurrectionist. Congress just ignored their duty.
So yes, there “are” protections. Said protections are simply being ignored.
The problem with 14th amendment is that the people who wrote that never specified an enforment mechanism. So we don't know how to properly invoke it. Any attempts to invoke it would just result in the supreme court spontaneously "invent" a method of enforcement. They could say that the supreme court get to decide if someone is ineligible, then rule that trump is eligible because the supreme court doesn't have enough evidence to prove trump was involved in Jan 6, or just declare Jan 6 to be a "protest" not insurrection.
I bet pardoning the 1/6ers qualifies as giving aid and comfort.
Only if there's anyone left in government who will enforce the law. We couldn't get that done with a democrat pres and a democrat DOJ, we're not getting it done now that the maganazis control everything.
Unless those Democrats still in washington have levers they can pull that none of us know about, or some Republicans grow a conscience (insert laughing hispanic guy meme here) I have legitimate fear about what the next four years will bring.
For the first time in my life I'm typing something critical of our government and elected officials and wondering if someone is going to bash my door down for it a year from now.
Well if we consider the Constitution unable to be enforced, its worthless, and the states can chose to disregard the same 14th Amendment and secede. https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=akronlawreview
Can't be a very good protection if it can just be ignored. I was under the impression that in the US, the constitution is strictly executed, though it looks like even that is a lie
People who say they follow the Bible are usually lying too. And anything that's allowed to be left up to interpretation and still be called "law" is bound to be corrupted when convenient and ignored when convenient.
It's like the ICC and UN. They just make suggestions. Whether they are followed or effectively enforced depends on who's in the dock.
The country just elected this guy knowing that this is what he would do. That's democracy.
And knowing that he's a convicted felon. And twice impeached. And almost certainly a rapist. And a successful conman.
Efficient propaganda is not democracy
But gullible people voting or not certainly is.
I'll bite: What is democracy to you?
Hmm.. it kind of is really. How do you separate democracy from the narratives that campaigning representatives espouse? It's a part of every democracy.
The mechanism was the election.
I mean, sure, impeachment and whatnot, but it's not like people didn't know who this guy was. I can give other institutions a whole bunch of crap for not getting rid of the guy the first time, but when you've given him a Supreme Court supermajority, both chambers of Congress and the presidency AFTER he attempted a coup I'm gonna say that's on you, guys.
The mechanism was the election.
That's making the very bold assumption that there was no interference in said election. In fact, we know for a fact that there was, we just don't know the extent of the interference and whether it changed the outcome. The reason we don't know is because it wasn't investigated (or if it was, it wasn't publicized), so I'm going to take the stance that it's very possibly on the outgoing administration, actually, for not making a bigger stink about it.
See, you think that doesn't make it sound like desperate deflection after having handed the country to the nazis, but it does. I was here during the campaign, I saw how that went.
Nah, man, there is no amount of interference that justifies Trump having a fart's chance in hell of not losing every single state in a country unwilling to hand the keys to these guys 1932-style. Beds were made, sleeping in them is to happen.
It just sucks that the rest of us are under the covers getting dutch ovened as well.
we just don’t know the extent of the interference and whether it changed the outcome.
We do.
There was close to zero in the polls. (Democratic and Independent poll watchers would've reported that, and I'm not seeing any of such reports)
The real interference was the far-right propaganda funded by unrestricted spendings thanks to Citizens United ruling.
We've always had interference, its just that now its getting more and more extreme, especially after Citizens United, exacerbated by modern technology (like social media that people use almost 24/7).
interference
If system relies on candidates not using legally allowed methods of advertisement (aka 'propaganda') that are deeply ingrained into every field of media and commerce, then probably there's a problem with the system in the first place. Many popular musicians, games or products gained popularity by the same kind of 'propaganda' working by the same mechanics yet people were always okay with that.
The mechanism was the election.
NSDAP was elected.
Exactly my point.
The mechanism is the three branches of power providing checks and balances and voting. But when the people elect them to all three branches. It kinda defeats the purpose
Also Benjamin Franklin said that he believed constitution should torn up and redone every 30 years. We shouldn't even be using it 200 years later.
I know about Jefferson and his 20 year automatic sunset phase for laws at all levels, except for Constitutions, charters, and other founding documents that can be amended. Hadn't heard that Franklin wanted to sunset the Constitution itself as well. Not sure that we would have lasted this long if Franklin had gotten his way there. I do think that Jefferson and Madison were on the right track with the federal, state, and local laws though. Tyranny of the dead and all that.
Trump has admitted he rigged the election
Trump has said that Elon "knows those computers better than anybody ... And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide".
First of all, we know that to be false because we know Elon doesn't know shit about computers. But, aside from that, there are multiple possible interpretations of what he meant, anything from "Elon rigged the election" to "Elon ensured the integrity of the election".
My policy is "Don't believe anything Trump says about anything". I don't change that policy when he says something that I want to believe is true.
Impeachment. That's it.
But you're also forgetting that in the US states have a significant amount of power. For example the President cannot cancel elections. If a state cancels elections they just don't get counted.
There's a lot in that particular area that shields people from federal government stupidity.
They can ignore election results though, or fraudulently certify them.
If they ignore election results then they're illegitimate and the country is free to descend into chaos.
Our government leans heavily on decorum and good faith. Trump's success has been due to his refusal to adhere to decorum and good faith. Our system doesn't know how to handle that other than shaming and shaking fists so Trump gets free reign to do whatever he wants.
Its not just government its all social systems. Cheating only works if the large majority follow the rules. This is sorta what civil disobedience is about. Its to show that hey, guess what, we could all just start ignoring norms.
The voters were supposed to be that check and the Framers were explicit in that it was part of how they designed the Constitution.
Even regarding electing a felon, the Framers didn't want a case where one state pushed through a a felony conviction quickly to keep someone out of office.
That conviction was nothing like rushed.
That conviction wasn't rushed. But imagine it was the fall of 2020 and Trump thought there was a decent chance he might lose. Order his attorney general to indict candidate Biden on some random charge, force it through the courts to get a conviction, removing any judges that object or stall. Voila, Biden has a conviction and can't run against Trump.
Yes, being able to elect a criminal is by design. I'm sure all of the founders were designated as criminals by England. It's the will of the people over the government which was like their whole thing.
Until the people change their mind we are stuck with Trump and or his cronies.
He's just a symptom of the real problem, which is that he exposed himself as a nazi a long time ago and still got reelected.
In 1776, people didn't know what fascism was. Hell there wasnt even consensus on what capitalism was, Wealth of Nations was published that same year. They had never seen a capitalist system degenerate, as would happen in France under Louis Napoleon in the 1850s.
They knew what feudalism was, which was bad and a form of authoritarian autocracy, but this isn't Fascism. They were afraid that the kings and queens would get restored, as revolutionaries (and capitalism was revolutionary and progressive at that time) they were safeguarding against a counter revolution which would come from monarchists.
There is no way they could conceive of a movement to overthrow capitalism, which they barely understood although being the revolutionary capitalist class, that would come from a greater demand of social reforms, one where the class they were a part of would rule society rather than just administer it as they had for centuries, one where a class that they didn't even know about, the proletarian working class, would supplant them and bring greater prosperity and equality. This movement developed fully in Russia and Europe after the first world war when the last of the weakened feudal aristocracy destroyed their own continent to fight over scraps of colonial internationalism. A revolution in Russia inspired the global working class, especially where they were highly organized and industrialized such as Italy and Germany, and terrified the ruling capitalist classes of those countries.
In the shadow of the emerging workers movement grew the dialectical opposite and evil twin of German and Italian communism: Fascism. Fascists gleefully fight and kill communists, and desire power above all else, exploiting contradictions in liberal democracy (that's "liberal" meaning supports private property, not cool liberals that like freedom and justice) to confuse the masses and gain power. The ruling classes, weakened by decades of militant worker struggles, assented to the will of the fascists and in a last ditch effort to preserve their dwindling control, handed power over to them. The rest is history.
The founders couldn't conceive of the conditions you describe as they either didn't exist or wouldnt be developed enough to study for 50-70 years. Not all forms of authoritarianism are the same. They thought they were doing away with their version of it. Besides, the "founding fathers" gags violently would have fucking loved Trump
Capitalism is defederating power, otherwise youll end up centralizing power and end up under some form of authoritarianism. We have all these elites because of privaleges granted by the state, not capitalism. We need less state if we want more equality.
I used to land at basically this analysis myself, but there are definitely some assumptions that need to be addressed. We can probably agree that to a significant degree "money is power", or at least, money can elicit power, especially in terms of directing the actions of the desperate. We witness in our society - which is not pure "free market capitalism" - that inequality is rampant. There are theoretical explanations for this blaming both government intervention and just simply the behavior of individuals within the market that centralize wealth. And, conversely, there are theoretical explanations for how government can decentralize wealth, or how market participants can decentralize wealth (including boycotts, unions, etc.). The biggest challenge with this age-old "communism vs. capitalism" debate is that establishing overall tendencies for state vs. private actors requires exhaustive historical analysis, and is not even inherent to the nature of either actor, i.e., someone as a private actor, or state actor, can act in a way that either centralizes or decentralizes wealth. The only overarching principle you can even safely state is that the actions of a state are distinct from those as a private actor because of the "monopoly on violence" factor, i.e., the ability to enforce unfair demands that people can't escape in practice (a behavior that leftie types usually accuse capitalism of, inversely, by pointing to corporate monopoly power - which of course, depends on the dictates of a state or equivalent body to enforce).
The only way I was able to resolve the problems with this whole analytical framework - communism, capitalism, state, private - was to reject this terminology entirely and perform the analysis in terms of individual behavior, actions, inanimate vs. animate, and the ethical properties deriving from those. A "state" is a useful abstraction at times and a confusing complication at other times. "Capitalism" and "communism" as terms have no universally agreed upon definition, resulting in unproductive, endless, circular debates. What we're really trying to do is design a social system that maximizes outcomes for every criteria we like - equality, prosperity, individual wellbeing, health, lack of environmental externalities, etc.
I love the other comments you made, but I want to point out one other thing: How did those privileges come about? That is, what were the conditions that led to the government taking the power to grant companies de facto monopolies?
In some cases, it was an unintended consequence of political conditions. For example, private insurers came to rule our healthcare system because of a cap on income to raise funds for WW2. In order to get around this cap, employers offered non-cash benefits and the rest is history. Libertarians love this one, it's pretty cut and dry that a form of socialism shot itself in the foot.
However, there are many other cases where it was an unintended consequence of regulation written in blood. An easy and popular example is the FDA. Making food and adhering to food regulations at scale is definitely something that requires so much up front capital that it has been favoring existing corporations for quite a while, leading to a relatively small number of companies controlling a huge portion of the food supply. But that regulation came about because companies large and small, unfettered and unrestricted, were adulterating the food or cutting dangerous corners to maximize profit. The solution can't just be less regulation, those same companies will continue to dominate but now with the ability to outright feed us poison while buying or otherwise destroying any competition.
The state is the historical apparatus that manages the inherent contradictions between classes. It administrates capitalism for and by the ruling class. Capitalism is maintained by the state, the state sustains capital and private property, through violence.
Capitalism is a form of class domination, various forms of slavery stitched together to exploit the masses for the benefit of the few. Only a democratically organized working class can "fix" capitalism, by eradicating it. The government is the apparatus that temporarily fixes the contradictions of capitalism, but the relations defined by this irrational, inefficient social system (unless you consider monopolies efficient) are what state governments under capitalist rule try and eventually fail to "mitigate". The contradictions compile until you have an economic crash, which is actually good for monopolistic capitalists who can purchase the productive capital of their competitors at a fraction of the cost, leading to systematic downsizing; while the rest of the population suffers recession, inflation, and mass indignity.
The poor exist because there are rich. The capitalists are in control, as a class, and governments merely mitigate the worst tendencies. This is why reformism isn't a long term strategy. Capitalism can't be reformed, it can only be replaced.
And if we, the working class will be able to replace it with a system of greater freedom, equality and democracy, then the aims of socialism will have been reached without the "authoritarian" tendencies becoming reified in any significant way.
You can have your doubts about this, but your libertarian perspective is one of false appearances. If you want to understand the state and the economy, it must be considered as a series of relations brought about by human activity, using the tools laid before us by history and nature. If you think of the world like this, considering the subjective nature of politics and the economy, such as incentives, motives, etc., then your investigation will uncover the true relations that comprise this mass wage slavery to the billionaire class, known as capital.
Please elaborate.
As far as I know a very important side effect of the capitalism is the great concentration of power (aka money) in just some small individuals and how this creates an oligarchy which the only objective of extracting value form the other layers of the society. And of course the self perpetuation.
This have been happening since monopolies were created since centuries ago.
I really want to see how a system that by nature is concentrating power in some individuals really is really a de federated thing.
Just to be clear, your solution to saving democracy would be for the military to usurp a president who received the majority of the vote less than six months ago?
USA hasn't been a democracy for decades. It's hard to pin it down to a certain tipping point but I'd hazard it was when you decided that corporations are people and buying politicians is free speech.
Hold your ponies. The US is very much still a democracy, if a flawed one in many ways. The US has always been a country run by the wealthy elites, as are most countries in the world.
Buying politicians works, especially in the US, regardless of party. Democrats and Republicans are both the parties of big business and capital interests.
Besides laws around spending money for political purposes, the media landscape has revolutionized over the last 20 years. The role social media has played in Trump‘s ascendancy can’t be overstated. Trump spent less than Kamala Harris in this election and still won, because of his exceptional way to use media to his advantage.
Sometimes a voting population needs to be protected from the consequences of their vote, right? A good chunk of the German voting population in the 1930 voted the NSDAP and Hitler into power, and we can agree that it would have been for the best if that party and its leadership had been deposed ASAP. Now, the US isn't quite that far down the slide yet, but they're certainly slipping, and the worst part is that the checks and balances that are supposed to keep a president in line are also failing. Not to be alarmist, but we're in for a wild ride.
Your first question is pretty philosophical. All I can say, is that most representative governments place a huge emphasis on giving the people the power to write their own collective destiny.
A military takeover based on the desires of a minority of citizens would violate that principal. I don't think any reasonable person can call it saving democracy.
Sometimes a voting population needs to be protected from the consequences of their vote
Who should have the power to make that decision?
Do you want a benevolent king at the top that can dissolve parliament, dismiss government, call for new elections, make parties illegal, and censor the press?
Or maybe have something like an electoral college?
Or the army coups, if things get too far?
The ultimate check on power is the people. A general strike, large scale protests, and occupation of public buildings can topple a government. Institutions from military, police, local government, government agencies, and so on value their positions and won’t go down with a sinking ship.
The military has rules limiting what they can do, especially against acting within the US, and every service member is supposed to disobey illegal orders.
Second Amendment.
The odds aren't in our favor.
People who wrote the 2nd amendment cant even conceive the concept of what a fat man can do
The nuke is a bad example of the sheer power of the modern American military. It's also a bit outdated. That legal mechanism was drafted when many other modern weapons and tactics were not even dreamed of. Just a couple days ago the US military announced its strongest armor yet.
But I agree: your assault rifle may save you from others with an assault rifle, but it won't do shit if the military comes for you.
That's a non sequitur though, unless you're suggesting a tyrant would nuke the population he wanted to rule.
Apparently that's what America wants. You mean for a possible future where it's a bad thing?
You can impeach a president for any reason. You don't need a crime or such committed, all you need is congress to do it.
Be careful what you wish for though since the other party could do "tit for tat" with the president you support.
not like it changed, he was impeached twice, didn't mean shit. he's a felonious racist rapist, doesn't mean shit.
USA made this bed, now we fucking lie in it.
That gets to the root of the problem. We have "checks and balances" designed around the idea that separate institutions would check the excesses of each other. Even if you don't accept the "Republicans and Democrats work for the same people" theory, well, now all three branches of government are majority Republican, and not even in a way where there's significant internal division or strife, so it's just a bulldozer. The stupidity of not including popular recall votes in the Constitution - or really, just not having a mechanism for popular referendums, vetoes, etc. - is I think its biggest fault. The "representative democracy" model is inherently flawed because you can corrupt representatives, while corrupting an entire population, while not impossible, is a hell of a lot harder.
Be careful what you wish for though
No, I'm calling BS. They'll impeach anyone they think they can get away with it on. They investigated the shit out of Biden. They're not being held back by some for of fear of tit for tat decorum. That's wildly inaccurate.
For it to succeed, it would require congress to agree which they won't because they're conspiriting. And if it did get him out, then we get Vance who is also a Nazi. Protest, Resist, put up an fight, and wait in hopes that he's bad enough that the right and left people can field some half decent candidates and stop being nazi's
Alternatively, we're now making/selling a lot of armbands.
Well isn't that the reason everyone uses on why America needs so many guns. So they can stand up to the government? But seems it ment standing up to a government giving more people rights not one taking them away.
The mechanism is impeachment. It's broken because of polarization.
What do you mean by "nazi"
I believe this is where the second amendment comes into play. Luigi was on to something.
This is something we can all agree on, including Mr. President. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/us/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton.html
Not really.
In some countries, they have this idea of Defensive Democracy which would allow the government (via court ruling) to ban political parties that are deemed to be a threat to democracy.
In post WW2 Germany, the nazi party was banned, and later a "far-left" (aka: Marxist-Leninist) political party was banned during the cold war, because they meet Germany's definition of being anti-democratic.
Unfortunately, the US constitution does not have this concept of Defensive Democracy.
I mean we do have impeachment... but we all know how that is (doesn't work at all).
You say "unfortunately" but do you really trust the GOP with this kind of power?
Had the defensive democracy been in place after the civil war, we could have banned Confederate symbolism, the Dixiecrats and the then Democrat party.
A new conservative party would probably have been created.
The problem with any government system is that it's still operated by humans. It would have become corrupted but hopefully with a system in place to overturn the corruption.
Everyone has been bought and paid for https://lemmy.world/comment/13431373
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.
"100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy"? That's not even true in a very minimal definition of democracy, let alone if we also mean equal rights for all. Just off the top of my head:
The vote of racial minorities was not protected before 1965.
COINTELPRO was a thing just over 50 years ago, targeting whatever political group was considered undesirable by the FBI. The FBI was found to be using unlawful surveillance targeting protesters for the inexcusable killing of a black man by police as recently as five years ago.
Last election there was an attempt to overturn the election results. It's not taken as seriously as it should have because it failed, but it was literally an attempt to overthrow democracy. It's important to note that Trump was allowed to run for president and the case against him was dropped as soon as he got elected. I'm pointing it out because the system was already there to protect him and it's not something that he caused through his own actions as president.
There are so many unwarranted invasions of other countries, assassinations, and human rights violations that I don't even know where to link to as a starting point.
Don't forget the large scale surveillance both within and without the country.
And then there's all the undemocratic qualities of unregulated free market capitalism. Politicians are lobbied. News outlets belong to wealthy individuals who often have other businesses as well. Social media too. Technically, you get to cast a vote that is equal to everybody else's. But your decision is based on false data, and your representative is massively incentivized to lie to you and enact policies that server their lobbyists and wealthy friends instead. Do we all really have equal power?
So if you mean democracy in a very literal and minimal sense, that the people have some sort of power through their vote, that's technically still going on. If you mean in it a more general sense, where people have fundamental rights that are always protected regardless of race or other characteristics, and where power is not unfairly distributed between individuals and racial groups, then again not much has changed. Because that was never the case. If you think fascism was universally condemned then you just hadn't realized how widespread and normalized it always was. Maybe fascism is growing. Maybe it's becoming more blatant. But it was always there.
So if you mean democracy in a very literal and minimal sense[…]
If you mean in it a more general sense[…]
Where would ancient Greek democracy fall in this spectrum?
Where would ancient Greek democracy
They had slaves, so it wasn't particularly democratic.
I don't know if there's a meaningful way to treat that as a spectrum and to place political systems on it. I mostly pointed out the different definitions one might use so that people wouldn't read my examples of rights violations and think "what's that got to do with democracy?".
Also, there's no ancient Greek democracy. Greece was a bunch of city-states, each with its own political system. I know that in Athenian democracy there were slaves, and as you would image they didn't get a vote. Neither did the women. If it existed today it would probably not even be called a democracy by western standards.
So, giving the public a means of dealing with tyrannical leadership, either through intimidation or something more, is literally and unironically one of the intended use cases for the second amendment. That's not to say you won't face prosecution, but there it is.
Whoosh
we have systems for putting people like him in jail but we just didn't want to do it
I'm told three marked bullets work wonders.
Bro we have the oldest still in use codified constitution in the world and haven't updated it in 40 years, really longer. What exactly made you think this fucked up system was anywhere close to resilient?
We have the second amendment, but I don't know how bear arms will help.
ARM THE BEARS!
BEAR FLAG REPUBLIC!
Bear arms are not effective against HIMARS and drones, but history is full of small uprisings, winning.
But who will wield these instruments? It'd be more relevant if he made an effort to hide his nature before the election.
Right now the majority voted fascism with open eyes.
I think you're overestimating how many people keep their eyes open at all.
The army or the police should immediately jump in and arrest Elon after the second salute, when it became obvious the guy knew what he was doing. And yet he saluted 3 times and half the country is extremely enthusiastic about that.
... and half the country is extremely enthusiastic about that.
There's the reason nothing is done about it. It's probably not actually half, but enough people didn't speak up early enough, and so this has become the loudest voice in the room. Unless, and until that changes, the whole world is in for a rough ride.
This isn't Germany where they can just arrest nazis. First amendment (unfortunately) also apply to hate speech. 🤷♂️
The USA has had a literal Nazi party since the 50's. If they let George Lincoln Rockwell run for president while calling himself a nazi why would they do anything?
Maybe there's an assumption that it's not 1950, it's 75 years later now. But if people don't really know their history, they are doomed to repeat it. As an American, I feel that the average ordinary citizen is not very educated in history. And no wonder, how we treat the education system in this country.
Lol its called the 2nd amendment we just gotta wait for the new Luigi to drop
Be the change you want to see
It’s not illegal to be a nazi in the USA BUT it’s worth noting that Trump is more garden variety fascist than Nazi. He’s not looking to create the ubwrmensch.
100 years? We very nearly reached 250.
Op is referring to 100 years of "upkeeping democracy". I guess he was able to pick 100 from 250.
40% of the time it's democracy 100% of the time
Let's just say the amendments are sorted by importance.
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.
Is 53 out of 100 senate seats really enough to make country fall into authoritarian regime?
Well you'd need 60; 53 is enough to do a lot but you can't amend the constitution or override filibusters.
Is the army really not constitutionally obliged to step in and save the day?
Usually when the army "saves the day" by removing a democratically elected president undemocratically we call that a military coup and it's considered, to put it lightly, a bad thing.
America isn't at all volatile as a democracy; as you surmised, it's on the robust side (sans nonsense like citizens united). However, there's not much that can be done when the anti-democracy guys won democratically not just the presidency, but also all government posts that would be able to stop them.
There are a few tools in the constitution.
Really because the rest of us have been watching you be wildly volatile for years now.
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).
Not that it would be used, but the 25th Amendment is another avenue to removal of a President.
Yeaaa... thats pointless when President and Vice President are elected together, so they are almost always the same ideology.
The premise was removing your mask after the election, so in that case the 25th would be the appropriate solution. But that's only for extreme cases because you need most of the cabinet to agree.
this is why giving too much power to a single position within gov is not a great idea
When a population give a party control of the senate, congress and the presidency that's the public disabling a lot of checks and balances..
We have the Bill of Rights which limits the government’s authority.
To be fair, that's a piece of paper. If the President violates that and isn't impeached then there's nothing physical to stop him.
This guy has been impeached twice and convicted of 34 felony charges. So we actually need something physical to stop him.
HAHAHAHHAHAAH
you were making a joke, right? Because Trump right now is using the constitution and the bill of rights and everything like it in his personal bathroom as toilet paper.
We're 2 days in and it's already a giant shit show world wide and we have 4 more years to go.
You better brace yourself for what's coming
He’s got to golf at some point.
You need the other half of the electorate to agree
- with a 100-year* tradition
- throwing down its* key ideology
- Are* 53 out of 100 senate seats
- make the* country fall
I don't think you know what being a Nazi looks like.
Yes they do, but why bring this up now? No President has claimed to be a Nazi. Trump is a big supporter of the Jewish state.
Yeah, he's not even likely to annex Austria in a foreseeable future. And he doesn't seem to have claims on Sudetenland either.
So no, not a nazi, nuh uh, nazism is only when perfectly replaying the Third Reich mission.
They mean 'fascist'. Fascists are not automatically anti-semitic.