this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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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.

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[–] kava@lemmy.world 21 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] collapse_already@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 week ago (12 children)

We really only have the Second Amendment. I am now on a list.

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[–] SuspiciousUser@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago

we have systems for putting people like him in jail but we just didn't want to do it

[–] peoplebeproblems@midwest.social 20 points 1 week ago (2 children)

We have the second amendment, but I don't know how bear arms will help.

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[–] nintendiator 19 points 1 week ago

I'm told three marked bullets work wonders.

[–] frezik@midwest.social 19 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] conditional_soup@lemm.ee 18 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

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.

[–] patatahooligan@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

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.

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[–] jason@discuss.online 16 points 1 week ago

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

[–] Agent641@lemmy.world 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (4 children)

That's what 2a is supposed to be for

[–] Klear@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago (2 children)

2A is supposed to facilitate millitias in case England attacks again.

[–] Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

... in case England attacks again.

I have been thinking about coming over there with a cricket bat.

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[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (6 children)

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.

[–] dx1@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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.

[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Check and Balance was intened to stop bad individuals, not an entire political party working in unison to destroy the system.

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[–] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

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?

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[–] clutchtwopointzero@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Second Amendment.

The odds aren't in our favor.

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[–] Norgoroth@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago

Second amendment

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] fermionsnotbosons@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 week ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world 12 points 1 week ago (15 children)

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?

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[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

100 years? We very nearly reached 250.

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[–] eric5949@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

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?

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