Ask Lemmy

For me, the US is still a democracy with elements of an authoritarian regime. Yes, I believe this can happen in any country, including mine, if the elected party or a wealthy figure decides to amend such authoritarian, manipulative, and exploitative policies.

I never considered it a democracy. It's one-party system with two parties, what can be democratic about it? Smoke and mirrors.

No.

Nope, it's an oligarchy pretending it's a democracy.

In some aspects, but no more than china. (spaniard here)

I barely considered it a democracy as a two party system as the elites controlled it all, but now it's just even more messed up. They need to hold people accountable and not elect criminals to office.

I fear for the future of America as a country.

I'm inside the US, and the federal government is most certainly no longer a democracy. It still has all the trappings, but corruption will ensure that the will of the people is secondary to whatever those in power want - even more than has been the case in the past. Locally, democracy is still practiced, in places like blue states.

I guess, I'd say it's a democracy-in-progress currently. I mean, all democracies always are, but the US perhaps a bit more. Seeing the protests is a very good sign, though.

When was the US the last time a democracy?

You can vote democrats or republicans, which mostly get bankrolled by the same rich assholes. As a normal citizen of the US you have almost no influence at politics at all, because the media is controlled by rich people, the biggest internet platforms are controlled by rich people, elections are paid for by rich people, ...

The current situation is not a spontaneous, miraculous, magical result of Trump and his gang, it was years in the making by lobby groups, influential/rich/powerful people and neo liberal brainwashing of the masses.

Same holds true for most other western so called democracies.

Not since I saw this graph:

From this paper:

https://archive.org/details/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc/page/n7/mode/1up

This was published in 2014, back when Obama was in office.

The institutions are completely captured. Yes, even the ones you thought were on your side all this time.

Nope Trump proved yet again the US is a Russian puppet today earlier in the week Ukraine destroyed a huge Russian Oil plant. Now a few days later Trump is giving them a Ceasefire against energy targets which Putin supposedly broke just a mere 3 hours later.

If anything this proves two things Ukraine really hurt them with that attack and Trump is again proving he's Putins lapdog and acting outright against Ukraine and Europe.

Actually saw some combat footage of that Ukraine attack and it looked almost like a nuke, from what I remember it's a 1000km ranged missile called Neptune.

Absolutely not. When laws don't apply to the president, the jig is up. Trump clearly plans to be in power forever. Either there won't be elections or they'll be rigged.

I still believe there are democracies in America but the US of A aren't one of them.

Not for quite some time now. Not since I learned about the electoral college.

Nope. I see it as an autocracy run by an elite oligarchy.

Noper....

No and it hasn't been for a long time. As long as you can buy influence via lobbying then the playing field is not level.

The difference this time is they are not trying to hide it anymore

Canadian here.

Before Trump? Ehhh, not really. I've always viewed the US as a place where you vote for which oligarch-backed monarch you'd want to put in absolute power for 4 years. Every 4/8 years the new incoming overlord just rips up whatever the previous one did and nothing of substance is actually achieved.

After Trump 2.0? No. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Trump is going to surrender all that power he and the GOP have accumulated. And why would he? He doesn't have to. He literally controls every branch of government that he can and ignores those that he doesn't. If the US ever has another election it will purely be for show, like China's elections. The mask is now fully off and the charade of US democracy is over as those who actually wield the power now do so openly on their sleeves.

On paper, I guess so? In reality, and as is the case with pretty much every developed democracy, money and technology make a mockery of the whole idea. A society in which billionaires can buy their way into the Whitehouse - literally - is no democracy.

still consider

It has only two political parties, and a weird system where all votes are not equal and the actual vote majority doesn't always win.

It has frequently had multiple people from the same families running for office, and only wealthy people have a shot. Corporations get to lobby for laws in their favour.

It also spies on its own citizens, holds people indefinitely without trial, has a huge prison population, a militarized police with a high homicide rate, and is the only western nation with the death penalty.

Trump and Musk are laying bare how fragile the veneer of "democracy" really is in that country.

lol

The US had always been a questionable democracy with the hyperfixation on the president and just two parties setting the agenda, but I'd argue that it's still a democracy, though it is a rapidly deteriorating one.

Anyone who is eligible to vote, and chooses not to, implicitly throws their support behind whoever wins.

On 2024-11-05, ⅔ of US citizens who were eligible to vote told the rest of the world they don’t want to be taken seriously for at least 2 years.

No. And I haven't for a while now. Looking at your electoral system (electoral college, gerrymandering etc.), it probably never was but it was never as obvious as it is now.

See, as a German, when I see a country go down the same route as the Weimar Republic after handing over the power to the Nazi party, I think it's just very obvious. Hitler took some two months to completely destroy democracy, and the US are juuust in the middle of that. History doesn't repeat, but sometimes it rhymes, and the similarities are just remarkable.

So yeah, I guess that would be a big fat trench in the sand.