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| If your concern is democracy, you can take a rest, because there hasn't been democracy in the United States--in any meaningful sense--in quite some time. |
WE keep hearing the term : (1)>>" Our Democracy " . Since the election of Donald Trump , and the so called (2)>>"Russia hoax" , the notion spun that there was "election meddling " the media from the mainstream pundits have been constantly bombarding us with the idea that (3)>>"our Democracy is under attack" . WE have to start to question things a little closely before we jump and point fingers at China , or accuse Russia of meddling in our election system. I am thinking about it just now, we are full of politicians who do not keep their promises, and we can't make new laws, only them if they wanna, they can potentially ignore any petition, without considering that journalism isn't an instrument for inform people, its focus is very low and short about everything, every news that we listen will be forgotten soon, with only some big exception, without things like censorship on socials, fake news or political propaganda, that that shape public opinion without making people think, (4)>>so are we really in a democracy? The naive answer is of course to say "no, we have a democratic society because we let everyone vote and that's what a democracy is: a system whereby the government gains power by allowing everyone to vote on who they want to govern". (Assuming that you're coming from a place where voting is actually allowed.) (5)>>Donald Trump helped expose the election system , way back in 2016 he was running against Hillary was the first to call out the rigged system . ALTHOUGH he did win , you know that Hillary Clinton flipped out and started accusing the Russians for helping Trump win. Hillary was a sore loser period . Trump won because he was a outsider , he was popular with a lot of people , well known as a billionaire world wide . Hillary's big problem was Bill Clinton , he was no way popular , some people would suspect that Hillary winning would in fact give Bill Clinton a third term.This is so important. The notion that things like elections are a competition between opposing sides is so ingrained in our thinking that we don't even question it or notice it.I like to frame it a bit differently. Imagine that the government exists, and it needs to know what to do and who to hire. In order to do that, it needs to conduct a survey of all the relevant people. (6)>>With that framing, any sort of voter suppression isn't about a competing side "winning." It's just damage to the purpose of the survey. Any voting system that fails to reach most of the people should be seen as a failure. But the only failure in our current framing is whoever doesn't get the most votes. It's not a goddamned football game. It's a mechanism for accurately determining policy and representation in the context of popular sovereignty.Any government that creates a system where less than 50% of people vote should basically be dragged out of office and beaten with sticks.What we need to think about is the constitutional crisis that is coming when they try to steal the next election. Is the Supreme Court gonna be there for us? Is the senate? Who will be? Jeff Bezos and Zuckerbeg? What do you do when fascists take over your country? I guess we gotta look to other places struggling. I know the people of Nicaragua are fighting a dictatorship right now. Something weird I noticed actually. Journalists can’t even get into Nicaragua to report on what’s happening. But guess what got in and passed right through? THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE. The crowning achievement of western science, a billion dollar project. The world and its systems show us time and time and time again what matters.
American Democracy in "decline"?
Before I start, I want everyone to know I desperately want to be wrong.As overused the word ‘patriot’ has become, I do consider myself one. Furthermore, I am honestly worried I am part of the ever-growing list of problems America has to face, and as someone who wants to see this country and everyone in it prosper, I absolutely do not want to be an additional complication. American delegate to the United Nations, Daniel Moynihan, noting the trend toward authoritarian rule among U.N. member nations, said: “Liberal democracy is not an ascendant ideology. There aren’t many of us left in the world. Democracies seem to disappear. I don’t notice any new ones emerging.” And James Reston of the New York Times wrote: (7)>>“Liberal democracy is now in serious trouble in the world. We are living in a time of widespread doubt about the capacity of free societies to deal with the economic, political and philosophical problems of the age.”I honestly think Republicans are going to sweep into Congress in 2022 and then easily take back the White House in 2024 and subsequently pass laws to ensure they never lose power again.Integrity of the elections is secondary to the perceived integrity.2016 about half of Democrats thought the election was rigged. 2020 about half of republicans did. The issue is that our faith in each other is declining and as such it reflects in the faith in the integrity of the elections. I don't know if it will be gone by 2024 but it is degrading rapidly.
NOTES AND COMMENTS: (1)>>" Our Democracy " . A word of Greek origin, “democracy” means “rule of the people,” or as Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, defined it: “government of the people, by the people, for the people.”" Our Democracy" is certainly a sham right now . The United States' democracy rankings have been sliding consistently for the last couple of years -- Freedom House's most recent report indicated “an acute crisis for democracy” in the United States. Important indicators of a democracy's health like political violence, erosion of voting rights, political extremism and polarization have been flashing their red warning signals with increasing urgency. The question is: Where does American democracy go from here?The government and politicians are just a pawn that they use to get what they want. AS LONG AS THE LOBBYIST GLOBALIST AGENDA is there in disguise .This isn’t our government doing this, this is a private institutions trying to push a specific agenda that benefits them in the long run. The regular people are left out , they go and vote that is no longer theirs , but what the Cabal chose . Conspiracy theories about imaginary election fraud seem to be the order of the day.Just recognize this proliferates on the left as well. It's not as pronounced, but the left was loud in 2016 about the election not being legitimate. Reasons ranged from Russians hacking voting machines to the EC not being a valid process. The parties pretty much immediately started making changes to entrench their power over the power of the people. Party primaries, for example.Basically the US has been slowly corrupting since we started it. This is why all empires crumble after awhile and must be rebuilt.(2)>>"Russia hoax" , the notion spun that there was "election meddling ". It was not just Trump who in 2021 said the election was rigged .You can cherry pick some Democrats questioning the legitimacy of the 2016 election (based on hearsay false Russian attempts to interfere with the process), but comparing the Democratic reaction to the 2016 election to the Republican reaction to the 2020 election is like comparing a paper cut to a guillotine. It makes no sense, and that's why it appears point to intentionally muddy the waters in our political system.Nice whataboutism. Let me know when "the left" starts storming the Capitol, or passing laws to put partisan Democratic bodies in charge of elections with the power to throw out any results they don't like.People seem to think whataboutism is a "get out of hypocrisy," free card. I don't think it's disingenuous to point out something the accusers have done when they are accuse others of the exact the same thing. Russian meddling really was a HOAX that was spun by Hillary Clinton to sabotage Donald Trump after losing . Sure, there were some on the left who thought Russia hacked voting machines. Sure, plenty of people think the Electoral College is a bad system to elect presidents.(3)>>"our Democracy is under attack" . The biggest attack on our "democracy" is being done by our elected officials. It's not Putin for sure , but our bumbling government .The fact only 46% of Democrats agree with this is concerning. It goes to show how democracy is being dismantled under the noses of most people and they don't even realize it. Democracy IS under attack, but most Americans don't seem to realize what the actual threat is. We're so deeply screwed come 2022 and 2024.What it goes to show is the power of media and political leaders. Conservatives are bombarded with endless coverage about how their country is being destroyed so they believe it. "Liberal" media avoids that kind of coverage so their audience thinks everything is normal.America but from Afar it looks like a plutocracy where the wealthy banks and corporations can just lobby for what the want. I’m in the finance space and you literally have investment banks like black rock taking all that government money and buying large neighbourhoods and communities. It feels like even under Biden, the country’s government is basically paralyzed and America continues to stumble forward on inertia alone. Inertia will only carry us so far.Once upon a time out government was able to get us to the moon, to build an interstate highway system, to win a world war. Now the government is barely able to pass a budget. The only people pushing the country forward are Silicon Valley corporatists - and as gross as they can be, China would have long since left us behind if it weren’t for them. (4)>>so are we really in a democracy? It depends on how you define democracy. I'm inclined to say that the United States is a liberal-democracy, which is qualitatively different from democracy qua democracy. To start off with, I largely think that Rousseau's definition of democracy is correct, that democracy is simply that which represents the general will of the people. The consequences of his definition, however, is that voting or the responsiveness of the state to the people are not necessary for democracy. Indeed, you can have a dictatorship, and so long as a dictator represents the general will, that dictatorship is a democracy. A further issue is Rousseau's definition of the general will, or that which holds the best collective outcome for a people as a whole requires homogeneity, ie, that minorities who dissent from the general will recognize that they are mistaken in their dissent, and if not, that they be "forced to be free". If this is the definition of democracy which we're using, and you can choose to define democracy in different ways(for instance, many pragmatists view democracy as simply a social relation mediated by institutions), then America is not, and indeed never was, a democracy. The fact that we vote by way of secret ballot, for instance, is an element of liberal democracy, not democracy. I say all this to point out that many of your concerns are not democratic concerns at all, but liberal concerns. For instance.👉 (5)>>Donald Trump helped expose the election system. Trump wanting a recount of the votes way back in December 21 & Jan 22 is probably the most undoing of the American voting system . Did your vote EVER GET COUNTED ? SERIOUSLY , Trump made several States recount all the mail in ballots . YES ALL THE MAIL IN BALLOTS and in some instances took weeks to do so by hand , or machine . AS CRAZY as it is , during that period it was discovered that there were ballots being thrown away by mail carriers , ballots that were harvested , ballots that were found in the dumpsters . For those coming in late, ballot harvesting or ballot collection happens when one person gathers absentee/mail ballots from many voters – bundling, you might say – for submission at a mail or drop box. This obviously happens on an innocuous micro scale when someone offers to post the completed ballot of a spouse or disabled friend, so it’s usual to define the threshold by reference to quantity (you’re not a collector unless you accept more than, say, three or six ballots) or relationship (it’s okay to do it for family members or persons with a specified incapacity).Voter fraud can certainly be a threat to democracy, but most mail-in ballot laws make that VARY REAL. (6)>>With that framing, any sort of voter suppression isn't about a competing side "winning."In discussing recent local government elections, the New Nigerian newspaper noted editorially that a society’s degree of democracy is often measured by the extent to which the right to vote is guaranteed. But what if “citizens are coerced into exercising this right”? Says the New Nigerian: “[That] society’s claim to democracy is laid bare. Lets use Pennsylvania as an example, where there has never been a concerted effort to fradualanty vote using a false identity.A recent requirement by the Republican controlled state legislature, makes having a state issued Photo ID necessary to vote. 750,000 registered voters in the state, do not have one. This new requirement is targeting poor, elderly and student populations (Democrats), not allowing them to vote for the first time in their lives. There are barriers to getting a Photo ID, you need to travel to a State office, fill out appropriate paperwork, and pay a fee.For example, people are supposed to vote on a tuesday. But tuesdays are work days, meaning people will be at work.Many other countries fix this problem by making Election Day a holiday, or guaranteeing the right to leave work to vote. The US doesn't do this (although some states try to address this in various ways).Yeah. Unfortunately the actual administration of elections is largely left to the states, and that's something that they'll cling pretty hard to so there's not much of a chance that a federal standard will come out any time soon. (7)>>“Liberal democracy is now in serious trouble . The average American can be deluded, abused and robbed to an extent that is amazing, just as long as those who spoil him leave him enough to eat to keep him from starvation. He has no ambition, to speak of, beyond filling his stomach, and he will tolerate conditions that give him less than that. Leave him enough to eat to keep him from positive starvation, and he will do little more than murmur. But don't go beyond that point. That tyrants, oppressors and robbers have occasionally overstepped that limit has caused results which have made history. They will tell you that the French Revolution was a great protest against feudalism and a great uprising for democracy. Stuff! The French Revolution was a hunger strike pure and simple. "How long present conditions persist in this country, depends on how soon our masters force us to the hunger point. Revolutions and reforms are not results of reasoning of the popular brain, but of feeling of the popular stomach. The people in the mass have small power of reason, and have never had much. Our degree of progress is the amount of increased nervous sensitiveness in the human stomach. Until we reach the hunger point there will be no reform in this country. The plunderers of privilege will continue to ride our necks until the insistent call of our stomachs forces us to assert our torpid manhood.
