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Is it? Do you think the US was founded as a democracy?
God, shut up nerd, like your red fascist bullshit and their one party elections were or are better. Do you want to hear that it's a flawed system? It is. All states are and should be abolished.
Still a type of democracy, and still more democratic than anything Russia or China have ever managed.
The United States was founded as a white supremacist settler-colony. This shit is the same as calling Israel a democracy.
How come the US can be "flawed" but China is "red fascist"? The US is white fascist. You want to talk about fascism? The US's prison population is higher than either the USSR was or China is, and under Trump it's going to get worse! Where's the democracy for the millions of undocumented workers that the US relies on to run its economy, that the US is gearing up to round up by the millions into prison camps? Where's their democracy? Where's the democracy for the hundreds of thousands of child brides and child laborers all across the US? Half a million children pick almost a quarter of the food currently produced in the United States. They pay taxes, are forced to give birth, but they can't vote.
Trump didn't even get 50% of the vote, and now he's in charge of everything. "Democracy"
We have to accept that the US is not democratic; it's reformed fascism, and those reforms are in danger right now. If you ever want the US to be a democracy you need to recognize this and protect the democratic reforms we have.
I agree with at least 95% of what you just said.
Uhhh yeah. The Constitution establishes a federal democratic republic form of government. That is, we have an indivisible union of 50 sovereign States. It is a democracy because people govern themselves. It is representative because people choose elected officials by free and secret ballot.
It's democracy when only white men are allowed to choose representatives? What?
It's settler-colonialism. Fascism. Where was the democracy for the Natives? Or the slaves? The original system has had many democratic reforms, but denying its roots as fundamentally undemocratic is historical revisionism and blinds you to the US's flaws. You'll never fix this country's problems if you can't even recognize this.
Bro I'm native, I know! I think it's a piece of shit also but it could be worse. I'm also trying to rage against the machine.
It can always be worse! How come you can acknowledge that it's shit, but you can't acknowledge that it's fundamentally undemocratic? Where's the disconnect here? The US was not founded as a democracy, it was founded as a white supremacist settler-colony. Today it's had many democratic reforms, and that's good! But we have to acknowledge these root problems.
Has it had enough reforms to be called a democracy? Trump got less than 50% of the vote and he's been elected twice!
As a Brit, this all seems unhelpful. The only reason anyone cares how the US was “founded” hundreds of years ago is that they were a bit closer to having the right idea at the start than most countries. Doesn’t mean they did of course, but compare to how the UK was “founded”, or Greece, “the birthplace of democracy”, and suddenly it really doesn’t matter.
As for whether it is currently a democracy, a flawed democracy is still a democracy. Trumps a terrible choice but he did get a lot of votes by ordinary people, and whilst their system is skewed by being a shitty fptp setup (just like the UK sadly) and their crazy elector system, it is nonetheless fairly democratic, in the sense that most people can vote, they didn’t pressure or threaten voters much, they didn’t fake lots of votes, and the flaws can only influence and skew the result to some extent, rather than being the deciding factor. But it isn’t the best democracy in the world, we can all agree on that. I hope they manage to replace it in our lifetimes with something that would allow for more than 2 parties (UK too).
He got a lot of votes, but he didn't actually get the majority. He got a plurality.
fairly democratic, in the sense that most people can vote, they didn’t pressure or threaten voters much, they didn’t fake lots of votes, and the flaws can only influence and skew the result to some extent, rather than being the deciding factor.
Unless all people can vote it isn't a democracy. It totally reverses the power dynamic of democracy - rather than the People choosing their leaders, the leaders choose who gets to be of the People. It's completely backwards! As long as the enduring legacy of settler-colonialism can choose who is allowed to vote there will be no democracy.
The way electoral districts are drawn, the way voters get purged or have to go through hoops to get registered, the way people can have their right to vote taken away, the way noncitizens and disenfranchised citizens in federal prisons are counted by the census for the purpose of allotting representatives, the efforts to keep voter participation as low as possible, it's all rigged to produce undemocratic results.
It's useful for us to recognize that this isn't democracy. Not yet.
Strongly disagree. Yes, all the problems you listed weaken a democracy. Some by a lot. But that’s “no true Scotsman” logic, and dangerous. Better to apply fuzzy logic than Boolean logic, countries are not perfect democracies or non democracies. They are on a sliding scale, and there’s not much point making a scale that is so idealistic that no existing country can get on the scale (or where only the best few can).
You can claim the US and UK are weak democracies, that’s justifiable if you define why (and you have, I see your point there). But calling them non democracies is just willfully twisting the meaning of words, in fact they’re unusually good democracies by some measures (both have unusually free and trustworthy elections compared to most in the world, and that has to be taken into account).
Or to put it another way, any scale needs space at the bottom.
Imagine an alternative USA where every single state was gerrymandered to hell by whoever won, where electors were routinely bribed by opposition parties to vote against their states results, where people were bullied at the polls or where minorities were entirely disenfranchised. That would be a worse place than our USA, but by your definition both would be the same. Clearly they are not the same, that one is a worse democracy. By my definition that hypothetical and awful democracy is still a democracy, just a very very bad one.
Imagine an alternative USA where every single state was gerrymandered to hell by whoever won, where electors were routinely bribed by opposition parties to vote against their states results, where people were bullied at the polls or where minorities were entirely disenfranchised. That would be a worse place than our USA, but by your definition both would be the same.
Okay. Now imagine an alternative USA where only a small selection of royal families are allowed to vote and electors are aristocrats chosen by birth and court intrigue. By your definition this hypothetical is also a democracy, even if it's an awful very very bad one. You have nuanced away the meaning of the word entirely.
Yes, great example. That would indeed be stretching the definition to breaking point. The fuzzy logic approach would be that you’ve described a 99% monarchy with 1% democracy.
Personally I’d put the US as a 60% democracy with a 40% oligopoly. The UK is similar since on the one hand we have more than 2 parties and are slightly better at avoiding gerrymandering and voter suppression, but on the other hand we have the silly rules for the House of Lords, and weaker freedom of speech (I don’t mind the theory of banning violent extremist speech, but I don’t like the application we’ve got at the moment, it prevents too much speech that isn’t unreasonable, free speech would be better).
Based on what you’ve said, I’m Sure you’d put it lower, but I don’t think you can justify putting 1% when it’s so easy to find worse countries even in the real world, that are still on the democracy spectrum.
Why are you applying this fuzzy logic to democracy when democracy, itself, does not? If one candidate gets 49% of the vote and the other gets 51% of the vote then the candidate with the most votes wins. Nothing fuzzy about it. If we apply liberal democracy's logic to itself then a country that isn't at least 50% democratic can not be called a democracy.
If you want to be technical a true democracy is mathematically impossible. Also Donald won the popular vote this time. Don't waste 4 years of your life chasing conspiracy theories like the right has and clinging to a fantasy that the loser actually won. I wish things were different but that's how it went.
He didn't get a majority of the votes. Less than 50%. That should mean something.
In a race with more than 2 people it shouldn't be uncommon to have less than 50% of the overall vote and still win. I don't understand the point you're trying to make. In this race he got the most votes compared to the other candidates.
Many countries use variations of runoff voting, where if no candidate gets a majority then the top two candidates move on to a second round and the other candidates are eliminated. This is actually the most popular way to run elections worldwide.