People outside the US, do you still consider America a democracy?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Not since after 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.

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.
- all those images of venezualen immigrants .... being handled like the absolute worst possible being.. its crazy

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

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

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

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

The short answer: yes.
The long answer: it will take a long time to completely dismantle a democracy in a country as big and complex as America. You don't just do that in three months.
All trump has done so far is move as fast as possible to make as much of a mess as possible in the hopes that some of his nutty ideas goes through once the system catches up to him. And the system will catch up to him and Musk and all the other cunts who are having their little ego fest currently.
I have patience. Kind of. I look forward to seeing the consequences of their actions come to haunt them. I also hope this period in American politics will be the wake up call America needs to hopefully bar politicians and political parties from taking donations from big corps essentially try to buy the government and weaken true democracy from flourishing. The US isn't the only country with this problem, but it is certainly neck deep in one of the worst outcomes of letting big corporations take ownership of a government.
- What makes you so sure of that? Trump is already actively disregarding court orders, and the Supreme Court ruled he cannot be charged with a crime if it is part of an “official duty”.
  
  I'm sure he will do his damnedest to dismantle everything, but I don't believe he will succeed. He may get away with it for a little while, but this shit isn't going to last.
  I fully believe it will be the wake up call America has desperately needed for a very long time. Countries like Russia and China never really had democracy and they never had freedom as a value so that is why I don't think trump will be successful in the long term with his little stunt here. It will get worse before it gets better and America is currently in the finding out phase that we learned in Europe in the 40s.
  That is how I look at it.

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.
- on paper.. .checks paper Democratic People's Republic of Korea... checks out

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.
- China's democracy is among party members.
  
  Oh I love parties! I'll bring the glowsticks!

Would be nice to know what part of America you mean by that. It is a pretty big continent you know? Argentinians, Mexicans, Brasilians and so on are all part of America.
Buuuut I'm gonna go ahead and assume you are asking about the UNITED STATES country, right?
Yes it is a Democracy. Not perfect, but then again which one is?
- Colloquially, internationally, when people say America, I don't think of them referring to anywhere but the US. I'm not about making things US centric either, just saying.

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.

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.
- To be honest, not even from the start was it a true democracy, the Electoral College is a layer on top of democracy to give different weight to each vote.

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.
- exactly, two party system completely pulls the pants down for top1% lobbyism to be rampantly in control
- I grew up in the US and have lived outside it for 10 years now. I would agree with this. Voting and representation have never been total and is definitely less available for many groups. Further things are being stripped away.
- Yeah. My wake-up call was quite early in life, when SCOTUS handed the election to GWB. If I was born a generation earlier I'd have called it with Watergate. If I was an ancestor currently dead, I would have called it around the time an assassin put the presidency in the hands of the opposite party, and a drunk asshole subsequently decided reconstruction efforts should fail. Or possibly just prior, when we somehow decided not to hang every man Jack of the confederacy for treason.
  Edit: an earlier still version of me would have overseen the death of a culture brought on by poxy mad white religious extremists, and laughed ruefully to hear that centuries later the utter bastardy continues unchanged.
- This

Absolutely not. A two party system was barely nominally a form of democracy. Current one quacks like a dictatorship and walks like a dictatorship. They might hold a fake election one day like many of those do, but still no.
- Firstly, the USA is obviously not a "dictatorship". Come on, be serious. Words mean things.
  Second, America's two-party system also has internal factions and primaries, many of them completely open (you don't even need to declare allegiance to the party). The primaries are effectively the first round in a two-round electoral system (of which there are plenty in the world). The whole point is to create a binary choice in the final round. For some reason this always gets missed by otherwise informed observers. "There are only two parties" is just not a valid argument in this debate.
  Of course, none of these facts will be popular here, since the real point of this thread is to allow participants to performatively dump on the shared hate-object. Classic social media, I get it.
  
  Firstly, the USA is obviously not a "dictatorship". Come on, be serious. Words mean things.
  They do. Have you ever heard about elective dictatorship?
  Mere presence of elections, especially gerrymandered to hell and especially where minority can easily win, does not make a democracy.
  
  Firstly, the USA is obviously not a "dictatorship".
  You sure about that? Have you read the news lately?
  
  While I don't consider the system of governance there very good, I'll have to agree. While I do absolutely worry for the American democracy, it isn't a dictatorship in its current form. I also agree that the primaries do make the system better and more democratic. I still think that the two part system is abysmal, but the primaries do make the claim to democracy stronger.
  
  In practice, however, it is a two-party system.

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.
- As a German also I agree with this statement. Ostensibly it is a democracy but in reality it's not. And yes, there is a lot of rhyming going on

Am Dutch. I have considered the US an incomplete democracy since I learned about voting in school. It’s not one person one vote, which to me is crucial for a democracy. The US right now is still a nation of laws, but democracy is sharply in decline. The voter-roll issues and Gerrymandering come to mind immediately. Not to mention the fact that guaranteed access to polls has been pulled by the courts. Which is insane to me.
- Also president having so much power was clearly never democratic to begin with as we can see it all play out now.
  
  The power of the president did not start out like this. Congress kept giving their power to the executive for political reasons.
  It happened over centuries.
- $ is votes, who could have seen where that would go.

Line in the sand? Going after political opponents. Censoring information. Dismantling media. Abandoning rule of law. Business and government mixing too much.
USA is speed running these.

A struggling democracy, in the beginning of an Orban/Hungary-like overtake of the country.
Its possible to revert, but you seem to have atleast a 1/3 of the country that would walk down a straight up facist line willingly and happily do so.
You need to fix your shit america.

First off, I'm an American. Born a stone's throw from the location of one of the critical events in the history of the American revolution.
To answer the question, no. Leaving aside the whole Republic versus democracy argument, my point of realization was when one party seized upon a minor technical issue and disenfranchised countless voters via lawsuit, sufficient to allow the race to be called in their favor.
I'm sure there are many readers who believe I'm talking about 2016. For those readers, your keyword search is "hanging Chad".
- Another key search from the same events is "Brooks Brothers Riot".
  
  Wow, this happens before I was born, had no idea this shit happened before.

I consider it a lesser democracy / something that barely qualifies for a few years now.

I consider it an autocratic regime with strong fascist characteristics.
- I consider America to be a plutocracy, which successfully propagandized the majority with the illusion of democracy, now transitioning into a Christian fascist kleptocracy... Basically a mafia state / corporate dictatorship using religion to control the masses (as is tradition).
  If you think it's not very Christian, that's because most Christians consider Jesus's teachings to be evil communism.

It was never a democracy.

Ignoring court orders, and "fake national emergency declarations" to create war and international extortion and remove rights and citizenships for deportations crossed the line. The voter suppression/rigging that won election for Trump is also clearly anti-democratic, but anti-democratic as usual. Media/oligarchy/Israel influence/disinformation might not make for an ideal democracy, but also "democracy as usual".
The big problem with the world is the US empire's manufacturing of hatred/war against "those who are less democratic than us and our colonies" Corruption of democracy in US, who can cheaply manipulate democracy in its colonies, means that you don't have functional democracy either. US praises the most violently oppressive apartheid ethnostates suspending federal and local elections as great democracies if they support US wars. There is something wrong when the most important issue of your government is to increase divisiveness/threats to the US's enemies when the US unjustifiably threatens you, and that thrills you as right track.
So, democracy is simply not working at bringing progressiveness and shared prosperity, or even the most basic understanding of humanist/national interests, to those who say they love it so much. This is global collapse level of delusion. Nations doing best economically are those distancing themselves from US colonial control.
The more objective measure of "good government" is control against oligarchist pillaging, while having pluralism/sustainability, and economic constructiveness. US approved democracies are failing hard on these metrics. Warmongering based on "blanket, evidence free, refusal to accept election results when non-CIA candidate wins" is not the democratic/liberal ideal you think it is.
- Just going to leave this here.

For the time being, sure. I dint think democracy is a binary. Democracy doesn't imply a fair system or universal suffrage or a system where power is split.
Like for example the Vatican is a absolute monarchy and also a democracy.

I consider it a faux democracy. It still has the semblance of one, with people voting, believing they matter and that they have actual free speech, but the masses are being, increasingly less subtly, controlled by media corporations and rendered incapable of critical, independent thinking by an ever decreasing quality of education.
Don't be fooled though! This isn't happening in the US alone. It is widespread all over the globe. The US is simply doing it in a smarter, more cunning way, while leading the wealthy 1% in other countries by example.

Absolutely not. A country where two parties are the only two viable electoral options, is absolutely not a democracy. Doesn’t mean I’ll stop my membership for the PSL.
- What does PSL stand for?
  
  Party for Socialism and Liberation.
  
  Plus Sized Lobsters
  
  .ml dipshits who spam "nato aggression" memes
  
  Pink Sexy Lizards
  
  Pacific South Lest
  
  Pumpkin Spice Latte

Nyet.

How can you be a democracy if you have only two political parties?
- With one not giving a fuck, and the other severely fractured due to conflicting ideals none the less

Not at all, you are just an autocracy now but don't fully realise it, and as the other commentator had said, not even really a good democracy in the loosest of terms before this entire mess going on ATM!

I really never did, not a well functioning at least. They've practiced voter repression for decades, and then they had fun testing how low they could go after 9/11, doing a lot of unlawful shit, going after citizens who spoke out against their policies and wars.

No but this isn't recent. My line in the sand was Russian interference in the 2016 US election that came to light in 2018.
*United States Democracy Index

Not for a long time. The Economist Democracy Index demoted the US to a "flawed democracy" since 2016, where it has been ever since.
Democracy index, 2024 - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu

No. I also don't consider the United States to be a democracy.

Yes, but a bad example of one very quickly heading towards autocracy. Some characteristics like screwing up your own economy and blaming 'the foreigners' rings a distant bell.

The answer depends of the reference point. I was born in Russia (I'm living abroad from 2022) and compared to the putin's dictatorship US is a democracy. You guys still have a freedom of speech, not fake opposition to Trump and independent courts. From the other side, most of the countries are democracies if compared to Russia..

yeah of course. it's still a corrupted and broken democracy.

Maybe a flawed democracy at best and it's getting worse every day. At least on federal level, I don't much about states politics. Not really an expert but democracy can't really work that well if you are stuck in a two party system. Having more choice would sure help against populists and autocrats.

The next election will tell, my tin hat is on Puting the US into a situation where an election can't be held so they can have a third term.
- I'm not sure even with a successful election and it going to the democrats we'll be able to tell. At least from today's view. It will largely depend on how institutions and the justice/court system can hold out against the current administration right now and during this phase.
  I feel like they may have already created damage that won't be cleared just from one election or one election period's fixups.
  At the same time, hopefully, this is the wake-up call for opposition and a transformation one way or another. It's plainly obvious what is happening now, and I am hoping opposition will become more apparent and prevalent because of it. Not just in citizens, but institutions too.

I don't recognise the current American regime as a valid government. Just like I don't recognise the Israeli occupation force as a valid state.
It's not remotely binding or even meaningful to anyone but myself of course. But hey, nothing matters these days.

Is demos how you say money in Greek?
- I know this isn't Greek, but I immediately thought of pesos and I bet you some people are gonna be hella mad if you call the US a pesocracy

Unfortunately, it's still a democracy. The electorate wanted what's now going on. That could rapidly change at this point, but for now not yet.
- Democracy is a sliding scale and the US is still on it. Could the people choose something different without resorting to violent revolution and protest? Yes
  
  I'm a bit skeptical about this argument because autocratic states love to hold practically fake and forced elections with 90 or 99 % approval and use that as justification.
  
  Unfortunately yes. People wanted this. They still want this. But people were also cheering for like, Mao even after he put millions of his own citizens into the ground, so who knows

Depends on the outcome of the next election.
- Or the existence of said election at all...

I am inside and I want to get out
- Same. Is there a sign up sheet, or...?

No. I agree with the comment about the electoral system and gerrymandering as fundamental issues. And the current administration does not respect the judiciary branch, that much is clear, and their actions are completely undermining the supposed divisions of power, without which there is no democracy.

Yes, but hardly an example for a good one. Besides that, it has become a bad ally, if it even is one at this time, and a factor of uncertainty.