Sometimes a voting population needs to be protected from the consequences of their vote, right? A good chunk of the German voting population in the 1930 voted the NSDAP and Hitler into power, and we can agree that it would have been for the best if that party and its leadership had been deposed ASAP. Now, the US isn’t quite that far down the slide yet, but they’re certainly slipping, and the worst part is that the checks and balances that are supposed to keep a president in line are also failing. Not to be alarmist, but we’re in for a wild ride.
hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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?
door_in_the_face@feddit.nl 5 months ago
hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world 5 months ago
Your first question is pretty philosophical. All I can say, is that most representative governments place a huge emphasis on giving the people the power to write their own collective destiny.
A military takeover based on the desires of a minority of citizens would violate that principal. I don’t think any reasonable person can call it saving democracy.
kadup@lemmy.world 5 months ago
a huge emphasis on giving the people the power to write their own collective destiny.
A functional democracy is not a dictatorship of the majority, and people from the US love making this mistake. It is true that the president gets elected by a majority vote… but this person now represents everyone, including the minority that opposes them.
It is natural that their government will make decisions aligned with their voters (in theory) but they shouldn’t be allowed to actively undermine the rights of everyone else.
No matter how inflated your perception of your “flawless” constitution and democracy is, this is something many countries understand pretty well and yours struggles with.
hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world 5 months ago
If you honestly think a military junta would be more representative of the American people than Trump, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Also our president is not elected via majority (or plurality) vote. This has been one of the major complaints about the American political system since 2000, so I gotta wonder how much you’re paying attention.
door_in_the_face@feddit.nl 5 months ago
Yes, but it is a question that is pertinent to the situation. What do you do if a population elects someone that starts undermining their democracy? I understand that forcibly taking that person’s power away is in itself anti-democratic, but if their actions are even worse, then it would be justified right? A smaller anti-democratic act to save the democratic system that they’re dismantling.
hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world 5 months ago
You’re basically describing the Riechstag fire decree.
VerifiedSource@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Sometimes a voting population needs to be protected from the consequences of their vote
Who should have the power to make that decision?
Do you want a benevolent king at the top that can dissolve parliament, dismiss government, call for new elections, make parties illegal, and censor the press?
Or maybe have something like an electoral college?
Or the army coups, if things get too far?
The ultimate check on power is the people. A general strike, large scale protests, and occupation of public buildings can topple a government. Institutions from military, police, local government, government agencies, and so on value their positions and won’t go down with a sinking ship.
door_in_the_face@feddit.nl 5 months ago
In a functioning democracy, there are legal systems already in place that prevent extreme negative consequences for the population and the democracy itself. The US just isn’t a functioning democracy, and the checks and balances that are supposed to protect the voting system have been eroded. Impeachment is one such mechanism that’s become dysfunctional - a democratic process to protect the democracy from autocrats. I do hope you’re right and the American people manage to pull through this somehow. But failing that, an intervention from either domestic or foreign forces can be justified depending on how severe the threat to the population is.
AA5B@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The military has rules limiting what they can do, especially against acting within the US, and every service member is supposed to disobey illegal orders.
miridius@lemmy.world 5 months ago
USA hasn’t been a democracy for decades. It’s hard to pin it down to a certain tipping point but I’d hazard it was when you decided that corporations are people and buying politicians is free speech.
VerifiedSource@sh.itjust.works 5 months ago
Hold your ponies. The US is very much still a democracy, if a flawed one in many ways. The US has always been a country run by the wealthy elites, as are most countries in the world.
Buying politicians works, especially in the US, regardless of party. Democrats and Republicans are both the parties of big business and capital interests.
Besides laws around spending money for political purposes, the media landscape has revolutionized over the last 20 years. The role social media has played in Trump‘s ascendancy can’t be overstated. Trump spent less than Kamala Harris in this election and still won, because of his exceptional way to use media to his advantage.