this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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At what point is a democracy not a democracy any more?
For the U.S., the decisive blow came with the Citizens United ruling, although itβs not unreasonable to suggest the refusal to punish Nixon during watergate signaled that the rule of law was merely a suggestion. That kicked off a whole cascade of political and legal maneuvering to get both the legislative and societal landscape into such a contortion that it would willingly hand away the entire nation to vulture-capitalists.
A better question would be "when was there ever been a true democracy?"
For me, there hasn't been. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't try. It means that we need to truly internalise that wealth and power will, if left unchecked, succeed in perverting it entirely. We need to be ever augmenting it, with that in mind, with a view to playing whack a mole with the interests of the 1% and keeping it working for the 99%.
I mean that won't work either. The rich and powerful will never allow us to simply vote away their ill beggoten wealth and power. However, at least people could say that they tried.
I don't think we'll ever have a "true" democracy.
Its like the concept of "utopia", you can get closer and closer, but never actually reach it
Like an asymptote in mathematics.
Sadly, some states, people voted against ranked-choice-voting in referendum. Seems lile people just hear a complex idea and want to shut it down because it challenged their simplistic worldview.
People keep commenting this without context and it's driving me mad. It's factually wrong, so at least tell us what you mean in the figurative sense.
No, this is just the first time anyone actually invested more than the one sentence into an explanation. Can you give me a little more to look into? I genuinely have no idea what you're referring to.
African Americans were supposed to be given the right to vote after abolition.
There was a brief period of time during Reconstruction where that happened. However, many states came up with complicated contrivances to make it impossible to vote - poll taxes, βliteracy tests,β etc. Effectively, it was a right solely on paper until LBJ in the 60s. Conservatives throwing a massive fit about this is why we have the insane fascistic Right we do right now - they were pro public education until Black kids got to go to the same kids as white kids.
Women werenβt guaranteed the right to vote until 1920. Conservatives today are trying to revoke the 19th amendment and undo that.
Yes, there's tons of things that make the process unfair, but does that make the system not be a democracy? It's a flawed one, one that basically only allows white dudes to vote, but the system is still a democracy.
What if only people who make over $500k annually can vote? Is that still a democracy?
I get you're referring to a plutocracy. The question is if the US is so far gone that it's out of flawed democracy territory - the lines are definitely blurred and I'd argue it depends on the state.
Yeah, democracy.
All that to say it is a democracy after all, just even more condescendingly. Wonderful.
When you refuse to listen to reason, yes you deserve it.
Okay, then, is Nazi Germany a democracy? It has votes, after all. How about fascist Italy? Is that a democracy?
A democracy requires free elections, so no to both.
I don't think the US is that far gone, though. Some states do care about the democratic process, as the graphic indicates. I don't think the US has left flawed democracy territory yet, at least not everywhere.
The US' democracy index is falling, but it's still comparably high, between France and Italy.
But I did say factually wrong. I do admit it's not that cut and dry, and the republic organisation isn't everything.
Not sure. Ancient societies also used FPTP and they are still considered by some Scholars/Historians as "democracy" π€·ββοΈ
Personally, I think government systems are actually a type of technology. Unfortunately, they aren't the kind of research where you can easily experiment and iterate upon, since people tend to die in massive numbers if the experiment fails.
The USA is too big to be a democracy. It would need to be several smaller regions/countries that had equal rights when dealing with each other. But its much easier to just force people to do what you want rather than make a mutually beneficial deal.
So, like, ... maybe 50 or so smaller regions? And a few other mostly even smaller territories that don't get those rights, just for funsies?
I joke, of course. But in seriousness: Are you suggesting the US just defederate and become more like, say, the EU? What are you anticipating that would solve? Moreover, what is it that makes it too big to be a democracy? Can large governments exist only in authoritarian forms? Why would that be?