Ask Lemmy

The amount of voter suppression, the broken FPTP system and mass media influence over the US electoral system, means that for all intents and purposes, the USA federal election is just picking your favourite of the two viable owning-class-endorsed candidates. "The people" never had a realistic chance of representation or empowerment. This is not a new critique, it's been discussed for at least a century and a half.

There is simply no real value in calling the USA a democracy at any point during our lifetimes, regardless of whether you are allowed to vote or even write-in candidates, regardless of the two-party system, because the power imbalance between the working class and the owning class surrounding that vote makes it as much a sham election as Russia's sham elections. But even compared to other (until recently) close allies, the US implementation of federal voting has long been an absolute circus.

One interesting thing I haven't read here yet (haven't read all the comments though) is religion. Sure, officially there's separation of church and state, but Christianity is everywhere in your country, including government. The amount of times I've heard "God bless the United States" being said is ridiculous. To me, that's undemocratic and I would feel very uncomfortable with that as an atheist.

No, because I'm sure it's passed the tipping point towards autocracy. There's endless different forms of both it and democracy, but it's a constant that democracy begets democracy and autocracy begets autocracy, so that's my "line in the sand".

In America's case as of now, all the checks and balances that used to work are still there, but they've been questionable for many years and aren't going to do anything going forwards, so they're functionally more like Canada's monarchy.

If you're looking for a perspective on what's normal and what's not, consider that when there's a big social problem in Canada, it's only a matter of time until a law trying to address it gets passed. That's what a functioning democracy is like. Meanwhile, there's been a known place in the US where no courts have jurisdiction to prosecute serious crimes for two decades now.

Not when they have the Electoral College bullshit upending every election in favor of a minority.

For a long while I thought America was a democracy but that the population was rather uneducated. Their media and culture seemed to glorify ignorance and shame intellectualism.

I now consider America a fascist state, early stages. I've seen too many simulations to know that the level of organized resistance required to prevent the descent into fascism is either too morally grey or too risky to be worth it. It must get much worse before resistance is meaningful.

At best an American is a victim, at worst they are a fascist.

Never have

To me it never really was. If you look into how they do voting here, its insane, really.

US citizens always loved to make these "we'll bomb some democracy in to you" but they never brought democracy either. I think it's fair to say that no other country started asa y dictatorships as the US has

Add to that;

Bush lost the election and became president anyway.

Trump has heen successfully lying his way through the past four years (and well, yeah the 4 years before that too) instigated an insurrection and was never held accountable

If a presidential candidate can lose an election and still become president, it's not a democracy.

American political system can very easily produce a new authoritarian leader, the president has much more power and with Congress majority can easily turn things around. The fact it hasn't happened before is a great achievement. Looking at everything Trump administration has been doing is to concentrate power at the top and to become new dictatorship. It wont be Trump, maybe JD Vance who knows.

It depends on what the Americans will allow to happen, cause I feel that Americans are getting pissed harder each year and many large protests will happen. Is it going to be a wakeup call to become democratic and sensible again or full dictatorship only time will tell.

People seem to think freedom and democracy are synonymous. Places can be free, but not have democracy; places can also have democracy and not be free. When a simple majority of the voting public supports cracking down on freedoms - you will have one of the two, but you can't have both.

It is still a democracy, but that democracy is in crisis. You will know over the next 2/years if it will survive, although the next federal election will be the real test.

• if the judicial and congress still share power,
• if elections are still fair.

Democracies can recover if they keep their representation.

Speaking on the federal level (have less of a view on the local and state level). It was a very flawed democracy, and it's descending a less and less functioning system as we speak, moving towards some form of fascism/techno feudalism.

Is anywhere really?

@Clinicallydepressedpoochie no

I never considered it a democracy. It's one-party system with two parties, what can be democratic about it? Smoke and mirrors.

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

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.

For me, the US is still a democracy with elements of an authoritarian regime. Yes, I believe this can happen in any country, including mine, if the elected party or a wealthy figure decides to amend such authoritarian, manipulative, and exploitative policies.

Democracy is an umbrella term. These are the types of democracy the US is:

1. Representative Democracy

2. Constitutional Democracy

3. Presidential Democracy

4. Liberal Democracy

Types of Democracy the US is not:

1. Direct Democracy

2. Parliamentary Democracy

3. Illiberal Democracy

4. Participatory Democracy

5. Social Democracy

So yes, it's a democracy.

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.

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.

No.

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.

Not since 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.

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.

In some aspects, but no more than china. (spaniard here)

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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