521
American democracy on the brink a year after Trump’s election, experts say
(www.theguardian.com)
is the US in democratic peril?
Maybe ask the people of Minneapolis.
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2026
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It's a throw back to 2014 and the BLM protests.
Easy to forget the time two journalists working for the WaPo were covering a protest in Ferguson, shooting footage from the inside of a McDonalds. The police saw the cameras and sent in officers in full riot gear to tackle the reporters and arrest them. No reason for it save that these were liberal reports filming a gestapo raid on civil rights marchers.
This was under Obama in a city with a Democratic Mayor that was fully in the thrall of a police-instigated terror campaign. The events surrounding Ferguson opened up a whole pocket of inquiry into why this branch off of the Greater St. Louis area with an enormous minority population was operating as some kind of colonized satrap of St. Louis proper - no control of their own police, no control of their own budget, an absurd rate of citations and arrests per capita, abysmal voter turnout in large part thanks to felony disenfranchisement, bad education, poor civil maintenance, and endemic inter-generational poverty.
If you want to talk about the state of American Democracy, you have to start talking about Ferguson, MO and how it is increasingly the benchmark for how civil society operates in this country.
You also have to start talking about The Network State and the Silicon Valley vision for American anarcho-capitalism.
Democrats don't identify with "the left," or with reform. They are the establishment, they are also generally crooked in ways that would make local officials vulnerable to police if they checked them, even if they wanted to, their corruption could be exposed. All blue cities have pretty fascistic police leadership. Ie portland was sharing intelligence and covering for the proud boys and their ilk in the first term of doh fuhrer there. Berkely had a rw crazy stab a handful of protesters, the cops arrested the stabbed and not the staber. It's not a one off.
We need all new leadership, these democrats are cynical rich, aristocrats, and they would be republicans if that was the party in power. They clearly are not doing an acceptable job unless one listens to and trusts the suits on tv,, in which case one would be a fucking moron.
That is not really unusual for the US, things like that have been going on long before 2014.
How many women got shot dead in broad daylight, by a thug who was immediately declared innocent of all wrongdoing, in the BLM protests? This time is different.
It's worse because it has been 11 years since Ferguson. This is how civil rights and government standards are eroded. You have a chip (two journalists being arrested and brutalized in 2014 filming a protest) and when it goes unpunished, it gets repeated across the nation until it becomes the norm.
Similar chips happened during the BLM protests, which were themselves a crackdown to the murder of black citizens in broad daylight by police. I recall watching a news reporter shot while broadcasting on TV at night during a 2021 BLM protest. The same happened to reporters in Los Angeles in 2025. Then we saw bystanders in LA being shot in the head. Then Renee Good was shot in the head her car.
It all builds on itself, as government gets increasingly confident in their strength and the passivity of its population. None of this is new; it's just expanding.
29-Year-Old Protest Leader Found Dead in Burning Car in St. Louis
On November 22, 2014, Tamir E. Rice, a twelve year old African-American boy, was killed in Cleveland, Ohio, by Timothy Loehmann, a 26-year-old white patrolman with the Cleveland Division of Police (CDP).
Sandra Annette Bland was a 28-year-old African-American woman who was found hanged in a jail cell in Waller County, Texas, on July 13, 2015, three days after being arrested during a traffic stop.
Vanishingly few people are allowed to remember this. I wonder if Renee Good will also fall down the mental rabbit hole.
One of the greatest sources for the end of US democracy is the complete and total lack of journalistic integrity by all of the most major news outlets.
If they aren't 100% compliant to Trump, they are 99% compliant because they rather pretend anything that asshole does might not be that bad so they don't alienate his dipshit base from their audience. They're also too chicken-shit to go against their sponsors, most of who donated massive bribes to Trump to do their bidding.
And don't get me started on Israel's control over US media, and alliance with the GOP and establishment Dems.
Seems like Snowden and Assange exposed the lack of journalistic integrity a long time ago, and Pulitzer and Hearst before then.
I tried to ask Renee Nicole Good, but she wouldn't answer her phone.
I still hate how almost every normal person I talk to outside of the internet still thinks it's all fake news.
Unless it's actively happening in their city, in front of them, it doesn't exist.
If it does happen in front of them, people like that will think the victim must have deserved it because "they're only going after the criminals." And they'll stick with this until it happens to them, whereupon they'll think they're the unique and first example of injustice and mistreatment of someone who didn't deserve it.
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American democracy is dead in the water. Insurrection + Trump happening twice proves it. There is no checks or balances. It is an authoritarian state. The people are divided, the house has fallen.
Everything since Reagan has been set up for this moment. It just took a truly evil, narcissistic piece of shit surrounded by sycophants and monsters to seize the opportunity that was created.
When Americans willingly gave up their democracy for an 80 year old felon rapist pedophile traitor.
Truly the most pathetic ending to a democracy.
On the brink suggests it's not already proper fucked, which it is. Past the point of no return, only a wild card chance of taking it back in 2028, soon to be squandered under the leadership of the aristocrats in the democratic establishment, as well intentioned people will be shitty to anyone wanting winnable candidates pushing popular reform because they trust the people that have brought us the last three presidential candidates to be the safe choice. America wants to be fucked by the rich, with gay marriage and crumbs to the deserving fucked!
It's not your fault well intentioned america, you are, let's call it misguided. Or less charitably we could say you are collectively fucking stupid. Admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery america!
A demented, senile, pedophile felon has taken over America and is planning to extend its parasitic presence in the world too.
Oh wait, same disgusting sack of filth.
Don't give him too much credit. Assholes like Miller and Thiel are also behind this bullshit.
Of course it is and MAGA fucks are following Project 2025.
Speedrunning for Supply-Side Jesus.
- Tracking and arresting people because of their appearance - check
- Prosecuting independent reporting - check
- Creating a de facto monopoly on information - check
- Prosecuting political opponents amd people who resist authoritarianism - check
- Prosecuting magistrates for following the law - check
- Killing protesters - check
- Military expansionism - check
- Personality cult - check
I think you pass
Extra point for changing the meaning of words and inventing a novlang
... and a covfefe.
Interesting how, if the OP's text is indictive of the original version of the article, The Guardian had to change their first sentence from saying Trump placed his hand on the bible to saying just him taking his oath of office since he didnt place his hand on a bible.
To be fair, they make his skin sizzle.
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Experts are saying a lot of obvious things lately.
I'm up for the 'experts do shit' phase.
Trump is such a vile human being.
The obese imbecile knows he's dying and thinks/wants to be remembered as a hardman president. And he will be by a few idiots in the back woods of stupidville.
However he will only truly be remembered as the guy who raped many children with his best mate Jeffery Epstein ...and then did increasingly idiotic things go try to cover it all up.
That is the legacy that will be left behind when the fat cunt finally does the world a favour and croaks it. Die, piggy, DIE.
This ship has sailed. Now everybody has to deal with this shit. Fascism doesn't know trade barriers
On the brink? Mate, you are falling off the cliff. You just don't know yet because your brains are still trying to process that a fascist pushed you off that cliff.
But don't worry, you'll notice sooner or later. After all, you'll have to hit the ground after the fall.
A lot of us do know. The mainstream media will always pretend otherwise.
American [representative republic] nuked by corporate buyout in 1980s-90s, now any remaining illusion of its former state now remains for indigent suckers. More at 11.
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And this my friends is why you don't vote for a loser. He's spread his petty mess to the country and is lashing out at those who would vote against him, how American.
You mean the same thing we were warning the MAGA fucks about before the election are actually happening? You don't say? Man, this is a shitty time to be right.
It's what they wanted and democracy won.
What failed is the completely lack of accountability and systamitic lack of boundries.
The first sentence is wrong. Trump never touched that Bible. He was probably afraid it would burn him
Its wild the things you forget, when your flooded with so much BS. If Obama didn't touch the bible they would probably still be talking about it on Fox News.
I might try to use this next time I have to talk to someone conservative. Just wave away whatever they are saying and just say "Yeah but Trump never touched the bible when he took his oath so he isn't actually the president. Fake President!"
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Congressional approval ratings in the tank year after year and incumbency is still way above 80%? Yeah, democracy went off a cliff already. Just waiting to see how hard the landing is gonna be.
Are they as deranged as Trump? After the disaster of his first term, people were like: yeah, we want that again! So they voted him back into office even though he clearly said what his plans were, which are totally dictator level. Within the first 100 days of his second term, he already did as much as Orban did in 8 years, you know, the guy known to be Europe's last dictator.
The US isn't a democracy, as it's voting system is corrupt (think of gerrymandering for example). It's a sham democracy, where the country is run by corporations, for corporations, and where it's citizens are just consuming drones for those corporations. It's capitalism, but so fucked up into the extremes that it's on a dystopian level.
So the US isn't a real democracy and what Trump has done, already ended whatever the US was before him within those first 100 days of his second term.
Agreed but Trump won the popular vote, he'd be in there regardless. The American people can't make excuses that they are oppressed. They chose this, more than half of them anyway
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We were a never a democracy. The illusion of democracy is dying and the sooner the better. The sooner we rip off the blindfold that hoodwinks us, the faster we can build on solid foundations. I hope the rest of the global West can come to that realization as well and start treating the global South and East as equals, worthy of a seat at the table, not begging for scraps in their own dining hall.
I'm in the US as a failed state camp. Once the Americans can accept that position, there can be a proper rebuild.
I'd consider the label "competitive authoritarianism" as rather generous, and narrowly focused on just the internal processes of the US. I also believe that the current state of the US can be more defined once we expand the view to include the Americans have yet to fully explore the scope and extent of the Epstein files, along with the full collapse of the Supreme Court of the United States to corruption.
I have similar concerns for Canada: the lack of any check on the political party system itself. For the US, with only two functional political parties, the need for some checks is even more desperate. Originally I think the concern is that politicians are always the target of lobbying and potential bribery. They are technically the most fluid agents in the political system, and therefore one of the weakest points.
Perhaps what surprised both the Americans, and others abroad, is how there's no check on SCOTUS Justices for what essentially amounts to the appearance of outright bribery and corruption. At that point, I would have expected a full audit of the suspect Justices cases should have been done and essentially a complete review of every case should have been committed. Maybe a temporary expansion of the number of Justices to include members of the American Bar Association and other Justice system participants should have been done to basically re-hear the compromised cases.
In any event, the damage to American institutions is far reaching, and deep. I don't think the American public fully appreciates that even with the "frame" of what once was a democracy, the damage will probably take decades to recover from.
"To the brink..."
Yeah, that's how brinksmanship works.
The orange, lying, rapist, felon, grifter, moron, mobster, malignant narcissist, asshole has single-handedly destroyed the greatest nation since Roman times.
greatest nation since Roman times
Bit of a stretch. You could argue that the Spanish, Portuguese, French or British empires were long lasting, more extensive and had a greater affect over history than the 125 or so years that the US has been a major power (half of it's history - prior to that it was mostly insular). Just in language alone, let alone diplomatic and cultural ties.
But yes, he has ushered in the final destruction of the US's standing in the world. However, it was set up to fall since at least the Reagan-era which you could argue we're still in.
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