this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2025
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No Stupid Questions

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You'd think a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players, would have some mechanism that would prevent itself from throwing down it's key ideology.

Is it really that the president is all that decides about the future of democracy itself? Is 53 out of 100 senate seats really enough to make country fall into authoritarian regime? Is the army really not constitutionally obliged to step in and save the day?

I'd never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Yes, the President can be impeached and removed by Congress. On the opposite side of the coin a President can veto laws passed by Congress, which Congress can override but it's harder than passing a law. The problem is when Congress also goes nazi at the same time. In that case we're fucked. In fact I think Article 97 sub-paragraph E13/W even says, "Such conditions and circumstances shall by Law constitute Fuckage."

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If the US military goes Nazi, then the USA is beyond fucked.

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[–] [email protected] -1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Cool, but half the country supports this shit. And no, people who don't vote don't matter in this context.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Then maybe they should have their own shithole country and stop taking our tax dollars.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

You’d think a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players, would have some mechanism that would prevent itself from throwing down it’s key ideology.

"100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy"? That's not even true in a very minimal definition of democracy, let alone if we also mean equal rights for all. Just off the top of my head:

The vote of racial minorities was not protected before 1965.

COINTELPRO was a thing just over 50 years ago, targeting whatever political group was considered undesirable by the FBI. The FBI was found to be using unlawful surveillance targeting protesters for the inexcusable killing of a black man by police as recently as five years ago.

Last election there was an attempt to overturn the election results. It's not taken as seriously as it should have because it failed, but it was literally an attempt to overthrow democracy. It's important to note that Trump was allowed to run for president and the case against him was dropped as soon as he got elected. I'm pointing it out because the system was already there to protect him and it's not something that he caused through his own actions as president.

There are so many unwarranted invasions of other countries, assassinations, and human rights violations that I don't even know where to link to as a starting point.

Don't forget the large scale surveillance both within and without the country.

And then there's all the undemocratic qualities of unregulated free market capitalism. Politicians are lobbied. News outlets belong to wealthy individuals who often have other businesses as well. Social media too. Technically, you get to cast a vote that is equal to everybody else's. But your decision is based on false data, and your representative is massively incentivized to lie to you and enact policies that server their lobbyists and wealthy friends instead. Do we all really have equal power?

So if you mean democracy in a very literal and minimal sense, that the people have some sort of power through their vote, that's technically still going on. If you mean in it a more general sense, where people have fundamental rights that are always protected regardless of race or other characteristics, and where power is not unfairly distributed between individuals and racial groups, then again not much has changed. Because that was never the case. If you think fascism was universally condemned then you just hadn't realized how widespread and normalized it always was. Maybe fascism is growing. Maybe it's becoming more blatant. But it was always there.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Let's just say the amendments are sorted by importance.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (3 children)

The mechanism is the three branches of power providing checks and balances and voting. But when the people elect them to all three branches. It kinda defeats the purpose

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Trump has admitted he rigged the election

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This is insane... But also his discourse is so incoherent that one could argue he was being sarcastic or something.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Trump has said that Elon "knows those computers better than anybody ... And we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide".

First of all, we know that to be false because we know Elon doesn't know shit about computers. But, aside from that, there are multiple possible interpretations of what he meant, anything from "Elon rigged the election" to "Elon ensured the integrity of the election".

My policy is "Don't believe anything Trump says about anything". I don't change that policy when he says something that I want to believe is true.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Wanna see a letter from several computer science PhDs to Kamala Harris presenting plausible evidence that MAGA hacked the voting machines?

https://freespeechforpeople.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/letter-to-vp-harris-111324.pdf

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's not what that letter says. It says that operatives may have gained access to the software used to count votes, and if that happened they may have been able to probe that software for weaknesses.

What it doesn't say is that there was a subsequent, second breach of the voting machines in which doctored software was then installed.

It's like someone gaining access to blueprints for a bank vault. Yes, that theoretically lowers the security of the vault, but it doesn't prove that a bank heist has taken place, just that a heist is more likely to be possible now.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Okay so what do you do when the mob gets the blueprints for the bank vault, and then a few weeks later the Don brags about all the money he stole?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

The Don who lies constantly about everything? Who didn't even say "we stole the money" but more, "Elmo is good with bank stuff, and we have lots of money"? The same guy who wouldn't know how to read a blueprint, and would probably just post a picture of the blueprint on social media to generate controversy and traffic? The Don who, if he actually had broken into the bank, wouldn't be able to shut up about it, and would be bragging about it non-stop, probably by doing live-streams from within the bank vault?

You don't assume that he hit the bank. You follow your normal security procedures, and check that what you expect to see in the vault is what you actually see in the vault. Then you just ignore the blowhard.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

But the people in charge didn't check. Harris was told to ask for a recount, and she didn't.

If the people responsible for security won't do their due diligence, drag is going to play it safe and assume they fucked up.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

How do you know that the people in charge didn't check? Just because there wasn't a big announcement doesn't mean that there weren't sanity checks done on the process. It's likely that was done and that the results seemed to be legit, so there was no need to do more.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago (13 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 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.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (6 children)

The CIA can always assassinate a president who gets too far out of line, ~~like what happened to JFK,~~ but they don't tend to mind the right so much as the left.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

You can impeach a president for any reason. You don't need a crime or such committed, all you need is congress to do it.

Be careful what you wish for though since the other party could do "tit for tat" with the president you support.

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

I don't think you know what being a Nazi looks like.

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