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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[–] PanArab@lemm.ee 20 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

What’s your definition of Nazi? I would think Andrew Jackson still a worse president than Trump. And not even the Supreme Court was able to stop him

[–] yarr@feddit.nl -3 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

I am learning that in modern America, Nazi is just anyone they don't like.

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[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 76 points 18 hours ago (6 children)

He knew it from the beginning. People didn't listen.

[–] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 33 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

He also didn't want to be president or have his face on money. They really just ignored the dude.

[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 19 points 18 hours ago

I guess ignoring Washington's wishes foreshadowed what the US would eventually become.

[–] Ohmmy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Who would have thought a government created in model of a constitutional monarchy would do this?

Oh right, all the people who opposed the US constitution. People forget the Anti Federalists every time.

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago (4 children)

Except most of the Anti Federalists weren't arguing against the specifics of the model, they were arguing against a centralized government at all. Which had literally just failed.

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[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 9 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)
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[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 12 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Impeachment. That's it.

But you're also forgetting that in the US states have a significant amount of power. For example the President cannot cancel elections. If a state cancels elections they just don't get counted.

There's a lot in that particular area that shields people from federal government stupidity.

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[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 52 points 18 hours ago (7 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.

[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Law enforcement tends to lean conservative...

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[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 36 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours 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."

[–] Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 6 points 13 hours ago

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

[–] nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca 8 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (2 children)

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

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[–] hesusingthespiritbomb@lemmy.world 12 points 14 hours ago (4 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?

[–] door_in_the_face@feddit.nl 3 points 11 hours ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 48 points 19 hours ago (4 children)

It turns out that a handful of young land-owning white men from the 1700s, born almost 200 years before the advent of game theory, didn't actually properly anticipate every way in which the political system they were designing could fail.

[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 18 hours ago (3 children)

Lol they fucked up real bad. I mean, Washington wanted 2 terms to be the norm. So why didn't he just advocate for that to be... ye know... written into the fucking constitution?

Also, they had a contingent election like just 4 years after his retirement, because checks notes Pres and VP are just 1st and second place? And electors cast 2 votes for the same office? NANI?!? What a bunch of mess. (Imagine if the Federalists just tell their electors to, instead of voting 65 for Adams and 65 for the VP, just vote all 130 for Adams, 0 for the VP candidate. Just win with a Federalist Pres and Democratic-Republican VP. Oh wait checks 1796 election that actually happened. They got a Federalist Pres and Democratic-Republican VP because of shenanigans. Imagine a trump-walz or harris-vance. What a dumb ass idea. It failed so bad, they had to write an entire amendment to fix this shit. 🤣

(When I read about that, my brain just had an aneurism, like WTF is that election system?!?)

[–] merc@sh.itjust.works 18 points 18 hours ago (4 children)

The funny thing is that so much of it is based on the idea that everyone involved is going to be on their best behaviour, working for the good of the country, compromising with their opponents, and so-on. And, then it all falls apart as soon as one person realizes that they get an advantage as soon as they simply ignore the norms.

Also, don't forget that there was less than a century between the revolution and the civil war. If your brand new form of government is so poor that a significant fraction of your population thinks a civil war is preferable to resolving things through that system, your system isn't very good.

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[–] droans@midwest.social 17 points 18 hours ago

I mean, Washington wanted 2 terms to be the norm.

He didn't, that's just a whitewashed version we tell ourselves.

He just didn't want the President to be viewed as a monarch or a lifetime appointment. He turned down a third term because he feared he would die in office and the public would believe that's the norm.

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[–] LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 16 points 17 hours ago

He's just a symptom of the real problem, which is that he exposed himself as a nazi a long time ago and still got reelected.

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 13 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

Second Amendment.

The odds aren't in our favor.

[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

People who wrote the 2nd amendment cant even conceive the concept of what a fat man can do

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 6 points 14 hours ago

The nuke is a bad example of the sheer power of the modern American military. It's also a bit outdated. That legal mechanism was drafted when many other modern weapons and tactics were not even dreamed of. Just a couple days ago the US military announced its strongest armor yet.

But I agree: your assault rifle may save you from others with an assault rifle, but it won't do shit if the military comes for you.

[–] nomy@lemmy.zip 5 points 14 hours ago

That's a non sequitur though, unless you're suggesting a tyrant would nuke the population he wanted to rule.

[–] BigBenis@lemmy.world 25 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Our government leans heavily on decorum and good faith. Trump's success has been due to his refusal to adhere to decorum and good faith. Our system doesn't know how to handle that other than shaming and shaking fists so Trump gets free reign to do whatever he wants.

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[–] SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.world 15 points 19 hours ago (3 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.

[–] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 30 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) (3 children)

not like it changed, he was impeached twice, didn't mean shit. he's a felonious racist rapist, doesn't mean shit.

USA made this bed, now we fucking lie in it.

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[–] dx1@lemmy.world 12 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

That gets to the root of the problem. We have "checks and balances" designed around the idea that separate institutions would check the excesses of each other. Even if you don't accept the "Republicans and Democrats work for the same people" theory, well, now all three branches of government are majority Republican, and not even in a way where there's significant internal division or strife, so it's just a bulldozer. The stupidity of not including popular recall votes in the Constitution - or really, just not having a mechanism for popular referendums, vetoes, etc. - is I think its biggest fault. The "representative democracy" model is inherently flawed because you can corrupt representatives, while corrupting an entire population, while not impossible, is a hell of a lot harder.

[–] IDKWhatUsernametoPutHereLolol@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Check and Balance was intened to stop bad individuals, not an entire political party working in unison to destroy the system.

[–] dx1@lemmy.world 10 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

Honestly, no amount of careful planning and constitutional design will restrain a society where enough people have gone completely insane. Look at "Israel". Even 100% direct democracy there would still be a genocidal nightmare. Gets to the problem of how culture is the real driver behind the shape of society. And in that case, how religion incinerates real morality.

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[–] Juice@midwest.social 29 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago) (8 children)

In 1776, people didn't know what fascism was. Hell there wasnt even consensus on what capitalism was, Wealth of Nations was published that same year. They had never seen a capitalist system degenerate, as would happen in France under Louis Napoleon in the 1850s.

They knew what feudalism was, which was bad and a form of authoritarian autocracy, but this isn't Fascism. They were afraid that the kings and queens would get restored, as revolutionaries (and capitalism was revolutionary and progressive at that time) they were safeguarding against a counter revolution which would come from monarchists.

There is no way they could conceive of a movement to overthrow capitalism, which they barely understood although being the revolutionary capitalist class, that would come from a greater demand of social reforms, one where the class they were a part of would rule society rather than just administer it as they had for centuries, one where a class that they didn't even know about, the proletarian working class, would supplant them and bring greater prosperity and equality. This movement developed fully in Russia and Europe after the first world war when the last of the weakened feudal aristocracy destroyed their own continent to fight over scraps of colonial internationalism. A revolution in Russia inspired the global working class, especially where they were highly organized and industrialized such as Italy and Germany, and terrified the ruling capitalist classes of those countries.

In the shadow of the emerging workers movement grew the dialectical opposite and evil twin of German and Italian communism: Fascism. Fascists gleefully fight and kill communists, and desire power above all else, exploiting contradictions in liberal democracy (that's "liberal" meaning supports private property, not cool liberals that like freedom and justice) to confuse the masses and gain power. The ruling classes, weakened by decades of militant worker struggles, assented to the will of the fascists and in a last ditch effort to preserve their dwindling control, handed power over to them. The rest is history.

The founders couldn't conceive of the conditions you describe as they either didn't exist or wouldnt be developed enough to study for 50-70 years. Not all forms of authoritarianism are the same. They thought they were doing away with their version of it. Besides, the "founding fathers" gags violently would have fucking loved Trump

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[–] Sgt_choke_n_stroke@lemmy.world 43 points 1 day ago (22 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

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[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 36 points 23 hours ago (3 children)

The voters were supposed to be that check and the Framers were explicit in that it was part of how they designed the Constitution.

Even regarding electing a felon, the Framers didn't want a case where one state pushed through a a felony conviction quickly to keep someone out of office.

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