this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
134 points (95.9% liked)

Ask Lemmy

30030 readers
1629 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

What is your line in the sand?

Edit: thank you all for your responses. I think it's important as an American we take your view points seriously. I think of a North Korean living inside of North Korea. They don't really know how bad it is because that is all hidden from them and they've never had anything else. As things get worse for Americans it's important to have your voices because we will become more and more isolated.

Even the guy who said, "lol." Some people need that sort of sobering reaction.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Nangijala@feddit.dk 1 points 1 minute ago

The short answer: yes.

The long answer: it will take a long time to completely dismantle a democracy in a country as big and complex as America. You don't just do that in three months.

All trump has done so far is move as fast as possible to make as much of a mess as possible in the hopes that some of his nutty ideas goes through once the system catches up to him. And the system will catch up to him and Musk and all the other cunts who are having their little ego fest currently.

I have patience. Kind of. I look forward to seeing the consequences of their actions come to haunt them. I also hope this period in American politics will be the wake up call America needs to hopefully bar politicians and political parties from taking donations from big corps essentially try to buy the government and weaken true democracy from flourishing. The US isn't the only country with this problem, but it is certainly neck deep in one of the worst outcomes of letting big corporations take ownership of a government.

[–] spittingimage@lemmy.world 3 points 34 minutes ago

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

[–] Shardikprime@lemmy.world 9 points 2 hours ago

Would be nice to know what part of America you mean by that. It is a pretty big continent you know? Argentinians, Mexicans, Brasilians and so on are all part of America.

Buuuut I'm gonna go ahead and assume you are asking about the UNITED STATES country, right?

Yes it is a Democracy. Not perfect, but then again which one is?

[–] 58008@lemmy.world 5 points 2 hours ago

On paper, I guess so? In reality, and as is the case with pretty much every developed democracy, money and technology make a mockery of the whole idea. A society in which billionaires can buy their way into the Whitehouse - literally - is no democracy.

[–] JoeKrogan@lemmy.world 5 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 10 minutes ago)

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

[–] TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world 20 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

China's democracy is among party members.

[–] stringere@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 hours ago

Oh I love parties! I'll bring the glowsticks!

[–] UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 18 points 7 hours ago
[–] nonentity@sh.itjust.works 19 points 8 hours ago

Anyone who is eligible to vote, and chooses not to, implicitly throws their support behind whoever wins.

On 2024-11-05, ⅔ of US citizens who were eligible to vote told the rest of the world they don’t want to be taken seriously for at least 2 years.

[–] tauren@lemm.ee 26 points 8 hours ago

The US had always been a questionable democracy with the hyperfixation on the president and just two parties setting the agenda, but I'd argue that it's still a democracy, though it is a rapidly deteriorating one.

[–] JacksonLamb@lemmy.world 66 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

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.

[–] gmtom@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago

For the time being, sure. I dint think democracy is a binary. Democracy doesn't imply a fair system or universal suffrage or a system where power is split.

Like for example the Vatican is a absolute monarchy and also a democracy.

[–] XTL@sopuli.xyz 24 points 10 hours ago (7 children)

Absolutely not. A two party system was barely nominally a form of democracy. Current one quacks like a dictatorship and walks like a dictatorship. They might hold a fake election one day like many of those do, but still no.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] TeaWalker@lemm.ee 25 points 11 hours ago (2 children)

Am Dutch. I have considered the US an incomplete democracy since I learned about voting in school. It’s not one person one vote, which to me is crucial for a democracy. The US right now is still a nation of laws, but democracy is sharply in decline. The voter-roll issues and Gerrymandering come to mind immediately. Not to mention the fact that guaranteed access to polls has been pulled by the courts. Which is insane to me.

[–] thermal_shock@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

$ is votes, who could have seen where that would go.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 9 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Also president having so much power was clearly never democratic to begin with as we can see it all play out now.

[–] RupeThereItIs@lemmy.world 11 points 10 hours ago

The power of the president did not start out like this. Congress kept giving their power to the executive for political reasons.

It happened over centuries.

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 7 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (1 children)

Ignoring court orders, and "fake national emergency declarations" to create war and international extortion and remove rights and citizenships for deportations crossed the line. The voter suppression/rigging that won election for Trump is also clearly anti-democratic, but anti-democratic as usual. Media/oligarchy/Israel influence/disinformation might not make for an ideal democracy, but also "democracy as usual".

The big problem with the world is the US empire's manufacturing of hatred/war against "those who are less democratic than us and our colonies" Corruption of democracy in US, who can cheaply manipulate democracy in its colonies, means that you don't have functional democracy either. US praises the most violently oppressive apartheid ethnostates suspending federal and local elections as great democracies if they support US wars. There is something wrong when the most important issue of your government is to increase divisiveness/threats to the US's enemies when the US unjustifiably threatens you, and that thrills you as right track.

So, democracy is simply not working at bringing progressiveness and shared prosperity, or even the most basic understanding of humanist/national interests, to those who say they love it so much. This is global collapse level of delusion. Nations doing best economically are those distancing themselves from US colonial control.

The more objective measure of "good government" is control against oligarchist pillaging, while having pluralism/sustainability, and economic constructiveness. US approved democracies are failing hard on these metrics. Warmongering based on "blanket, evidence free, refusal to accept election results when non-CIA candidate wins" is not the democratic/liberal ideal you think it is.

[–] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 6 points 8 hours ago

Just going to leave this here.

[–] nichtburningturtle@feddit.org 9 points 9 hours ago

I consider it a lesser democracy / something that barely qualifies for a few years now.

[–] FelixCress@lemmy.world 128 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] VieuxQueb@lemmy.ca 2 points 7 hours ago
[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 40 points 15 hours ago

I grew up in the US and have lived outside it for 10 years now. I would agree with this. Voting and representation have never been total and is definitely less available for many groups. Further things are being stripped away.

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 21 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Yeah. My wake-up call was quite early in life, when SCOTUS handed the election to GWB. If I was born a generation earlier I'd have called it with Watergate. If I was an ancestor currently dead, I would have called it around the time an assassin put the presidency in the hands of the opposite party, and a drunk asshole subsequently decided reconstruction efforts should fail. Or possibly just prior, when we somehow decided not to hang every man Jack of the confederacy for treason.

Edit: an earlier still version of me would have overseen the death of a culture brought on by poxy mad white religious extremists, and laughed ruefully to hear that centuries later the utter bastardy continues unchanged.

[–] DasFaultier@sh.itjust.works 104 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] unlogic@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 hours ago

As a German also I agree with this statement. Ostensibly it is a democracy but in reality it's not. And yes, there is a lot of rhyming going on

[–] SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 42 points 14 hours ago

Line in the sand? Going after political opponents. Censoring information. Dismantling media. Abandoning rule of law. Business and government mixing too much.

USA is speed running these.

[–] tortina_original@lemmy.world 13 points 11 hours ago

It was never a democracy.

[–] Brownandoffended@lemm.ee 44 points 14 hours ago

A struggling democracy, in the beginning of an Orban/Hungary-like overtake of the country.

Its possible to revert, but you seem to have atleast a 1/3 of the country that would walk down a straight up facist line willingly and happily do so.

You need to fix your shit america.

[–] uhmbah@lemmy.ca 8 points 11 hours ago
[–] zonnewin@feddit.nl 38 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I consider it an autocratic regime with strong fascist characteristics.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Intergalactic@lemmy.world 12 points 12 hours ago (6 children)

Absolutely not. A country where two parties are the only two viable electoral options, is absolutely not a democracy. Doesn’t mean I’ll stop my membership for the PSL.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] sinnsykfinbart@lemmy.world 10 points 12 hours ago

I really never did, not a well functioning at least. They've practiced voter repression for decades, and then they had fun testing how low they could go after 9/11, doing a lot of unlawful shit, going after citizens who spoke out against their policies and wars.

[–] char_stats@lemm.ee 22 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

I consider it a faux democracy. It still has the semblance of one, with people voting, believing they matter and that they have actual free speech, but the masses are being, increasingly less subtly, controlled by media corporations and rendered incapable of critical, independent thinking by an ever decreasing quality of education.

Don't be fooled though! This isn't happening in the US alone. It is widespread all over the globe. The US is simply doing it in a smarter, more cunning way, while leading the wealthy 1% in other countries by example.

[–] Mvlad88@lemmy.world 13 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

How can you be a democracy if you have only two political parties?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Zoldyck@lemmy.world 7 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

No. I also don't consider the United States to be a democracy.

[–] coaxil@lemm.ee 19 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Not at all, you are just an autocracy now but don't fully realise it, and as the other commentator had said, not even really a good democracy in the loosest of terms before this entire mess going on ATM!

load more comments
view more: next ›