4 ms·

Are they trying to say that the democracy is now worse because the wrong guys was elected?

by agnsaft 10y ago

muninn_ 10y ago
Basically.
Jyefet 10y ago
It's more to do with people's trust in the government than Trump being elected. As an example - Trump's lies about the size of the crowd at inauguration.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  How about trusting Obama when voting for him and then seeing him suing whistleblowers like never before, and continuing the never-ending trail of War in the Middle-East (without ANY Congress approval) despite getting a Nobel peace prize (let's not forget his personal "kill-list" for drone strikes too) ? And while he was supposed to be progressive about drug use, he has intensified the War on Drugs in practice to a level that even Bush did not even dream to go to. So, can we be honest a second about "trust in elected officials" ?
chrisrhoden 10y ago
> because of a further erosion of trust in government and elected officials there. Guessing it is actually a combination of very low approval ratings across the board and the fact that the guy who was elected is encouraging distrust in the system. So if you don't approve of / trust him, you don't trust the government. If you do trust him, you don't trust the government.
- akjainaj 10y ago
  > because of a further erosion of trust in government and elected officials there. As perceived by the media... the same media who wanted the other candidate to be elected.
  - chrisrhoden 10y ago
    I'll assume you downvoted me because you think that the article is wrong and not because you think I am wrong in my assessment of what the article is saying. I don't disagree that the media at large would have preferred the other candidate. That would be true if the media was a perfect statistical representation of the country, and the media is not, it's largely focused in population centers, where the preference was overwhelming.
    - akjainaj 10y ago
      I can't even downvote.
  - ajmurmann 10y ago
    Well functioning media are also an important factor for a democracy. Apparently many people doubt the US has that. No matter how you look at it something important is broken. The difference in perception is what's the broken part.
- pabloski 10y ago
  "So if you don't approve of / trust him, you don't trust the government. If you do trust him, you don't trust the government.", are you talking about Obama/Clinton? The ones who have destroyed the Middle East, armed the syrian terrorists, buried Osama Bin Laden without showing its corpse ( but they showed Gaddafi's one, and he was muslim too, really strange ). And the same who are spouting nonsense on the "russian hacking" without showing proof. Seriously, if the american people distrust the government, it is because of the globalist oligarchs puppets actions.
  - chrisrhoden 10y ago
    What you're describing is the first half of what I said. And you're right, there has consistently been a sizable percentage of the electorate who doesn't trust the government. What's relatively new is that now, the President is asking people who are on his side to distrust the rest of the government.
    - shuntress 10y ago
      This is the scariest part. I have a hard time seeing how his team's assertion of "alternative facts" (seemingly designed/delivered to undermine trust in every system we have built for the last 200 years) can lead to anything other than descent into fascism.
Gupie 10y ago
No, as the very short article says it's "because of a further erosion of trust in government and elected officials there".
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
calvin_c 10y ago
I think they're trying to say that the democracy is now worse because we have a leader who is lying to the media, threatening voting rights based on unsupported claims, silencing scientists from sharing publicly funded research, and is charging journalists with felony charges for covering protests against him.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  How about the previous President who ignored the Constitution blatantly (4th Amendment anyone?) and continued the global surveillance of US Citizens without any due process (unless you consider Secret Courts one?), and lying blatantly about it in the first place? Does that count for anything?
  - calvin_c 10y ago
    Certainly does, which is why our score went down last year before Trump took office.
ForrestN 10y ago
No. The new administration is systematically undermining the norms that held up our strong democracy, on purpose. Any student of history recognizes moves like lying about crowd sizes, delegitimizing peaceful protests, and undermining the press. The president is lying daily about millions of people voting fraudulently; why should anyone have any confidence in our democracy, whether you somehow crazily believe him, or whether you know he's lying?
- decaysackparity 10y ago
  You seem to be going with the assumption that previous presidents told the truth. Trump is not as charismatic with the lies like Obama.
  - ForrestN 10y ago
    No. Any reasonable analysis comparing the two presidents shows immediately that Trump is in a whole other league. I'm not saying Obama was perfect, but he was most often misleading. Trump is saying the sky isn't blue, over and over again, and then forcing his communications team to say so as a loyalty test. The New York Times has now put "lie" in headlines describing Trump multiple times, and he's been in office less than a week. In a long campaign and then eight years governing that never once happened with Obama.
    - shuntress 10y ago
      You knew when you wrote this that the only response will be "Thats because the NYT wants Obummer and hates Trump" How is it even possible to come to the table when we cant both agree "Most large news sources come close enough to the truth"? Just look at the crowd size thing. We can't even agree on a basic simple fact. We have to fix that before we can even think about starting to discus larger issues. But the issue of "We can't agree on basic simple facts" is a large issue so I guess we are just boned.
- briandear 10y ago
  Lying about crowd sizes undermined democracy? As far as delegitimizing protests -- how about the delegitimization of Tea Party protests? How about the attempted delegitimization of the president by the press by suggesting the Russians are responsible for his election? We could talk about the lying of the government when they repeatedly and officially stated that Benghazi was because of a YouTube video. My point -- nothing has changed -- only the people doing the lying and deligitimizing. I get it, your person lost and you're mad about it -- but don't pretend that Trump is any worse than the guy that came before. Same game, different players.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
bildung 10y ago
No: " The downgrade was not a consequence of Donald Trump, states the report. Rather, it was caused by the same factors that led Mr Trump to the White House: a continued erosion of trust in government and elected officials, which the index measures using data from global surveys. In total, it incorporates 60 indicators across five broad categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties." [1] That link also has a really nice interactive world map. [1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/01/daily-chart-20 http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/01/daily-c...
- briandear 10y ago
  However had Hillary won, this report would be different.
- optimuspaul 10y ago
  I wish that they had chosen colors for their "really nice interactive world map" that weren't so similar on the ends for the colorblind population of the world.
ryguytilidie 10y ago
Nope. You'll be surprised to know that the article said nothing even remotely close to the thing you just made up!
juki 10y ago
Looking at the data in Wikipedia[1], USA seems to be getting low scores for "Functioning of government" and "Political participation". Also notice that the US score only fell from 8.05 to 7.98 [2] from last year, so the difference isn't that big. It was barely in the top category (8+) to begin with. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index [2]: http://www.eiu.com/Handlers/WhitepaperHandler.ashx?fi=Democracy-Index-2016.pdf&mode=wp&campaignid=DemocracyIndex2016 http://www.eiu.com/Handlers/WhitepaperHandler.ashx?fi=Democr...

Are they trying to say that the democracy is now worse because the wrong guys was elected?

by agnsaft 10y ago

Are they trying to say that the democracy is now worse because the wrong guys was elected?

muninn_ 10y ago

Basically.

Jyefet 10y ago

It's more to do with people's trust in the government than Trump being elected. As an example - Trump's lies about the size of the crowd at inauguration.

ekianjo 10y ago
How about trusting Obama when voting for him and then seeing him suing whistleblowers like never before, and continuing the never-ending trail of War in the Middle-East (without ANY Congress approval) despite getting a Nobel peace prize (let's not forget his personal "kill-list" for drone strikes too) ? And while he was supposed to be progressive about drug use, he has intensified the War on Drugs in practice to a level that even Bush did not even dream to go to. So, can we be honest a second about "trust in elected officials" ?

chrisrhoden 10y ago

> because of a further erosion of trust in government and elected officials there. Guessing it is actually a combination of very low approval ratings across the board and the fact that the guy who was elected is encouraging distrust in the system. So if you don't approve of / trust him, you don't trust the government. If you do trust him, you don't trust the government.

akjainaj 10y ago
> because of a further erosion of trust in government and elected officials there. As perceived by the media... the same media who wanted the other candidate to be elected.
- chrisrhoden 10y ago
  I'll assume you downvoted me because you think that the article is wrong and not because you think I am wrong in my assessment of what the article is saying. I don't disagree that the media at large would have preferred the other candidate. That would be true if the media was a perfect statistical representation of the country, and the media is not, it's largely focused in population centers, where the preference was overwhelming.
  - akjainaj 10y ago
    I can't even downvote.
- ajmurmann 10y ago
  Well functioning media are also an important factor for a democracy. Apparently many people doubt the US has that. No matter how you look at it something important is broken. The difference in perception is what's the broken part.
pabloski 10y ago
"So if you don't approve of / trust him, you don't trust the government. If you do trust him, you don't trust the government.", are you talking about Obama/Clinton? The ones who have destroyed the Middle East, armed the syrian terrorists, buried Osama Bin Laden without showing its corpse ( but they showed Gaddafi's one, and he was muslim too, really strange ). And the same who are spouting nonsense on the "russian hacking" without showing proof. Seriously, if the american people distrust the government, it is because of the globalist oligarchs puppets actions.
- chrisrhoden 10y ago
  What you're describing is the first half of what I said. And you're right, there has consistently been a sizable percentage of the electorate who doesn't trust the government. What's relatively new is that now, the President is asking people who are on his side to distrust the rest of the government.
  - shuntress 10y ago
    This is the scariest part. I have a hard time seeing how his team's assertion of "alternative facts" (seemingly designed/delivered to undermine trust in every system we have built for the last 200 years) can lead to anything other than descent into fascism.

Gupie 10y ago

No, as the very short article says it's "because of a further erosion of trust in government and elected officials there".

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

calvin_c 10y ago

I think they're trying to say that the democracy is now worse because we have a leader who is lying to the media, threatening voting rights based on unsupported claims, silencing scientists from sharing publicly funded research, and is charging journalists with felony charges for covering protests against him.

ekianjo 10y ago
How about the previous President who ignored the Constitution blatantly (4th Amendment anyone?) and continued the global surveillance of US Citizens without any due process (unless you consider Secret Courts one?), and lying blatantly about it in the first place? Does that count for anything?
- calvin_c 10y ago
  Certainly does, which is why our score went down last year before Trump took office.

ForrestN 10y ago

No. The new administration is systematically undermining the norms that held up our strong democracy, on purpose. Any student of history recognizes moves like lying about crowd sizes, delegitimizing peaceful protests, and undermining the press. The president is lying daily about millions of people voting fraudulently; why should anyone have any confidence in our democracy, whether you somehow crazily believe him, or whether you know he's lying?

decaysackparity 10y ago
You seem to be going with the assumption that previous presidents told the truth. Trump is not as charismatic with the lies like Obama.
- ForrestN 10y ago
  No. Any reasonable analysis comparing the two presidents shows immediately that Trump is in a whole other league. I'm not saying Obama was perfect, but he was most often misleading. Trump is saying the sky isn't blue, over and over again, and then forcing his communications team to say so as a loyalty test. The New York Times has now put "lie" in headlines describing Trump multiple times, and he's been in office less than a week. In a long campaign and then eight years governing that never once happened with Obama.
  - shuntress 10y ago
    You knew when you wrote this that the only response will be "Thats because the NYT wants Obummer and hates Trump" How is it even possible to come to the table when we cant both agree "Most large news sources come close enough to the truth"? Just look at the crowd size thing. We can't even agree on a basic simple fact. We have to fix that before we can even think about starting to discus larger issues. But the issue of "We can't agree on basic simple facts" is a large issue so I guess we are just boned.
briandear 10y ago
Lying about crowd sizes undermined democracy? As far as delegitimizing protests -- how about the delegitimization of Tea Party protests? How about the attempted delegitimization of the president by the press by suggesting the Russians are responsible for his election? We could talk about the lying of the government when they repeatedly and officially stated that Benghazi was because of a YouTube video. My point -- nothing has changed -- only the people doing the lying and deligitimizing. I get it, your person lost and you're mad about it -- but don't pretend that Trump is any worse than the guy that came before. Same game, different players.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

bildung 10y ago

No: " The downgrade was not a consequence of Donald Trump, states the report. Rather, it was caused by the same factors that led Mr Trump to the White House: a continued erosion of trust in government and elected officials, which the index measures using data from global surveys. In total, it incorporates 60 indicators across five broad categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, democratic political culture and civil liberties." [1] That link also has a really nice interactive world map. [1] http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/01/daily-chart-20 http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/01/daily-c...

briandear 10y ago
However had Hillary won, this report would be different.
optimuspaul 10y ago
I wish that they had chosen colors for their "really nice interactive world map" that weren't so similar on the ends for the colorblind population of the world.

ryguytilidie 10y ago

Nope. You'll be surprised to know that the article said nothing even remotely close to the thing you just made up!

juki 10y ago

Looking at the data in Wikipedia[1], USA seems to be getting low scores for "Functioning of government" and "Political participation". Also notice that the US score only fell from 8.05 to 7.98 [2] from last year, so the difference isn't that big. It was barely in the top category (8+) to begin with. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index [2]: http://www.eiu.com/Handlers/WhitepaperHandler.ashx?fi=Democracy-Index-2016.pdf&mode=wp&campaignid=DemocracyIndex2016 http://www.eiu.com/Handlers/WhitepaperHandler.ashx?fi=Democr...