3 ms·

Words have meanings. It's not a "dictatorship", because Congress (elected every 2 years, approximately) sets the laws that the President acts under, and the Pr

• Ygg2 6y ago
  Even de facto, US is an oligarchy not a dictatorship.
  • mullingitover 6y ago
    “The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.” -Julius Nyerere
• dragonwriter 6y ago
  Dictatorships can be elective, so raising elections is irrelevant,and they can result from a legal delegation of arbitrary authority to the dictator (both election and legal delegation were absolutely the case for the Roman office of Dictator, which “dictatorship” is a generalization from.) If the President rules arbitrarily without meaningful constraint, despite being elected and despite that arbitrary power being explictly delegated in law, it is a dictatorship. It's not, though, because the President is neither delegated general arbitrary power in law not ruling with it despite the law. While constraints on executive authority in the law have significantly broken down and one might argue that it is on the road to dictatorship, arbitrary executive action despite the law still faces meaningful checks at least by the courts. There has been significant defiance of court orders without meaningful consequence (e.g., with regard to family separation policy) but the areas where that has occurred are still limited and noticeable, however deeply problematic, exceptions.