8 ms·

As an American who grew from nothing, served in the military, and expanded in my career - I find the concerns for Democracy comical. Most of you do not unders

• selfmodruntime 2y ago
  Hopefully, the economy will recover with him as president.
  • pavlov 2y ago
    Recover? It’s better than ever on every actual metric. But I do look forward to February 2025, when journalists will once again travel to rural Pennsylvania to interview Trump voters in diners who will say that the economy is amazing now that the Great Man has been in power for a whole week. The magic of recovery!
    • e40 2y ago
      This will absolutely happen. Within days of taking office he will take credit for the “great” economy and his followers will eat it up.
      • xnx 2y ago
        I disagree. He will start taking credit for anything good that happens in the economy now, and blame anything bad that happens in the economy on Biden.
    • selfmodruntime 2y ago
      > Recover? It’s better than ever on every actual metric. Except for all metrics that matter. People are on average much poorer.
      • steve_adams_86 2y ago
        Yes, the economy is incredible but wealth disparity is too. The average person isn’t winning. Trump’s proposed economic changes appear to make that much worse, as well.
        • jkubicek 2y ago
          So much of this election has been utterly perplexing, but probably the most confusing part is how many people have legitimate gripes about how the economy is serving them, yet are voting for someone who has plans to make their situation worse. "He said he'll decrease inflation!" "But his plans for tariffs will make inflation much much worse!" ".... but he said he'll decrease inflation"
      • 9dev 2y ago
        Yes, voting for a bunch of corrupt billionaires and their friends will surely fix the wealth distribution issue. A sound plan, for sure!
• TheAlchemist 2y ago
  Can you explain a bit ? As somebody not living in US, that's surprising. My opinion is that Democrats did a really shit job - focusing on wrong problems, promoting stuff nobody cares about etc. Trump / Musk did appeal to a lot of people for different reasons, some of which I can understand. But both are grifters and very dangerous in my view.
• julkali 2y ago
  As a non-American, my personal concern for Democracy in regards to the USA is the questionable system of the electoral college which, in my opinion, is one of the worst forms of representative democracy on the planet and certainly not apt for a country so proud of its democratic values. This also goes hand-in-hand with the black-white thinking of a two-party-system.
  • briandear 2y ago
    Is the EU president elected by popular vote?
    • simonask 2y ago
      There is no president of the EU. There is a President of the European Council (Charles Michel, elected by member countries' heads of state), there is a President of the European Commission (Ursula von der Leyen, elected by the European Parliament), and there is a President of the European Parliament (Roberta Metsola, elected by the members of the parliament). Seats in the European Parliament are not proportionally allocated (small countries have more seats per capita), and member countries have different systems for allocating their seats among representatives, but nobody uses first-past-the-post, maybe except Hungary (debatably - their system is weird). So, no, none of the "EU presidents" are elected by popular vote strictly speaking, and none of them have a role that is even remotely similar to the US presidency.
  • seanp2k2 2y ago
    A good dive into the history of the electoral college can be found at https://www.hks.harvard.edu/more/policycast/if-electoral-college-relic https://www.hks.harvard.edu/more/policycast/if-electoral-col...
  • arp242 2y ago
    I don't disagree, but Trump won the popular vote by a decent margin.
    • grahamj 2y ago
• i_love_limes 2y ago
  Other high ranking military officers that have worked closely with Trump disagree. I might be inclined to believe them over you, unless you've also worked with Trump? Or are you just someone that he would call a 'sucker'? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/us/politics/john-kelly-trump-fitness-character.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/22/us/politics/john-kelly-tr...
  • ramoz 2y ago
    Yes you should listen to an actual grift and live in fear. People like me won’t. You not being able to resonate is what makes you and I different - and one of us capable of defending freedom and the other not.
    • mlnj 2y ago
      > and one of us capable of defending freedom and the other not. Did you just imply that these high ranking military officers are not the ones actually defending everyone's freedoms? Please stop with the talking points and actually think about what you are repeating again and again.
    • arp242 2y ago
      Ah, so he's a person who built and fought for democracy, but not the right person who built and fought for democracy. And it's really not hard to find more veterans supporting Harris; just the top two search results: https://commondefense.us/vets-for-harris https://commondefense.us/vets-for-harris https://votevets.org/press-releases/votevets-makes-historic-first-ever-endorsement-for-president https://votevets.org/press-releases/votevets-makes-historic-...
• aibrahem 2y ago
  As someone who spent most of his life in a dictatorship, I don’t think you appreciate how easily a society can slide into a totalitarian state and how apathetic most of the population can become. It’s also interesting that you served in the U.S. military and didn’t recognize how self-serving and institutionally corrupt it is. I come from a country with an oversized military relative to its government, and the parallels I can draw between its behavior and that of the U.S. Army are uncanny.
  • ramoz 2y ago
    I appreciate what you’ve been through. However, comparing American society with one of the Middle East does not resonate with me. That goes hand in hand with comparing a military of a dictatorship with one of a democracy.
    • mlnj 2y ago
      Trump has already floated - Imprisoning criticizers - Removing the broadcast licenses of news network that questions him. He's been calling them fake news for years. - More power to the rich buddies. Not just more money, now they get more control over government affairs. Musk and Thiel are frothing over this. - Control over women and minorities. - More power to the theists. Looks like "comparing American society with one of the Middle East does not resonate with me." will soon become apparent as the parallels start to be clearer.
      • ramoz 2y ago
        Right, you’d be better off without any media that convinces you of this fear. /s
        • greenie_beans 2y ago
          nobody needs media to tell them this. it comes directly from his mouth. it's hilarious that you think people get their opinions from media. no, just listen to what the politicians say. he said he's gonna do mass deportations? believe him
• TrackerFF 2y ago
  See, this is a real problem in the US. People assume that there's going to be some grand take-over event, a third-world coup d'état if you will. In reality, modern democracies die slowly. Russia was once a democracy, now it's democracy on paper only. What will Americans do, when their courts are infringing their freedom? Again, it happens slowly. Bit by bit, in the boring court rooms.
  • ramoz 2y ago
    What Russia are you talking about? The brief highly instable 1990s after the Soviet collapse that was followed by Putin’s rapid consolidation of power?
  • e40 2y ago
    This is why people don’t fear what is coming, they have no clue about history.
    • mlnj 2y ago
      Decades of defunding and weakening education does that to you.
    • ramoz 2y ago
      This is a false history narrative about Russia. Your insight is tarnished.
  • sneed_chucker 2y ago
    I agree with your general point, but the comparisons to Russia don't work. Russia was barely a functioning democracy in the 1990s and had no democratic tradition before that, just different flavors of authoritarianism for centuries.
    • bcrosby95 2y ago
      The problem is the US only really has traditions. We were hardly a democracy at our founding in the modern sense of the word and as such the guard rails are fairly weak. The electoral college wasn't established in some brilliant attempt to moderate the votes of states, it was so rich land owners could control who ran the country.
• bigodbiel 2y ago
  America joined the ranks of Russia and China. If you think Democracy isn't threatened, then you believe it never existed
• consteval 2y ago
  > I find the concerns for Democracy comical Trump has explicitly and clearly stated he plans to fill the supreme court with cronies, and then dissolve massive parts of the bureaucracy to instead divert that power to the president. Keep in mind, on top of this, he is also now completely immune from all crimes. This new-found concentration of power in the president has never before been seen in American politics. It is genuinely worrying, even if you believe Trump will use his new powers in benevolent ways.
  • bamboozled 2y ago
    The other problem now is that, whoever succeeds him instantly gets the same power, it's actually fucking wild.
    • consteval 2y ago
      This is working under the assumption a succession will be like the one's we're typically used to. With this newfound power, that might not be the case. At the expense of sounding like a doomer, I think there is a possibility the next president won't be democratically elected.
      • bamboozled 2y ago
        It's possible, but I feel the democratic process seems like somewhat of a religion in the USA, and I just can't see him being that influential to be able to kill democracy, the government is quite huge and he has energized a lot of conservatives. I mean the mid-terms are in 2 years and if the dems (hopefully) learn from this, they have a chance to bring it back somewhat. Seriously, if you go look at the numbers, which are still being counted, Harris clawed back quite a lot. It really was close in the end, similar to how the polls predicted. I was in denial about it, but I do think the dems lost their own election, the more I look at it, and listen to people who voted Trump, the more I have to admit, they screwed up in many ways, and we all paid for it. Biden calling his supporters garbage was the nail in the coffin IMO. That comment potentially lost them the election if you go look at how close some of the swing states were.
• DinoDad13 2y ago
  [flagged]
• tootie 2y ago
  Since last time, he survived two impeachments for which he was dead to rights and had the SC declare he has near total immunity for official acts. With a senate majority he knows that he can now operate with total impunity. He can cancel Congressional appropriations, cancel investigations, direct prosecutions and it doesn't matter if he does that illegally and he knows it.
• d_burfoot 2y ago
  +1. America has immense sociopolitical inertia. It is absolutely incomparable to societies like 1930s Germany, 1910s Russia, or post-war China that gave rise to the brutal dictatorships of the 20th century. This a blessing if you are worried about totalitarianism, and a curse if you are hoping for deep structural reform.
  • Vegenoid 2y ago
    A reasonable worry is not that America is going to become just like China, Russia, or Nazi Germany, but that it will become a bit more like them in some ways. Which I think would be bad.
• evantbyrne 2y ago
  Read They Thought They Were Free. People who vote for dictators _rarely_ view themselves as enablers of the bad things that come afterwards, even though they are an essential part of the process. Supporters choose to ignore the bad stuff. Let's hope the worst of it is just hot air, but I'm not giving people a pass this time around personally because it's way too dark.
• thinkingtoilet 2y ago
  How did Ashli Babbitt die? She was shot in the head, on January 6th, at point blank range, by the secret service, because she was trying to break through a barrier that was protecting the vice president of the United States, the man whose job it was to certify the election. Why was she there? Because from the top of the Republican party down, they spread a lie that the election was stolen because they devoid of morals and they knew their followers would believe them. The concerns about democracy are very real.
  • mynameishere 2y ago
    [flagged]
    • thinkingtoilet 2y ago
      There is video of this. There is a mob of people behind her trying to get the vice president to stop him from certifying the election. It wasn't just her, she was just the person in front. This is what people talk about how Trump supporters are detached from reality. There is video. Watch the video.
• culi 2y ago
  In Florida 10% of adults are not allowed to vote. In Mississippi, 15% of all black people are not allowed to vote Florida is particularly bitter because Floridians voted to give back felon voting rights and DeSantis and the judicial branch he controls just declared it unconstitutional
• culi 2y ago
  You should check out the It Could Happen Here podcast!
  • ausbah 2y ago
    behind the bastards is a great series as well
• holtkam2 2y ago
  I find it less comical. I don’t think my friends or family care that much about democracy… they just want their guy in charge.
• 4fterd4rk 2y ago
  "Average Joe" thinks he knows more political science than people who went to school. Inadvertently demonstrates why it's so easy to manipulate the public into voting against their own self interests while convincing them they're somehow smarter than the "elites", who are really just educated people trying to save them.
  • AlexandrB 2y ago
    As I get older, I grow increasingly weary of this kind of condescending rhetoric. As an example, where were these educated saviors when there were calls to "defund the police"? Most low-income neighbourhoods want more police presence[1], not less because crime hurts them personally and not just in an abstract way on some spreadsheet. You can't "save" someone without understanding what their day to day problems are. [1] https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2019-06-04/gallup-study-finds-low-income-chicagoans-want-more-police-support https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/2019-06-04/gallu...
• jkubicek 2y ago
  > Most of you do not understand the type of people that built and fought for democracy. I AM the type of people that built and fought for democracy. My people donate to the ACLU and drive people to the polls. We marched for civil rights and women's rights. We fight voter disenfranchisement and poll intimidators and insurrections. This is EXACLY why I'm concerned for Democracy.
• csa 2y ago
  Nice anecdotes you have there, but history suggests that you might have a bit of myopia. 1. Abraham Lincoln said "America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves." Whether you agree or not, some people think we may be at that inflection point right now. If you think American citizens haven’t lost substantial freedoms in the recent past, then you haven’t been paying attention. Is it at the level of “destroying ourselves”? To be determined, but the potential is there, and some folks really aren’t shy about trying to implement that a policy of reduced freedoms. 2. There are many cases in the last 100 years or so of authoritarian regimes rising because people want order during a time of distress — Saddam, Hitler, Mao, Lenin, and others rose to authoritarian power by offering stability during unstable times. They were welcomed with open arms, and often times people (including and especially the military) were willing to give up their freedoms for this potential for stability. Some folks think that the US is one big destabilizing event from welcoming an authoritarian. You may think this way of thinking is hubris, but none of us will know that it happened until after it has occurred. I’m glad things have worked out for you, but I hope you have open eyes about how things can go south, as they have in the past.
  • ramoz 2y ago
    It’s comical because you’re comparing literal communists and human rights offenders (some pure evil) to a _republican_ president in a democracy over 200 years old with decentralized power between the states as well as private sector independence. I’d question which party would bring us closer to something such as the cultural revolution or government-ran industries. Still, what most fail to understand is the core values instilled in places like our military as the ultimate check/balance.
• Whatarethese 2y ago
  Sounds like the government had been subsidizing your life for quite some time.
• underwater 2y ago
  One thing that's struck me since Trump was announced the winner is how many Replublican voters are determined to invalidate the opinions of people who voted for the Democrats. I'm left leaning, but I think jobs in rural areas, inflation, cost of living are all valid concerns that should be addressed regardless of who is in power. I disagree to varying extents with Trump's stance on abortion, immigration and gun control. But I also understand why people have a different opinion to me. What I see online is a continuing anger towards the left and a determination to not only discredit their opinions, but also punish them for their dissenting views. There is this gleeful perception that it's time for payback.