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This is based on a too literal interpretation of democracy. Democracy had a bad reputation in the ancient world, because unconstrained majority decisions often

This is based on a too literal interpretation of democracy. Democracy had a bad reputation in the ancient world, because unconstrained majority decisions often led to terrible outcomes. In the modern world, democracy usually means liberal democracy, which includes things like the rule of law and constitutional protections. As a rough approximation, a constitution exists to prevent the government from doing what the voters want. A constitution in itself a worthless document, and the checks and balances have no power. The power comes from conventions. Conventions on how the constitution should be interpreted and how the people in power should act within the constitutional framework. If too many people ignore the conventions and interpret the laws and regulations literally to their advantage, democracy will die. It died in the Roman Republic, and it has died in many modern republics. Plenty of authoritarian states maintain nominally democratic institutions. And many of them became like that in a way that was at least nominally legal.

_heimdall 2y ago
> This is based on a too literal interpretation of democracy. Attempting to run a democracy in a non-literal way seems like a recipe for disaster. That seems to imply that citizens get to cast a vote and have their voice heard...unless those in charge decide the citizens don't know what is best for them. As a country we picked Trump. For better or worse we made that bed and we now have to lie in it.
- rayiner 2y ago
  Folks on the left would do well to remember that the same unelected bureaucracy that declared “resistance” to Trump would destroy an AOC or Sanders presidency too. Ultimately, it’s a good thing if electing the President can effectuate drastic changes in the executive branch, because that’s the only real lever voters have for affecting the largest and these days most powerful branch of government.
  - archagon 2y ago
    In a modern nation, it’s not tenable to flush the federal government down the toilet every four years.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      To the contrary, in a modern, diverse country, it’s not tenable for the same people to keep running the government in the same way regardless of who wins elections. That was okay when we had a more homogenous, slower-changing country with widely shared values. That’s untenable today.
      - DFHippie 2y ago
        Engineering, statistics, science: these things do not change every four years. How to dig a trench or survey a boundary does not change. How to conduct clinical trials, combat disease, deliver mail: these things do not change. What is not tenable today, or ever, is firing the people with these skills every four years and re-hiring replacements, to the extent that this happens at all, based on ideological tests.
        rayiner 2y ago
        That was a fine notion before it became apparent that skilled professionals are unable to separate their work from their political ideology: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-health-protests-301534 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-hea... This was a huge problem in the first Trump administration: https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/20222702-federal-bureaucrats-resisted-president-trump https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/20222702-federal-burea.... Do you really think that, for example, DOJ lawyers who defended Biden’s mass immigration policies are going to flip and use 100% of their talents to figure out how to do mass deportations now? If that’s genuinely the case, then there’s a place for the idea of a neutral civil service. But I don’t believe that’s the case, and that’s an unacceptable state of affairs.
        DFHippie 2y ago
  - turtlesdown11 2y ago
    The "deep state" is just a scapegoat for stuff people don’t like or understand. It’s a way to dodge real issues. There’s no secret conspiracy—just a lot of people doing their jobs in a messy system.
    - _heimdall 2y ago
      The "deep state" is also used to refer to the relatively small number of unelected people who make some of the most impactful decisions on society with no voter input. I don't know that I've ever actually heard someone talk about the "deep state" to refer to career bureaucrats just doing their jobs in large government orgs / a messy system.
      - acdha 2y ago
        Do you have any examples of people you think do that?
        _heimdall 2y ago
        Oh I'm not directly making the case that a "deep state" exists, I was just surprised by the way the earlier comment was using the term.
bruce511 2y ago
Ultimately the checks and balances are also elected. Directly in the case of congress, indirectly in the case of the judiciary. (Mitch McConnell obstructed merrick garland and was rewarded for it.) Of course unrestrained majority decisions lead to terrible outcomes. This is well understood, and has been demonstrated over and over recently (think Brexit.) Democracy is objectively a flawed system for this reason. It has never promised to deliver the best, or even good, government. It is what it is. I agree, this is a literal interpretation of democracy. It is "the will of the people". I'm not sure that anything else could still be even called a democracy.
- graemep 2y ago
  > This is well understood, and has been demonstrated over and over recently (think Brexit.) That is a matter of opinion. Most of what is terrible about Brexit is "the media hate it". Economic outcomes have been in line with comparable EU countries so the promised "project fear" disaster (e.g. the Treasury prediction of a collapse of the economy in the wake of a vote for Brexit - not even on implementation) did not happen. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80772140f0b62305b8b510/hm_treasury_analysis_the_immediate_economic_impact_of_leaving_the_eu_web.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80772140f0b...
rayiner 2y ago
This is Orwellian double-speak. You’re defining “democracy” to mean “not democracy.” Nor does the “constitution” support your view. Article II says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” What you’re calling “democracy” and the “constitution” is neither. It’s Wilsonianism, an idea invented by a eugenicist who hated the constitution as well as democracy: https://fedsoc.org/commentary/fedsoc-blog/woodrow-wilson-s-case-against-the-constitution https://fedsoc.org/commentary/fedsoc-blog/woodrow-wilson-s-c...
- jltsiren 2y ago
  I don't see how your reply is related to my comment. I was not defining democracy. I was describing the common real-world usage of the term, which has a more specific meaning than simple majority rule. It is commonly used as a shorthand for "liberal democracy". Some Americans use "republic" for the same concept, but that's misleading in other ways. Partly because some countries that are commonly understood to be liberal democracies are constitutional monarchies. And partly because some actual republics (such as North Korea or the member states of the former USSR) do not match the concept particularly well. I was also not talking about any specific constitution, but constitutions in general. They all come with implicit and explicit assumptions that must hold, or the system will not work as intended. If some entities are supposed to function as checks and balances to each other, they are expected to remain independent. If they choose to collude instead, nobody is capable of stopping them if they decide to twist the constitution beyond recognition or outright break it. I said that a constitution on its own is worthless. That means a constitution cannot enforce itself. There must be some people who are capable and willing to enforce it. But if they are capable of enforcing the constitution, they are also capable of breaking it. Which means there must be other people capable and willing to act as checks and balances. And so on. The system may work as long as those people act within the expectations, complying with both the spirit and the letter of the constitution. But if they reject the expectations and start looking for loopholes to take advantage of, they may find some. If that becomes too common, the constitution becomes worthless, because the people who are supposed to enforce it no longer believe in it.
  - mise_en_place 2y ago
coliveira 2y ago
One thing Americans don't seem to realize is that the current constitution needs to be rewritten once we get out of this mess. One of the consequences of dictatorships is that they deform the constitution for their purposes. It seems that republicans have done enough to deform the system in an irreparable way.
- rayiner 2y ago
  How would you propose rewriting it that wouldn’t just mean “less democracy” and “more control by credentialed elites?”
  - Braxton1980 2y ago
    Are you sure that any change to address the recent issues would always result in those two outcomes? Also, Elon Musk is the richest elite in the world so it seems we already are at the bottom of the problem.
    - rayiner 2y ago
      But the power Musk holds isn’t the result of him being rich, it’s because he has a populist cult of personality. The candidate who spent twice the money lost the election. Musk has power because he got on stage with Trump in Pennsylvania promising to fire all the federal workers.
      - turtlesdown11 2y ago
        Absolutely incorrect. Musk holds power because he spent $290m on the election boosting the winning candidate.
        rayiner 2y ago
        But the money didn’t win the election.
        2y ago

_heimdall 2y ago

> This is based on a too literal interpretation of democracy. Attempting to run a democracy in a non-literal way seems like a recipe for disaster. That seems to imply that citizens get to cast a vote and have their voice heard...unless those in charge decide the citizens don't know what is best for them. As a country we picked Trump. For better or worse we made that bed and we now have to lie in it.

rayiner 2y ago
Folks on the left would do well to remember that the same unelected bureaucracy that declared “resistance” to Trump would destroy an AOC or Sanders presidency too. Ultimately, it’s a good thing if electing the President can effectuate drastic changes in the executive branch, because that’s the only real lever voters have for affecting the largest and these days most powerful branch of government.
- archagon 2y ago
  In a modern nation, it’s not tenable to flush the federal government down the toilet every four years.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    To the contrary, in a modern, diverse country, it’s not tenable for the same people to keep running the government in the same way regardless of who wins elections. That was okay when we had a more homogenous, slower-changing country with widely shared values. That’s untenable today.
    - DFHippie 2y ago
      Engineering, statistics, science: these things do not change every four years. How to dig a trench or survey a boundary does not change. How to conduct clinical trials, combat disease, deliver mail: these things do not change. What is not tenable today, or ever, is firing the people with these skills every four years and re-hiring replacements, to the extent that this happens at all, based on ideological tests.
      - rayiner 2y ago
        That was a fine notion before it became apparent that skilled professionals are unable to separate their work from their political ideology: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-health-protests-301534 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/04/public-hea... This was a huge problem in the first Trump administration: https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/20222702-federal-bureaucrats-resisted-president-trump https://americafirstpolicy.com/issues/20222702-federal-burea.... Do you really think that, for example, DOJ lawyers who defended Biden’s mass immigration policies are going to flip and use 100% of their talents to figure out how to do mass deportations now? If that’s genuinely the case, then there’s a place for the idea of a neutral civil service. But I don’t believe that’s the case, and that’s an unacceptable state of affairs.
        DFHippie 2y ago
- turtlesdown11 2y ago
  The "deep state" is just a scapegoat for stuff people don’t like or understand. It’s a way to dodge real issues. There’s no secret conspiracy—just a lot of people doing their jobs in a messy system.
  - _heimdall 2y ago
    The "deep state" is also used to refer to the relatively small number of unelected people who make some of the most impactful decisions on society with no voter input. I don't know that I've ever actually heard someone talk about the "deep state" to refer to career bureaucrats just doing their jobs in large government orgs / a messy system.
    - acdha 2y ago
      Do you have any examples of people you think do that?
      - _heimdall 2y ago
        Oh I'm not directly making the case that a "deep state" exists, I was just surprised by the way the earlier comment was using the term.

bruce511 2y ago

Ultimately the checks and balances are also elected. Directly in the case of congress, indirectly in the case of the judiciary. (Mitch McConnell obstructed merrick garland and was rewarded for it.) Of course unrestrained majority decisions lead to terrible outcomes. This is well understood, and has been demonstrated over and over recently (think Brexit.) Democracy is objectively a flawed system for this reason. It has never promised to deliver the best, or even good, government. It is what it is. I agree, this is a literal interpretation of democracy. It is "the will of the people". I'm not sure that anything else could still be even called a democracy.

graemep 2y ago
> This is well understood, and has been demonstrated over and over recently (think Brexit.) That is a matter of opinion. Most of what is terrible about Brexit is "the media hate it". Economic outcomes have been in line with comparable EU countries so the promised "project fear" disaster (e.g. the Treasury prediction of a collapse of the economy in the wake of a vote for Brexit - not even on implementation) did not happen. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80772140f0b62305b8b510/hm_treasury_analysis_the_immediate_economic_impact_of_leaving_the_eu_web.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a80772140f0b...

rayiner 2y ago

This is Orwellian double-speak. You’re defining “democracy” to mean “not democracy.” Nor does the “constitution” support your view. Article II says: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” What you’re calling “democracy” and the “constitution” is neither. It’s Wilsonianism, an idea invented by a eugenicist who hated the constitution as well as democracy: https://fedsoc.org/commentary/fedsoc-blog/woodrow-wilson-s-case-against-the-constitution https://fedsoc.org/commentary/fedsoc-blog/woodrow-wilson-s-c...

jltsiren 2y ago
I don't see how your reply is related to my comment. I was not defining democracy. I was describing the common real-world usage of the term, which has a more specific meaning than simple majority rule. It is commonly used as a shorthand for "liberal democracy". Some Americans use "republic" for the same concept, but that's misleading in other ways. Partly because some countries that are commonly understood to be liberal democracies are constitutional monarchies. And partly because some actual republics (such as North Korea or the member states of the former USSR) do not match the concept particularly well. I was also not talking about any specific constitution, but constitutions in general. They all come with implicit and explicit assumptions that must hold, or the system will not work as intended. If some entities are supposed to function as checks and balances to each other, they are expected to remain independent. If they choose to collude instead, nobody is capable of stopping them if they decide to twist the constitution beyond recognition or outright break it. I said that a constitution on its own is worthless. That means a constitution cannot enforce itself. There must be some people who are capable and willing to enforce it. But if they are capable of enforcing the constitution, they are also capable of breaking it. Which means there must be other people capable and willing to act as checks and balances. And so on. The system may work as long as those people act within the expectations, complying with both the spirit and the letter of the constitution. But if they reject the expectations and start looking for loopholes to take advantage of, they may find some. If that becomes too common, the constitution becomes worthless, because the people who are supposed to enforce it no longer believe in it.
- mise_en_place 2y ago

coliveira 2y ago

One thing Americans don't seem to realize is that the current constitution needs to be rewritten once we get out of this mess. One of the consequences of dictatorships is that they deform the constitution for their purposes. It seems that republicans have done enough to deform the system in an irreparable way.

rayiner 2y ago
How would you propose rewriting it that wouldn’t just mean “less democracy” and “more control by credentialed elites?”
- Braxton1980 2y ago
  Are you sure that any change to address the recent issues would always result in those two outcomes? Also, Elon Musk is the richest elite in the world so it seems we already are at the bottom of the problem.
  - rayiner 2y ago
    But the power Musk holds isn’t the result of him being rich, it’s because he has a populist cult of personality. The candidate who spent twice the money lost the election. Musk has power because he got on stage with Trump in Pennsylvania promising to fire all the federal workers.
    - turtlesdown11 2y ago
      Absolutely incorrect. Musk holds power because he spent $290m on the election boosting the winning candidate.
      - rayiner 2y ago
        But the money didn’t win the election.
        2y ago