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We voted for this! This is “democracy” at work
by r053bud 1y ago
We voted for this! This is “democracy” at work
- ty6853 1y agoI mean yes? Democracy is a pretty poor model for governance. IMO peak enlightenment happened circa the 17th or 18th century when classical liberalism decided government should be based on individual liberties and anything outside of that is decided democratically not because it is a good system but because votes are roughly a tally of who would win if we all pull knives on each other because we didn't like the vote.
- timeon 1y agoSeems like US-centric view. Many countries had several iterations since then.
- entropicdrifter 1y ago[flagged]
- makeitdouble 1y agoDemocracy is not 2 parties doing voter suppression and gerrymandering as a filter to pass the result to an electoral college. The US system was never designed to be fair to individuals in the first place, pointing at it as a failure of democracy is IMHO pulling the actual issues under the rug.
- rayiner 1y agoIt’s basically impossible to engage in meaningful voter suppression in a country where election results can be cross-checked against high-quality polling. “Gerrymandering” also has no effect on Presidential elections. And in 2024, Republicans won a larger share of the House popular vote than their share of House seats.
- makeitdouble 1y agoVoter suppression is the act of limiting the pool of voters. That includes putting large swaths of the population behind bars or flagged as non eligible to voting, putting barriers to voter registration etc. It can never be 0 and every country will have a minimum requirement, but the degree to which it is done in the US is far ahead of most western country. Gerrymandering has an effect on the criteria for voter eligibility, the voting rules in the state etc. It's not direct but who's in power has a sizeable effect on who will have an easier time voting.
- rayiner 1y agoNo, “voter suppression” is the act of preventing legitimate voters from voting. Society determining that categories of people shouldn’t vote (children, felons, non-citizens, etc.) isn’t voter suppression, it’s simply establishing qualifications for voting. The goal isn’t to get to 0 or try to get as close to 0 as possible. People who should vote should be able to vote, while people who shouldn’t vote shouldn’t be able to vote. In the modern era, we should probably narrow the franchise, instituting civics tests and restricting voting to natural born citizens. Statistically, both of these would have hurt my party in 2024, so this isn’t self-interest speaking.
- makeitdouble 1y agoVoter suppression is suppressing voters one way or the other. Your idea of restricting by birth rights is of course another form of it. It's fascinating to look at that proposition for a country that mostly got rid of its indigenous population.
- rayiner 1y agoWords have meaning. Setting qualifications is different than “suppression.” The former determines who are legitimate voters. The latter is an effort to keep legitimate voters from voting. Conflating legitimate qualification rules with “suppression” is fuzzy thinking in service of propaganda. Restricting by birth right is simply an extension of the universal practice of restricting voting by citizenship. Every democracy decides who has sufficient stake in and familiarity with the society to be able to vote.
- sapphicsnail 1y agoHow can someone talk about democracy peaking when the franchise was extended to a tiny minority of the population. You don't give a damn about individual liberties, you only care that the "right" people have liberty.
- edgyquant 1y agoThat poster is specifically arguing against democracy
- sapphicsnail 1y agoYour right. I stand corrected. They don't give a damn about democracy or individual liberties.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoHmm. What if I told you that the parent was clearly in favor of the republic? Would that change your disposition? If not, why not.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- tsimionescu 1y agoAh yes, the wonderful time of enlightenment when all straight white Christian land-owning men's rights became recognized, not just the nobility's. Just a few short centuries from there, the rights of poorer white men, children, women, people of any other skin color, non-Christian, and LGBT people would be recognized too.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoYou jest, but skin in the game is argument is not irrelevant. It is called a franchise for a reason after all. You want a slice of the pie, you should be able to prove that you know what you are doing. Owning land was a good enough proxy then. We can argue what would be a good proxy now.
- keybored 1y agoYou’re saying that people who owned land (and humans) as property had skin in the game while everyone else did not. Just stop.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y agoThere is no reason to conflate the two. To be frank, I explicitly stated land ( and not property as a more generic term ), which makes me question how much of a good faith of a conversation this is. My point stands on its own merits, but you seem to want to rely on cheap rhetorical theatrics a good chunk of the audience here can see through.
- keybored 1y agoOkay, owning land then. My bad. All humans existing in the nation have skin in the game by the fact that they exist there. How do landowners have more of a stake?
- ty6853 1y agoThey have land that can be taken or voted away. I don't think only land owners should be able to vote, but it's worth noting worldwide having significant property is one of the most common ways for immigrants to qualify for a resident visa (other two common ways is job or business investment). Right or not it signifies enough skin in the game to many if not most societies to reflect reciprocated integration the community. Remember in the early days there was almost no immigration control as well, so finding proxies for skin in the game might have been more challenging than today, when emigrating is almost impossible for the poor so they are stuck with their skin in America whether they like it or not.
- watwut 1y agoWhatbexactly are values you consider enlightened and did you ever bother to read history, specifically the parts about how society functions not just where armies went? I assure you French prior, dueing and after French revolution was not pinacle of great governance. More like, the low.
- cyberax 1y ago> IMO peak enlightenment happened circa the 17th or 18th century Hmmm... The time when most people were not able to read?
- yndoendo 1y agoDemocracy built lies, decide, and rejection of facts through propaganda. Really need a viable means to fight it, say allowing an elected official's constitutes being able to sue them for no less than $10,000 for incidence of bearing false witness. Help erode the dark money networks. Also having a 4th branch of Governments, the people with State and Federal binding resolution, would help. Only way to overrides those in power is to unionize the will.
- westmeal 1y agoThe suing thing would be cool but the court system is slow by design. I can't see it working in practice however I'm also really fed up with the bullshit so i understand.
- Ar-Curunir 1y agoGood luck relying on a court of law when the President suspends courts and arrests judges. The latter is happening right now.
- candiddevmike 1y agoLess than 30% of voter age Americans voted for this
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- fnordpiglet 1y agoAnd a minority of those who did vote voted for this.
- monkeyelite 1y agoWhat presidential elections are you comparing it to?
- rchaud 1y agoThe majority that did vote, voted for this. The participation rate has always been low in rich western countries. Given the standards of media literacy and civics education, there's no evidence that a higher participation rate would have changed the outcome.
- pesus 1y agoPlurality, not majority. It may be pedantic but it's an important difference.
- rafram 1y agoI was going to say that it was a majority this time, but it seems like the results shifted as more votes were counted after election night, and he ended up with 49.8%. Still, unbelievably, pretty close to a majority.
- khazhoux 1y agoI don’t think it’s important in the slightest. Fact is that they were exactly two competitive candidates, and of all the people that cared to vote, more voted for one than the other. It may not be technical majority, but this is the common understanding in this country of “majority rule.”
- Shekelphile 1y ago[flagged]
- toast0 1y agoMaybe I'm too optimistic, but I think actual election fraud, big enough to steal an election, would be too big to miss. Yes, it might only take a small number of votes in the right place, but either you somehow know the right place, or you have to move a lot of votes. There's a reasonable discussion to be had along the lines of 'these guys seem to be doing everything they whine about', but could they get a big operation done without a) bragging openly about it, b) leaving a big trail, or c) having a falling out with a conspirator who then tells all. Adding on, certainly gerrymandering and voter supression laws affect voting results, but I have trouble calling that stealing an election.
- tayo42 1y agoPoints B and C are believable. Constant headlines about screw ups like the signal chats and sloppy handling of data from doge
- jfengel 1y agoI know that Harris put up zero fight about it. I infer that she believed it to be legitimate. That's not definitive, to be sure. But it's sufficient for me to believe that we did this to ourselves. Now all we can do is figure out how we're going to get through it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- wongarsu 1y agoTrump did thank that "very popular guy. He was very effective. And he knows those computers better than anybody. All those computers, those vote counting computers, and we won Pennsylvania in a landslide." If Biden or Obama had said something like that the nation would be in uproar. https://www.youtube.com/live/kdvpXxXVyok?si=XALuK7No9-PLQBAr&t=7974 https://www.youtube.com/live/kdvpXxXVyok?si=XALuK7No9-PLQBAr...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- fguerraz 1y agoThere is no democracy without a free press, or else no one can make an informed decision. I doubt that the press can be called free when it’s owned by oligarchs.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoSure, but you also voted for a system of checks & balances, laws, and separation of powers - whatever happened to all these laws and stuff from the Cold War where even a hint that you may have ties to Russia would get you a Visit?
- kzrdude 1y agoDo you think it's legitimate when the administration transgresses constitutional limits? With legal eyes nobody voted for that, you can't vote inside the system to break the system, office holders are expected to follow the law once elected.
- vkou 1y agoPeople also voted in a Congress that is tasked to uphold the law, and it seems fine with this. That was the really stupid part of that election.
- timeon 1y ago> We voted Depends if your “democracy” have one person = one vote. Or if the land is included somewhere in the vote.
- keybored 1y agoIt’s interesting that people who claim Americans live in a democracy will slam-dunk any topic based on a completely binary decision made every four years. No discussion beyond that point is needed.