7 ms·
Among my European friends, no one considers the USA to be a legitimate democracy any more. The USA has for us devolved into a bandit state.
by pelorat 10mo ago
Among my European friends, no one considers the USA to be a legitimate democracy any more. The USA has for us devolved into a bandit state.
- woodpanel 10mo ago[flagged]
- ocdtrekkie 10mo agoHi, here in America we also know this is true. :) Just riding it out til the regime of crazy falls over. When it happens, there will be much rejoicing.
- iknowstuff 10mo agoI certainly see the vitriol against the US on r/europe which seems like it has more news about the United States than Europe. Can’t help but think it’s orchestrated by Russian bots. You do realize the current government won the elections and the president won the popular vote right
- bborud 10mo agoElected heads of state have moved towards totalitarian rule before. Besides, elections isn’t what defines a functioning democracy. Why do so many people fail to pay attention in history and civics class? And why do people get so upset when their ignorance is pointed out to them. «He was elected» is not a justification. If it were then the rest of the world would take a dim view of Americans. Be glad that hasn’t become worse.
- singpolyma3 10mo ago> If it were then the rest of the world would take a dim view of Americans. I have news for you...
- bborud 9mo agoIf you sit people down and talk to them, I think you will find that most people around the world are actually able to distinguish between peoples and their governments. However when you look at what people say online, or when you ask groups of people, they do not always make the distinction. The people who can not present a problem. Regardless of what pairing of nationalities.
- singpolyma3 9mo agoSure but also tourists etc from USA give the country a bad name worldwide no matter who is in government in the country at the time.
- Braxton1980 10mo ago[flagged]
- userbinator 10mo agoShow me a politician who hasn't lied.
- elcritch 10mo agoAll while Europe dabbles in outlawing and criminalizing opposition parties they’re deeming “far right”. Sure anyone who opposes unlimited unrestricted immigration is now “far right”. Regardless of opinion, democracy is about the people determining that conversation, not politburos. Alternatively the UK violating the millennia old Magna Carta by halting jury trials for criminal offenses with less than 2 years of jail time.
- jibal 10mo ago[flagged]
- elcritch 10mo agoThe comment I was replying to is also whataboutism from Europe. It was Nazi's who didn't like free speech. Shutting down any sort of debate by yelling "far-right" at everything isn't a functioning democracy either. My grandfather tried to fight in WWII against the actual Nazis, but his politics would be labelled "far-right" now. That's just absurd.
- jibal 10mo ago> The comment I was replying to *is also* whataboutism Whoosh.
- bborud 9mo agoIt's actually a bit more complicated than that. And unlike the US during the 20th century, Europe has actually had to contend with the far right abolishing democracy and committing genocide on its own population before. It is understandable that Europe doesn't want to repeat that mistake. As for your assertion that anyone who opposes unlimited unrestricted immigration is somehow far right: you are simply wrong. If you want to find out how wrong you are I would encourage you to try moving to Norway. Then tell me if the process feels "unrestricted". I would suggest knowing things before you express strong opinions.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 10mo agoNever forget that the largest share of the 2024 US voting-eligible population went to "did not vote". Harris received 97% of Trump's vote count. There is not that strong a popular mandate for Trump, which shows in his approval ratings.
- Loudergood 10mo agoThey made their choice. It's damning for the Democrats that they couldn't engage more of them.
- LanceH 10mo agoYou could start with none of them voting for their presidential candidate to be nominated. The Democratic Party is at odds with Democrats, in my opinion. They just don't want to let anyone but the party itself pick the candidate, then are surprised when their own voters don't feel the candidate is theirs. Obama was nominated in spite of the party, and people showed up for him. Trump is awful, but losing to him twice is unfathomably stupid.
- stodor89 9mo agoThe US must end the bipartisan model before the bipartisan model ends the US. There, I said it.
- rayiner 10mo agoMultiple polls have found that Trump would have won by an even larger margin if those people had voted. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-election-non-voters-coalition https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec... https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%20Research%20Retrospective.pdf https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%2...
- sjsdaiuasgdia 9mo agoAnd yet, they did not vote. People often say things in polls that don't align to their actions.
- michaelt 10mo ago[flagged]
- stickfigure 10mo agoThere's Option 3: Trump built a campaign on lies, a significant minority of the American public were gullible enough to believe him, and many of those people regret it. Option 3 is consistent with national polls. This fact is not flattering to the American public, but it's also not damning. Unfortunately, our electoral system has a slow cycle rate so we're stuck with the consequences for a while. Assuming you are European, I can only offer these small words of consolation: I feel confident that a significant factor Trump's plummeting approval ratings is his anti-Europe and pro-Russian rhetoric. Everyone was pretty aghast when Trump declared the new public enemies (Canada and Greenland) on his first day in office. Americans generally have very positive feelings towards Europe. We all just need to make it through the next three years.
- mensetmanusman 10mo agoBut #1 is so poorly framed, you would think it would be written by someone who only knows America via the corporate media.
- array_key_first 10mo agoYes, clearly the russian bots are running a campaign against Trump, the most explicitly pro-Russia president we've had in decades. Donald "Ukraine started the war" Trump.
- iknowstuff 10mo agoI have no issue with critique of him and his admin, but r/europe is on a whole different “dismantle usa” level lol
- vel0city 10mo agoIt doesn't seem far fetched to me for Russia to further drive a wedge between the US and Europe. I don't partake in that subreddit so I have no clue as to the content or if this claim is true or false but it doesn't seem like a crazy idea for Russia to do. Sure there's plenty of content Trump gives Russia to potentially amplify, but there could still be bots amplifying things and making some opinions or takes on a story be more popular than reality.
- mindslight 9mo agoThe goal isn't to help one coherent team win, but rather to foment division that undermines cohesive action. This is also an attractor for anybody interested in neutralizing democratic governments, be it Russia or simply corporations that don't want to be regulated as they gradually form more and more of their own government.
- apparent 10mo ago> You do realize the current government won the elections and the president won the popular vote right Technically he won a plurality of the popular vote, but he didn't win the popular vote. This is typically not a distinction that matters, but in this case it's what happened. The majority of people voted for someone else, but he got votes from more people than any other candidate did. Of course, what really matters is the electoral college, but the popular vote is often seen as lending even more legitimacy to a victory.
- xp84 10mo agoThe reason it doesn’t matter is that everyone who chooses to vote third party does so fully knowing who the two front runners are, as well as the likely margin of their state. Most third-party voters are in extremely uncompetitive states, making it quite safe to make a statement vote, even though it potentially dampens your “lesser of two evils” candidate’s apparent mandate. For instance, I wrote an invalid write-in candidate since both major parties ran clowns in 2024, but Harris carried my state by a mile.
- apparent 10mo agoI agree that most people who vote for other candidates come from uncompetitive states. But this doesn't necessarily prove your point. If there were more other-candidate supporters who would have voted for Kamala (if they had to vote for one of the two main candidates) than Trump, then that would mean he wouldn't have won the popular vote if it was just between the two of them. Regardless, I think it's important to be precise about claims like this, since there is actually a difference between winning the popular vote and winning a plurality of it. Imagine making the claim if 10% of the popular vote went to third-party candidates, or even 20%!
- JCattheATM 10mo ago> For instance, I wrote an invalid write-in candidate since both major parties ran clowns in 2024, That makes you part of the problem. And no, only one party ran a clown, and that party won because of people like you.
- jibal 10mo ago> I certainly see the vitriol against the US on r/europe which seems like it has more news about the United States than Europe. Nonsense. > Can’t help but think it’s orchestrated by Russian bots. Rational people can. > the president won the popular vote False.
- lp0_on_fire 10mo ago> False Trump won the popular vote in 2024. He lost it in 2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_elections https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_elections
- xp84 10mo agoOh, so we’re just making up our reality now? Biden and Trump each won the popular vote and to suggest otherwise would require a belief in a colossal conspiracy theory.
- myko 10mo agotrump was ineligible due to his attempted insurrection on Jan 6th, end of story
- DaSHacka 10mo agoEvidently the country's people, and government, disagree with you.
- immibis 10mo agoIf you're still treating Reddit, especially large subreddits, as a serious source of information rather than an extremely manipulated outlet of 90% propaganda bots, that is quite foolish. Maybe I should make a website where example.com/e/Europe shows whatever I want people to think Europe thinks, and people will treat it as an authority for some reason? That's basically what you're doing with Reddit.
- bborud 9mo agoBut people do treat sites such as reddit as a source of truth. That's part of the problem.
- tracker1 9mo agoWhile there may be some truth to that (bots)... there are definitely a lot of quasi communists that are participating in these groups. They are active, involved and have an outsized influence in terms of being a squeaky wheel. You just have to look at the protests in NYC over Venezuela to see it... they aren't actually for what the people of Venezuela seem to want (they're celebrating), the protestors are clearly pushing for and protecting at what represents communist values, even if Maduro isn't really much of a Communist.
- bborud 9mo agoWhat if it isn't? What if the sentiments expressed represent what Europeans think of the US?
- gradus_ad 10mo ago[flagged]
- amarcheschi 10mo agoMaybe the president of the USA can do something about the president of the USA being authoritarian
- oceanplexian 10mo ago> Among my European friends, no one considers the USA to be a legitimate democracy Sure is a bold statement considering Spain was a dictatorship as recently as 1975.
- mensetmanusman 10mo agoThat's the story many Europeans are hearing from their hand rectangles.
- ericmay 10mo agoThey should study political philosophy a bit more so they don’t say foolish things. America is very clearly a legitimate democracy, even if who was voted in office and the actions of that democratically elected government don’t align with your expectations or world view. I didn’t vote for the guy. But I did vote. And as a poll worker I can tell you first hand that we ran a free and fair election as we have for any year I can think of. Legitimate Democracy. Period.
- mindslight 10mo agoAs corporate lobbying succeeds with its lobotomization/capture of public institutions, it fundamentally raises the bar for what constitutes legitimate democracy - for example ranked choice voting rather than raced-to-the-bottom plurality. Or to the point you're responding to - as Congress continues to sit by and let this dictator run amok, how much can we say that this is really the democratic system working as laid out, rather than a mere husk of the old democratic structure going through the motions while something else is actually running the show? This should be doubly apparent in this thread, where this specific invasion would likely still be happening even if the fascists had lost in 2024 - this has military industrial complex's manufacturing consent and nation building all over it, regardless of it benefiting Trump to distract from the childrape files and whatever other corruption/stealing he can wedge in.
- JohnBooty 10mo agoThank you for serving as a poll worker. (Seriously: thank you) We have a legitimate democracy in terms of vote-counting, and you personally contribute to that. It looks a lot less legitimate to me when I think about factors like votes having vastly varying weights because of gerrymandering and the Electoral College. It gets even less legitimate when I think about how severely restricted our choice of candidates are, and how they are more or less chosen by party leaders and the oligarchy via billions of dollars of lobbying etc.
- tracker1 9mo agoIn this case, Trump won both the popular vote and the Electoral vote... that said, I believe in the idea of the Electoral College in that it's important to balance population and each State's rights. The one thing I would like to see are a larger congressional body as there are too few congressional representatives for the size of the electorate. We should probably have at least 3x the members of the House to at least be closer to the founding norms. Just my own take. I'd also like to see a better runoff system than what we have in place, which could give a chance to more parties coming out. Right now, there are alignments into the two major parties and a lot of infighting because they are at least closer to what each group wants, but not really aligned and these create hard splits where there shouldn't be on a lot of issues.
- weregiraffe 10mo agoSame friends who believe there is genocide in Gaza?
- vga42 10mo agoThis one is probably also -- if not completely invented by -- at least seriously boosted by russotrolls. And weaponized for several pro-Russia talking points, such as campaigning against Kamala Harris ("she is not against Israel so don't vote for her") and driving global gaze out of Ukraine.
- qcnguy 10mo ago[flagged]
- ViewTrick1002 10mo agoProposed by the European Council [1] = governors in US terms. Accepted by the European Parliament = single chamber congress. What part of this process is not democratic? [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Council
- qcnguy 10mo agoI asked why, not how. In any democracy that question is easy to answer. You can look at the candidates platform or poll the voters to find out why someone won. You can't answer the question I asked, because nobody knows why she got the job. The vote in the Europarl had a single candidate choice (her) and nobody else. Literally a rubber stamp.
- ViewTrick1002 10mo agoBecause the party groups negotiated with the heads of states comprising the European Council to find a suitable candidate? You know, like how all parliamentary systems works? No parliamentary system directly has the populace vote for their prime minister. After the election someone has the task of proposing an executive government to the parliament. In many countries that is the speaker of the house. In the EU it is the heads of states. The European Parliament has also rejected commissioners from being appointed. How is that literally being a rubber stamp? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/26/meps-reject-two-eu-commissioner-candidates https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/26/meps-reject-tw... Yes, the EU is a bit more complex. What most people miss is that the EU functionally has both an upper and lower house, with the upper house being selected from the national elections and lower house from EU wide elections. I personally would prefer a more transparent system with more involvmement of the people in the EU democracy. But the EU functionally is democratic where the votes in both EU and national elections leads to the current executive branch.
- rayiner 10mo ago[flagged]
- sbohacek 9mo agoElections is only one characteristic of a democracy. Other characteristics include freedom of the press, freedom of speech, minority rights, rule of law, accountability and transparency, and separation of powers.
- Amezarak 9mo agoNothing about democracy implies minority rights, the rule of law, or the separation of powers. Indeed these things are in greater or lesser degrees anti democratic.
- rayiner 9mo agoNone of those things are characteristics of “democracy.” Many of those are exactly the opposite: they are anti-democratic checks on democratic government. They empower a privileged class of lawyers and judges to overrule majorities based on supposed “rights.”
- munksbeer 9mo agoYou'd make an excellent politician, as you have a great way of using words in an emotive manner to win a point. "privileged class" immediately plays on people's emotions, along the lines of "the people have spoken", meaning if you didn't vote the same way, you're not "the people". I lived through all this in the brexit vote, and your language is all very similar sounding. Over the years, democracies around the world have evolved these kind of checks and balances. They are part of the system, not imposed on it by some "privileged class" for their own nefarious reasons.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]