The End of Democracy

[sterngard friegen]

We comment a lot (as do the liberal talking heads) about Trump and his allies' dangerous talk, which may incite violence. I agree that it does.

But these same liberal talking heads speak about Trump's re-election in apocalyptic terms, usually with an "End of Democracy" in there somewhere. And that may be true, too.

Perhaps it is inevitable, perhaps it is unavoidable, but "End of Democracy" talk is just as inciting in my view as the talk from the other side. Perhaps it will incite some misguided left wing patriot to take matters into his own hands.

The question then becomes what is worse - another Trump Presidency or an assassination that roils the race and American political and social life. I lived through the 1960s and 1970s. I was in college, law school and then practicing law. Those were some terrible times. We had not yet recovered from JFK's assassination (also a 1960s event) and we were still involved in Vietnam. But the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy clearly made things worse.

At this point I think they are equally bad. And equally possible. And I am saddened at what we have become.

[Frater I*I]

I feel that we are accelerating towards Civil War 2.0...

[John Thomas8]

This isn't the country that existed when I was born in 1961.

Trump would have had the same chance of being president I would have as a newborn.

Racism was blatant, but not as codified or accepted by national media entities.

There was kkkorporate greed, but it wasn't written into the tax code.

A "normal" individual could feed, clothe and house themselves with a single 40 hour per week job. Now it takes having two adults combined income, and often that doesn't cover everything.

We were still kind of a beacon of hope to the world (if you ignore stuff like what happened in Iran in 1953 and the like).

Gerrymandering existed, but it wasn't openly celebrated as it is now.

Openly participating in Project 2025 would have gotten you shunned in polite society, now it's the underlying basis for half of the body politic.

Everything, including human life, is now a kkkorporate cost center to be cut if there isn't a big enough profit to be extracted.

Late Stage Capitalism enshittifies every single thing it touches.

[neeneko]

It was always an open question how viable democracy would really be. While it feels like we have had it forever, it has really only been a couple centuries, and even less when you talk about things like universal suffrage and civil rights. It is still the rather new, untested system, and it could very well end up being a temporary product of the industrial revolution and all that social/economic mobility. Now things are more stable again, its era might be ending.

[SuzieC]

What would it really take to end democracy in the US? Let's say Trump is elected and that he announces that the 2028 Presidential election is canceled. Elections are run by each of the individual states. Many would refuse to go along and how would Trump prevent that? Would he have enough storm troopers to stop the elections in 50 states? Would other Republicans go along? There are ambitions Republicans like Rubio, Vance, and Youngkin. Would they step aside for an 82 year old fat addled dictator?

And every state still has elections for governors and senators. Would Trump cancel those as well?

There are many moving parts in these scenarios and I am torturing myself pondering them.

[RTH10260]

Democracy = dictorship of 51% over 49% or make it 50.000000001% over 49.999999999% or make it 50% + 1 vote over 50% - 1 vote

or it's the dictatorship of part of the voters over the rest..

[RTH10260]

What would it really take to end democracy in the US? Let's say Trump is elected and that he announces that the 2028 Presidential election is canceled. Elections are run by each of the individual states. Many would refuse to go along and how would Trump prevent that? Would he have enough storm troopers to stop the elections in 50 states? Would other Republicans go along? There are ambitions Republicans like Rubio, Vance, and Youngkin. Would they step aside for an 82 year old fat addled dictator?

And every state still has elections for governors and senators. Would Trump cancel those as well?

There are many moving parts in these scenarios and I am torturing myself pondering them.

You forget the Space Farce

[SuzieC]

How many storm troopers in the Space Farce?

[Frater I*I]

How many storm troopers in the Space Farce?

It depends upon how many in the military are willing to betray their oath as side with fascism...

And in my day there was a fairly decent fascist contingence in the military, hell I had those tenancies in my youth and being in the military only reinforced them...

[Dave from down under]

All he needs is control of SCOTUS and any election that he loses will be invalidated.

California doesn’t vote for him - obviously rigged - SCOTUS recognises the validity of his alternative electors for that state…

[Lansdowne]

Democracy = dictorship of 51% over 49% or make it 50.000000001% over 49.999999999% or make it 50% + 1 vote over 50% - 1 vote

or it's the dictatorship of part of the voters over the rest..

That is not democracy as it works anywhere in the world.
That is the parody of democracy quoted by Anna Maria Wilhelmina Riezinger von Reitzenstein von Lettow-Vorbeck and many others when they claim "we are a republic not a democracy; a democracy is MOB RULE." Those comments rarely -if ever- explain how a "republic" is supposed to choose its leaders if not by election.

A democracy involves an electoral process which produces an outcome which the people generally accept as valid. Examples:

1) The French election results these last two weekends have produced a National Assembly made up of a mixture of parties. There is no 50.00..1% anywhere in the system but that assembly has the responsibility to produce a government that runs the country according to the constitution.
2) The election here in UK (a very different voting system) produced a massive Labour majority of seats with Labour gaining far short of 50.00..1% of the popular vote. Rich Rishi Sunak immediately accepted the result was valid and conceded.
3) Hillary Clinton won 3 or 4 million votes more than the orange individual, but the Electoral College result produced the opposite outcome. That was accepted as the valid constitutional outcome and DJT became President.

[p0rtia]

As I like to say, unanimity is highly over-rated.

[sterngard friegen]

We comment a lot (as do the liberal talking heads) about Trump and his allies' dangerous talk, which may incite violence. I agree that it does.

But these same liberal talking heads speak about Trump's re-election in apocalyptic terms, usually with an "End of Democracy" in there somewhere. And that may be true, too.

Perhaps it is inevitable, perhaps it is unavoidable, but "End of Democracy" talk is just as inciting in my view as the talk from the other side. Perhaps it will incite some misguided left wing patriot to take matters into his own hands.

The question then becomes what is worse - another Trump Presidency or an assassination that roils the race and American political and social life. I lived through the 1960s and 1970s. I was in college, law school and then practicing law. Those were some terrible times. We had not yet recovered from JFK's assassination (also a 1960s event) and we were still involved in Vietnam. But the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy clearly made things worse.

At this point I think they are equally bad. And equally possible. And I am saddened at what we have become.

I posted this 8 days ago. The comments were all about a democracy. No one was interested in the invitation to violence.

[Frater I*I]

I posted this 8 days ago. The comments were all about a democracy. No one was interested in the invitation to violence.

My post was that I feel we're heading to another civil war.

[Foggy]

I'm still thinking ...