That's one of the things why I do not like direct democracy!
Constitution and the system of checks and balances is intended to limit the possibility of a politician gaining enough power to become a dictator.
this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2024
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I wonder if this is some religious predisposition. A lot of people around the world are primed to accept the authority from "The One True God." I bet that aligns with a lot of authoritarian ideals.
Democracy and money don't mix. And as long as we're attached to money, we'll never have a democracy that isn't contaminated by it.
Democracy and Russian propaganda don't mix very well either.
Ugh. Just a reminder that Bernie Sanders made repealing citizens united, and campaign finance reform one of his main platforms for each presidential run. He would have done so much good. His lampooning by neo-liberals who are devoted more to order than justice, forever stains my opinion of them and their institutions.
Clinton received so much more support from Democrat party leadership, so much more funding from corporate donors, and so much more coverage from mainstream media sources. The fact that Bernie even put up a fight was admirable, but he really had the odds stacked against him.
Sanders never really had a chance. And got a ton of media coverage. Remember, its much better for the media that there is an actual race, as it gives them something to report on.
I voted for Sanders both in 2016 and 2020. But the "unfairness" against him was minor. The reality is, unfortunately, the moderate Clinton and Biden represent the median democratic voter better.
Keep in mind that the primaries also aren’t free and fair elections, we don’t know for sure what the outcome would have been in an actual election. Between the state ordering that gives early preference to relatively conservative states and “superdelegates” that allow party insiders to put their thumb on the scale, the DNC can get just about whatever result they want out of a primary without concerning themselves with voters or popular support.
None of this makes sense. Clinton crushed sanders by like 12 points. Even if Sanders had gotten all of the super delegates of the states of the primaries he won, Clinton still would have beaten him. Iit's a pretty good mix of conservative vs liberal states throughout the democratic primaries. And, on top of that, the democratic party is not overall all that conservative. .. it's almost like you are saying that non-representative states should have gone first. And claiming this is done to "tip the scales" doesn't make any sense because it's not like they are reordering the states every election.
They quite literally tried to reorder the states in the current primary even though there wasn’t a competition. They told the (Republican controlled) state of New Hampshire to change their primary date, and when they refused, the party punished the democratic voters by reducing their number of delegates. But that’s somewhat irrelevant though, a fair election wouldn’t have state orders which increase the power of earlier states, they would simply have all of the states vote at once and tally the results. Without a fair election, saying Clinton won by 12 points is accurate just like how Putin won with 88% of the popular vote in Russia this year. That is to say, completely useless because it didn’t come out of a free and fair election.
They quite literally tried to reorder the states in the current primary even though there wasn’t a competition.
Which kind of undercuts your claim that it's done to tip the scales.
Without a fair election, saying Clinton won by 12 points is accurate just like how Putin won with 88% of the popular vote in Russia this year.
lol The Putin number is either outright fudged, or due to repression of actual votes. The fact that they did not all vote at the same time is not even remotely equivalent to this. I'm honestly shocked that you would even make this argument.
It is observable and well known that opinion polls in later voting states shift in line with results in earlier states. Basically, people don’t want to vote for a candidate they believe has already lost, and so there is a snowball effect where a candidate having a small lead in the first few states ends up having an increasingly large lead in later states, even if opinion polls from before the primary election began predicted other results. The US parties exploit this by ensuring states that favor their preferred candidates go first. If you don’t believe this, well there’s nothing else I can offer you and I hope you are content in your rosy world view.
I would be curious to see your evidence that this happens, not that I would be surprised. But how much does this account for? Remember, she crushed him. Right from the start. We aren't talking about some narrow victory. And they were both in the same system, so he could have gotten a head start and she fallen off.
Unless you have some quantifiable evidence that would overcome such a large deficit, then it's really just believing what you want rather than what the evidence suggests. In other words, it's not my world view being tainted by glasses.
Leftists don't like admitting that the average American isn't worth fighting for.
I feel like that's less of a democracy issue, and more of an issue that people with power will use that power for their own benefit.
money is power in most places.
Money is power always. They are two sides of the same coin.
Money is dependent on power to enforce its value and contracts.
Money is only power in the context of a society.
Money is only money in the contexts of a society. So, it's always a form of power. Being dependent on other power structures does not make it not power.
Societies depend on the sun's power, as does all life here. Still we talk of other forms of power and how they influence democracy 🤷
Between the housing crisis, economical hardships, ecological collapse and whatever else I'm forgetting about, it's a bit strange to be surprised at people's faith being shaken in democracy. Since none of those issues have been seriously addressed pretty much anywhere.
What country has a 90% home ownership rate (in fact, many people are buying second home due to oversupply), 80% without mortgages or liens?
What country net 0.1% CPI recently with 5% GDP growth? (A single RMB can buy 0.1% less goods, but the economy is worth 5% more RMB).
What country is "flooding the world with cheap solar panels" for renewable energy? Leading global reforestation (with, thankfully, no more monoculture plantations).
Different countries have fundamentally different challenges. Let's not pretend like everyone's challenges are the same.
democracy failing because leaders selling out so hard to corporations that the people consider other alternatives should be what the headline is
citizens should not be blamed for why the leaders and the country sucks
the bought and paid politicians should be blamed
I wonder what the split would be for a dictator doing what I want vs going against what I want
Everyone assumes the dictator would be doing what they want.
Exactly,
I never thought the leopards would eat my face
My last Suzerain playthrough I was a dictator. I managed to change the constitution to give me a bunch of power, with that I got rid of all the corruption either politically or..."discreetly". Nationalised all the corporations, reformed workers and women's rights, balanced taxation of the rich and poor, removed racism from the government, crippled the nationalists, improved free healthcare, gave higher education opportunity to the poor, aligned with the communist superpower, and brought peace to the region by exposing aggressors diplomatically, which in turn boosted trade with other nations and improved the economy.
Everyone was happy.
All this took was a heap of shady shit until I was in control and a whole lot of, "It'll get better. Trust me." with the citizens.
In the real world the benevolence lasts until the next leader takes over and uses that consolidated power to turn it into an authoritarian hellhole.
Or it ends even sooner, as when you stop doing the shady shit the people benefiting from the shady shit will overthrow you and have someone else double down on the shady shit.
Yeah, they say power corrupts, but it is because the corrupt seek power and will use corruption to get and keep power.
You can't fight corruption with bare-knuckled honesty and a plucky devotion to fair-play. There are two ways to fight corruption, with overwhelming force and zero tolerance, or with more crafty corruption.
But the line between zero tolerance and despotism is thin and wavy.
Yeah, I figured post-game and at the end of my reign, I either have to install another like me or dissolve all powers I used for good, return to democracy, and hope it all kept working out peachy.
A return to democracy won't work because they already associate authoritarianism with benevolence. Trying to hand it to someone else rarely worked out for the few nobility that were better than average.
Honestly people will ruin whatever after a few generations when they don't see the negstives anymore.
Well, my character at least had a finger snap moment in history where everyone on that empire of dirt was happy and well-looked after.
Maybe he did the right thing and launched the nukes on his death bed so everyone else got to die happy as well. One last authoritarian action of goodwill.
Honestly people will ruin whatever after a few generations when they don't see the negstives anymore.
Why am I still paying those IT security folk? We haven't had any data leaks in years!
It's no secret that some people crave being ordered around. It's just sad that there are so many of them.
They crave non-responsibility
So do I but I don't go around bootlicking
There is no freedom of choice without responsibility. Authoritarian power structures take the extreme opposite stance: you are free from responsibility so long as you fulfill the letter of the law/your orders (and therefore have very few real choices).
It's a black and white system of morality. As long as you do what you're told, there's no need to ask difficult, confusing philosophical questions.
So, to those allergic to deep thought, it's quite appealing because suddenly the world makes sense. Even if it can be cruel, everything is neatly, cleanly delineated.
To those of us who prefer to think in detail and see shades of gray, it's horrifying.
I'm just trying to understand my enemies.