E.A.Poe had similar concerns. He called the then hypothetical president "King Mob". On the other hand, he was a fan of Andrew Jackson.
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2024
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Honestly, Trump isn't that much dumber than most presidents. He actually understood how to break the system, mostly because he wasn't clouded by love for it. I wouldn't call him a mastermind, but he has better political instincts than anyone. He's an idiot, but he's fully aware what he's doing.
implying that an election to choose a single representative for 300 million people with a 2-horse race is particularly democratic
Yep, America has only ever had the least democratic system that can possibly exist before it's essentially classified as a dictatorship... and Americans are like "peak freedom". Lol. No wonder it's a failed fucking state.
Conversely, as democracy is perverted by moneyed interests, government will more and more resemble the will of the short sighted shareholders obsessed with the next quarterly gains. Leading to a useful idiot government selling the country to corporations through regulatory capture and privatization.
That's what happened in the real world. Not the will of the broader populace, but the will of the few people who pay the politicians in charge of both parties.
Mencken had a lot of good one liners
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
If the purpose of a system is what it does, then it seems the purpose of democracy is the self flagellation of the masses.
Hnngh hnngh yes yes quite the unwashed masses need to be kept far from power hmm yes Tallyho good man hmm hmm.
holy crap and that was before nixon.
Nixon was smart and ruthless.
Evil, sure, and an alcoholic, but no moron.
If only us North American scum could perceive this idea of proportional representation.
What about the Northern peoples? Sadly I think they may be voting for the wannabe Trump. I really hope not.
Well, us Kiwis are following not that far behind and catching up quickly.
What a dumb thing to say. Australia has the same things said about it, yet we aspire to be closer to the NZ system. Neither of us is anywhere close to the disaster of US politics. It would take fundamental changes to our voting laws to "catch up" to them.
That's what we thought.