What is your line in the sand?

Edit: thank you all for your responses. I think it’s important as an American we take your view points seriously. I think of a North Korean living inside of North Korea. They don’t really know how bad it is because that is all hidden from them and they’ve never had anything else. As things get worse for Americans it’s important to have your voices because we will become more and more isolated.

Even the guy who said, “lol.” Some people need that sort of sobering reaction.

  • wolf@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    44 minutes ago

    When was the US the last time a democracy?

    You can vote democrats or republicans, which mostly get bankrolled by the same rich assholes. As a normal citizen of the US you have almost no influence at politics at all, because the media is controlled by rich people, the biggest internet platforms are controlled by rich people, elections are paid for by rich people, …

    The current situation is not a spontaneous, miraculous, magical result of Trump and his gang, it was years in the making by lobby groups, influential/rich/powerful people and neo liberal brainwashing of the masses.

    Same holds true for most other western so called democracies.

  • Freshparsnip@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    2 hours ago

    Absolutely not. When laws don’t apply to the president, the jig is up. Trump clearly plans to be in power forever. Either there won’t be elections or they’ll be rigged.

    • arakhis_@feddit.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      32 minutes ago

      all those images of venezualen immigrants … being handled like the absolute worst possible being… its crazy

  • gaael@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    ·
    1 hour ago

    I still believe there are democracies in America but the US of A aren’t one of them.

  • Nangijala@feddit.dk
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    3
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    2 hours ago

    The short answer: yes.

    The long answer: it will take a long time to completely dismantle a democracy in a country as big and complex as America. You don’t just do that in three months.

    All trump has done so far is move as fast as possible to make as much of a mess as possible in the hopes that some of his nutty ideas goes through once the system catches up to him. And the system will catch up to him and Musk and all the other cunts who are having their little ego fest currently.

    I have patience. Kind of. I look forward to seeing the consequences of their actions come to haunt them. I also hope this period in American politics will be the wake up call America needs to hopefully bar politicians and political parties from taking donations from big corps essentially try to buy the government and weaken true democracy from flourishing. The US isn’t the only country with this problem, but it is certainly neck deep in one of the worst outcomes of letting big corporations take ownership of a government.

    • HorseFD@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      edit-2
      2 hours ago

      What makes you so sure of that? Trump is already actively disregarding court orders, and the Supreme Court ruled he cannot be charged with a crime if it is part of an “official duty”.

      • Nangijala@feddit.dk
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        2 hours ago

        I’m sure he will do his damnedest to dismantle everything, but I don’t believe he will succeed. He may get away with it for a little while, but this shit isn’t going to last.

        I fully believe it will be the wake up call America has desperately needed for a very long time. Countries like Russia and China never really had democracy and they never had freedom as a value so that is why I don’t think trump will be successful in the long term with his little stunt here. It will get worse before it gets better and America is currently in the finding out phase that we learned in Europe in the 40s.

        That is how I look at it.

  • JoeKrogan@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    edit-2
    2 hours ago

    No and it hasn’t been for a long time. As long as you can buy influence via lobbying then the playing field is not level.

    The difference this time is they are not trying to hide it anymore

  • 58008@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    5 hours ago

    On paper, I guess so? In reality, and as is the case with pretty much every developed democracy, money and technology make a mockery of the whole idea. A society in which billionaires can buy their way into the Whitehouse - literally - is no democracy.

  • Shardikprime@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    4 hours ago

    Would be nice to know what part of America you mean by that. It is a pretty big continent you know? Argentinians, Mexicans, Brasilians and so on are all part of America.

    Buuuut I’m gonna go ahead and assume you are asking about the UNITED STATES country, right?

    Yes it is a Democracy. Not perfect, but then again which one is?

  • TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    8 hours ago

    Canadian here.

    Before Trump? Ehhh, not really. I’ve always viewed the US as a place where you vote for which oligarch-backed monarch you’d want to put in absolute power for 4 years. Every 4/8 years the new incoming overlord just rips up whatever the previous one did and nothing of substance is actually achieved.

    After Trump 2.0? No. There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell that Trump is going to surrender all that power he and the GOP have accumulated. And why would he? He doesn’t have to. He literally controls every branch of government that he can and ignores those that he doesn’t. If the US ever has another election it will purely be for show, like China’s elections. The mask is now fully off and the charade of US democracy is over as those who actually wield the power now do so openly on their sleeves.

  • nonentity@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    22
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    10 hours ago

    Anyone who is eligible to vote, and chooses not to, implicitly throws their support behind whoever wins.

    On 2024-11-05, ⅔ of US citizens who were eligible to vote told the rest of the world they don’t want to be taken seriously for at least 2 years.

  • tauren@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    11 hours ago

    The US had always been a questionable democracy with the hyperfixation on the president and just two parties setting the agenda, but I’d argue that it’s still a democracy, though it is a rapidly deteriorating one.

  • JacksonLamb@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    74
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    14 hours ago

    still consider

    It has only two political parties, and a weird system where all votes are not equal and the actual vote majority doesn’t always win.

    It has frequently had multiple people from the same families running for office, and only wealthy people have a shot. Corporations get to lobby for laws in their favour.

    It also spies on its own citizens, holds people indefinitely without trial, has a huge prison population, a militarized police with a high homicide rate, and is the only western nation with the death penalty.

    Trump and Musk are laying bare how fragile the veneer of “democracy” really is in that country.

    • TeamAssimilation@infosec.pub
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      2 hours ago

      To be honest, not even from the start was it a true democracy, the Electoral College is a layer on top of democracy to give different weight to each vote.