It’s democracy when only white men are allowed to choose representatives? What?
It’s settler-colonialism. Fascism. Where was the democracy for the Natives? Or the slaves? The original system has had many democratic reforms, but denying its roots as fundamentally undemocratic is historical revisionism and blinds you to the US’s flaws. You’ll never fix this country’s problems if you can’t even recognize this.
It can always be worse! How come you can acknowledge that it’s shit, but you can’t acknowledge that it’s fundamentally undemocratic? Where’s the disconnect here? The US was not founded as a democracy, it was founded as a white supremacist settler-colony. Today it’s had many democratic reforms, and that’s good! But we have to acknowledge these root problems.
Has it had enough reforms to be called a democracy? Trump got less than 50% of the vote and he’s been elected twice!
As a Brit, this all seems unhelpful. The only reason anyone cares how the US was “founded” hundreds of years ago is that they were a bit closer to having the right idea at the start than most countries. Doesn’t mean they did of course, but compare to how the UK was “founded”, or Greece, “the birthplace of democracy”, and suddenly it really doesn’t matter.
As for whether it is currently a democracy, a flawed democracy is still a democracy. Trumps a terrible choice but he did get a lot of votes by ordinary people, and whilst their system is skewed by being a shitty fptp setup (just like the UK sadly) and their crazy elector system, it is nonetheless fairly democratic, in the sense that most people can vote, they didn’t pressure or threaten voters much, they didn’t fake lots of votes, and the flaws can only influence and skew the result to some extent, rather than being the deciding factor.
But it isn’t the best democracy in the world, we can all agree on that. I hope they manage to replace it in our lifetimes with something that would allow for more than 2 parties (UK too).
It’s democracy when only white men are allowed to choose representatives? What?
It’s settler-colonialism. Fascism. Where was the democracy for the Natives? Or the slaves? The original system has had many democratic reforms, but denying its roots as fundamentally undemocratic is historical revisionism and blinds you to the US’s flaws. You’ll never fix this country’s problems if you can’t even recognize this.
Bro I’m native, I know! I think it’s a piece of shit also but it could be worse. I’m also trying to rage against the machine.
It can always be worse! How come you can acknowledge that it’s shit, but you can’t acknowledge that it’s fundamentally undemocratic? Where’s the disconnect here? The US was not founded as a democracy, it was founded as a white supremacist settler-colony. Today it’s had many democratic reforms, and that’s good! But we have to acknowledge these root problems.
Has it had enough reforms to be called a democracy? Trump got less than 50% of the vote and he’s been elected twice!
As a Brit, this all seems unhelpful. The only reason anyone cares how the US was “founded” hundreds of years ago is that they were a bit closer to having the right idea at the start than most countries. Doesn’t mean they did of course, but compare to how the UK was “founded”, or Greece, “the birthplace of democracy”, and suddenly it really doesn’t matter.
As for whether it is currently a democracy, a flawed democracy is still a democracy. Trumps a terrible choice but he did get a lot of votes by ordinary people, and whilst their system is skewed by being a shitty fptp setup (just like the UK sadly) and their crazy elector system, it is nonetheless fairly democratic, in the sense that most people can vote, they didn’t pressure or threaten voters much, they didn’t fake lots of votes, and the flaws can only influence and skew the result to some extent, rather than being the deciding factor. But it isn’t the best democracy in the world, we can all agree on that. I hope they manage to replace it in our lifetimes with something that would allow for more than 2 parties (UK too).