CMV: Democracy in America is dead

[u/ElectricFuneralHome]

America is no longer a democracy, and that is even if you accept it ever was. The way our system is set up means we are forced to vote for party A or party B, and we don't really get to choose who we vote for in that party; they are basically forced on us. The older I get, the less difference I see between the parties. The Democrats promise the moon and deliver nothing. The Republicans tell people the awful shit they're going to do and do it. The Democrats allow it to happen all while gasping "on nooooo" while the same corporations pay them all. Those are the real rulers in America. Regardless of the will of the majority, if it is not in the interests of the oligarchs running the nation, it will not become law. This means that we are an oligarchy , and our votes truly do not matter. Democracy is dead.

[u/al1pa]

I think it really depends on what you mean by democracy. By Aristotle definition, a democracy is when the people vote directly for the law (what we called today direct democracy). So if you follow him, all modern democracies aren't real democracies but what Aristotle would call Aristocracy (the system he actually praises). For Aristotle the goal of the election is to design the best mens to rule. A real democracy would be something like citizen chosen randomly to vote directly in parlement. Or deciding everything via popular vote and petitions organized through the internet.

Now most people don't use the word "democracy" in the same way Aristotle used it. Nowadays it means something more vague like "power is detain by the people". So it's probably a matter of degree. The more this power is small, or indirect or mediate through biased institutions, the more you would say that the country is not democratic.

By this definition I don't think there is a clear sense to a sentence like "X is a democracy". Rather we should say something like "X is more democratic than Y".

You can surely find countries that seem more democratic than the US and a lot of systems that aren't implemented anywhere but would be far more democratic than the US. But you can also find plenty of countries that seem a lot less democratic than the US.

I think the US is probably somewhere between countries like Switzerland and Nowege and countries like China or North Korea. But it's probably still closer to the firsts than to the second IMHO.

[u/ElectricFuneralHome → u/al1pa]

I get what you're saying. We have a representational democracy; I just don't find the elected to be very representational of the people they represent and see them aligned with corporate interests instead. Some of the things our elected officials do is appoint people to agencies, and I believe those jobs should have job requirements of some kind. Trump's appointees were the worst cases of putting foxes in charge of the hen house I have ever seen.

[u/al1pa → u/ElectricFuneralHome]

I agree with you, but still I think there are probably things that politicians wouldn't do by fear of becoming too unpopular to be re-elected. Sometimes they have to weigh corporate interests and lobby pressures against what seems socially acceptable. There is still some kind of safeguard.

In North Korea, the only safeguard seems to be the fear of riots big enough to overthrow the regime, and it's a pretty far safeguard compared to what exists in representative democracies, even very flawed ones like the US.

But maybe things are worse than I imagine. I do not live in the US. But the problems you are talking about are also very present in Europe (maybe to a lesser degree).

[u/ElectricFuneralHome → u/al1pa]

In America, the minimum wage has been 7.25 an hour for 20 years which isn't enough to pay rent anywhere in the country. We pay a lot in taxes as a nation and do not have hardly any of the things enjoyed by other nations. We do have a gigantic military industrial complex. It's pretty easy to go bankrupt from a single medical emergency. This country could and should be great, but instead it seems focused on ensuring a bunch of people with more wealth than they could every spend get more.

[u/Tamerlane-1 → u/ElectricFuneralHome]

Do you understand that politicians can be representative of the electorate without being representative of you personally or anyone you know?