You’d think a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players, would have some mechanism that would prevent itself from throwing down it’s key ideology.
Is it really that the president is all that decides about the future of democracy itself? Is 53 out of 100 senate seats really enough to make country fall into authoritarian regime? Is the army really not constitutionally obliged to step in and save the day?
I’d never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile.
Couldn’t keep a:
34 count felon
Child rapist
Fraudster
Tax dodger
Draft dodger
Grifter
Deadbeat
Wife beater
Philanderer
Classified documents thief
Obstructionist
Out of office… so why would they be able to keep a Nazi out?
We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons. If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this bear’s work, that is its affair. We do not come as friends, nor even as neutrals. We come as enemies. As the wolf bursts into the flock, so we come.
Joseph Goebbels
It has impeachment. The list of reasons for impeachment are (quite possibly intentionally) vague. But it has to be done through Congress.
The Constitution assumes the people through the ballot box or through protest would clean up any issues like that
The US government is not (and has never been) against fascism for ideological reasons. Fascism and American-style democracy go hand in hand quite well. Our government fought a war against fascists because they disrupted the global trade status quo and threatened US economic prosperity and that of our primary trade partners.
The problem is he won the election.
The vote is the final check and balance.
49% of Voters are either sympatico or stupid.
We really only have the Second Amendment. I am now on a list.
I’d never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile
Ignore the political system and look at the economic system. The US is capitalist and as it turns out- capitalism is not mutually exclusive with fascism.
If a human being lives long enough, he will eventually develop cancer. It’s simply a natural physical consequence of repeated cell division. Eventually there’s some mutation that leads to a chain reaction. The cancer spreads enough and there’s no going back. Capitalism, similarly, will always inevitably embrace fascism.
Marx got it wrong. He believed that the workers, realizing their position as class consciousness increases, would inevitably revolt against the power structure. The reality is more depressing.
Capitalism has cycles of crisis. Sometimes the economy is doing good which leaves the workers content. Sometimes the economy is doing bad. The problem is when the economy is doing bad coincides with some other set of crisis, the combination of events radicalizes the workers. This part Marx predicted. However he was mistaken about human nature.
Really, our problem started back in 2008. The global economy never fully recovered. Interest rates were kept low in a desperate attempt to increase spending to keep the boat from tipping. Then COVID pumped up inflation to historic levels- supply chain shortages wrecked chaos. After that, the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed up inflation even higher. Prices go up but wages lag behind.
Workers, naturally, become more radicalized- as Marx predicted. The issue is Marx was too optimistic about human nature. Humans as a whole are fearful herd animals. They need a shepherd to point somewhere. And eventually, inevitably, some megalomaniac with a vision will take advantage of a vulnerable system and point somewhere. In the 1930s it was to the Jews and the communists. Today, it’s the illegals and “wokeism”.
All this to say that this shouldn’t be surprising. Left wing voices have been warning about this for a long time.
It’s funny that Germany has safeguards against nazis in power in it’s constitution which was designed
byin cooperation with the USA, France and GB, yet afaik all three don’t have similar mechanics in their own constitutions because they never belived to have to deal with the next hitler themselfs.Lets take out the politics for a moment, and just look at railroads
This is what I call the “Old Railroad Theory”:
The US build the railroad/subways so long ago, that most of it is now in decay and as far as I know, none of the US has any Platform Safety Barriers, and people could just fall on the tracks (see NYC)
In constrast, in China (PRC), because most subways are only recently built, they are much more modern, air-conditioned, and have Platform Safety Barriers, preventing any “fall on tracks” incidents. (I’ve seen first hand the subway in GuangZhou, they look much nicer than NYC, when I first got to NYC, the tracks were terrifying for me, I always have intrusive thoughts about falling in)
Its because once you build a system, its unlikely to get replaced even when better technology comes along. Too much cost to replace, politicians don’t care.
Same thing with Constitutions.
It was written so long ago, now its too late to add new ideas like Defensive Democracy. 3/4 of US legislature means its almost impossible to add it as an amendment.
(Btw, Germany has a AfD problem, that they still haven’t banned yet… 👀)
Edit: typos
Those same safeguards that banned AfD years ago, thank god they exist!
PS.: With the current trend we will find out in about the next decade if the safeguards work …
Assuming America is a democracy is the first mistake. killing the native population, viewing non land owners, poc and many more as lessors. Let’s not forget who wrote the constitution.
If you really believe that the USA has “100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players” you are in delusion.
Hitler didn’t take power democratically. Neither did Mussolini or Franco. They each found cracks in how liberal democracy worked in their respective countries. Those cracks were usually the places where the system was decidedly undemocratic, which in those three cases, was generally something where the old nobles still had some power and they lined up behind fascists to save them from leftists.
America never had nobles, but it does have plenty of cracks in its liberal democracy to be exploited by fascists.
So to answer your question simply, no, there are no instruments to fix this. Congress can potentially either reign Trump in with legislation, or even impeach him, but I don’t expect either one to happen. If the GOP can be swept out of Congress in 2026, then we can maybe start to fix some things without resorting to extralegal methods. Even that is only a starting point.
I do know for sure that we can’t go back to the old trajectory as if Trump was just an outlier.
a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players
Your proof of this is… what?
Ah fuck you really going to make me infodump I hate you sm fr
Part 1: The Two Parties
In the 1960s Civil Rights movement a deep political polarization began which results in wealthy interests backing the Republican party more and more, President Ronald Reagan in return shifted the party away from unions and towards deregulated and low tax markets and industries, and when Democrats introduced a campaign finance reform to curb the issue in 1995 it failed but was reintroduced and passed in 2002 it furthered that divide yet again, that bill was then sued by Citizens United wealthy interests and the SCOTUS sided with Citizens United as a Partisan 5-4 decision. So now we live in a world where political divide has all of the wealthy interests backing one side whose policies are actually extremely unpopular but people are easily misled into not knowing the stances of people they are voting for, or misled on the repercussions of those actions.
Figure 1: Partisanship of Congressmen
Figure 2: Partisanship of citizens
Part 2: Legislative Requirements of the USA
The USA has steps to pass laws:
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It gets called to vote by majority leader and passes the House of Representatives, which is capped at 435 congressmen allotted very very roughly proportional to the state populations.
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It gets called to vote by majority leader and passes the Senate with a simple majority of 51 votes, unless a handful of senators decide to filibuster it to delay the vote indefinitely, in which case the bill gets amended with concessions and sent back to the House for yet another round of voting. Filibuster can be bypassed with 60 votes which is basically impossible due to aforementioned partisanship.
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The president signs it into law.
Now the problem here is that to remove a congressman, the president, or a supreme court judge: you need 60 votes following a successful impeachment inquiry. So it never happens.
Part 3: Foreign Interests
Influential media from the Murdochs, the Kochs, and the CCP are constantly pushing the USA further into the grave they’ve been digging for 50 years. China has always been a source of cheap labor and the relationship soured greatly following the Chinese influences on Korean and Japanese elections during the time those two nations were rebuilding following the World War era and were under the watchful eye of the US Military who were a central figure in the aforementioned conflict. This divide deepened with the 1984 Tienanmen Square Massacre where cities all over China were quelled by military forces being deployed on their own people. But far from being the end of it, the Pacific was still a prime trade route where the USA sought profits, and so Chinese influence continued to spread more as the days went by.
Part 4: Where We Are Now
President Obama was denied a lifelong SCOTUS nomination in an election year, giving the nomination to Donald Trump.
Donald Trump was granted yet another lifelong SCOTUS nomination in an election year. The SCOTUS was thusly deeply conservative.
His court nominations allowed him to run for office despite not qualifying under the insurrection clause, because if the courts choose not to reverse a lower court decision that he wasn’t barred from office then nobody is enforcing the law.
Billionaires bought or operated their own home made social medias in the USA, the CCP deployed TikTok campaigns to elect a fascist.
This isn’t just a thing that happened which we were unprepared for. It’s a thing that has been happening for decades which so many of us have been desperately attempting to stop.
This is good information, a few follow up questions:
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what does China gain by influencing the US to elect a fascist? It’s clear what us billionaires gain, less so for China
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where are the breaks on choo choo train to Nazi America, based on this trend?
USA military interventions in Asia have been a constant concern for a long time, and the USA allied Korea and Japan directly oppose Chinese expansion and Chinese allied North Korea. The USA military control of the pacific ocean is seen as a wall to be overcome. The Chinese deeply despise the existence of NATO; the world’s largest mutual defence pact, and the US Government as barriers between them and their expansionist goals.
For examples, the takeover of Hong Kong and Taiwan almost failed due to US support, and their econimic use of Philippine and Australian seas have faced setbacks.
China is openly allied with other USA adversaries such as Iran and Russia.
It also helps that President Trump has repeatedly praised and admired Xi Jinping openly in public. The USA Tariffs will have no effect on Chinese trade profits at all as USA citizens will instead pay the fees. The less average faith a US Citizen has in their country and the more easily radicalized they are to harm their country, the better it is for China. They constantly predict the downfall of America and the rise of China in a single breath.
If you want evidence of all of this then look no further than the quotes of Chinese officials and the ideals of “communist parties” of the USA.
- The brakes would be electing 60 democrats to senate to pass campaign finance reform, public healthcare with no concessions, and tax reform. As they have repeatedly tried to do for many years but always come up short of votes. Bonus points if they expand the court, house, and senate but I dont know if its an achievable goal until after the campaign finance reform.
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