Washington is tightening its fuel blockade of Cuba while Ecuadorian courts have thrown out the drug charges against fishermen captured in the boat campaign.
But that’s exactly what democracy is supposed to prevent. Democracy is all about respecting each other, and making a better society for all. But in USA that is failing completely, and has instead lead to an intolerant hateful society, where a living wage and healthcare are not for all but privileges. Only USA has not figured these things out among democracies with a developed economy.
I mean, that might be the ideal idea, but democracy has never done that historically. Its main benefit is that it averages out the opinions of the populace so extremist dictators can’t steer a state as fast as possible into collapse, which is not something you can do much about when so many people are so willing to vote for a demagogue or a populist without explicitly antidemocratic protections, like, say, a filibuster. Alcibiades, Caesar, Robespierre, Netanyahu, Trump, Modi, Farage, the list goes on.
It’s also worth emphasising the role of the far-right captured media headed by Murdoch and Russian disinformation attacks on democracies globally. Obviously, there is blame to be had with the people who choose to vote for these fuckers, but at the same time, it’s no coincidence that the right is winning across many Western democracies simultaneously with AfD, Reform, the GOP, etc. in recent years making significant gains.
It absolutely has, Scandinavian countries are good examples of democracy actually working. They rank highest on the democracy index, and they also rank highest in satisfaction in the population and quality of living, and quality of public services.
The better the democracy, the better the results.
Problem is that USA is an awfully bad democracy, and for half a century nothing has been done to improve it. Not even making gerrymandering illegal, or remove the idiotic FPP voting for federal elections. Which are so obvious and a bare minimum to move forward.
For now our democracy here in Denmark where I live is working very well, but that is not an automatic thing, it is something we need to continuously protect, and in general Europeans are better at that than Americans.
We (EU) have the same problems USA do, like AfD in Germany and Le Penn in France, the difference is that here those extremists although popular, cannot take total power of the system, because in functioning democracies you have representation of many parties, and no government is allowed almost total power like the US president has.
The US system with a very powerful president is based on an idea of efficiency to get things done, not an idea of democracy and fairness like most European democracies.
Don’t judge democracy based on the flawed democracies that exist, democracy is the least bad system we have, but a flawed democracies like USA and UK, are doomed to make HUGE mistakes in the name of efficiency, because too much power is concentrated with 1 person. Except when it comes to it, they are only efficient at maintaining the status quo of the power structure, and never really getting much done to benefit society as a whole.
I would argue the problem is merely of the scale of crazies. Granted, a lot of the European democracies are doing a lot better than the US or UK, but at the same time, fundamentally, no system other than a dictatorship that actively acts against its own people can withstand a large enough population that vehemently decides to be evil. Israel’s parliamentary system is a pretty good example. On paper not a bad system, the problem is that so many of them are completely captured by the right and far right that even the leftmost parties are still pretty damn horrendous when it comes to the West Bank and Gaza.
Like, I’m not saying a democracy can’t work, it obviously can and has for a good number of decades, but, like any other system of politics, it has a failure condition.
democracy only goes so far when there’s a significant section of the population that are psychotic.
But that’s exactly what democracy is supposed to prevent. Democracy is all about respecting each other, and making a better society for all. But in USA that is failing completely, and has instead lead to an intolerant hateful society, where a living wage and healthcare are not for all but privileges. Only USA has not figured these things out among democracies with a developed economy.
I mean, that might be the ideal idea, but democracy has never done that historically. Its main benefit is that it averages out the opinions of the populace so extremist dictators can’t steer a state as fast as possible into collapse, which is not something you can do much about when so many people are so willing to vote for a demagogue or a populist without explicitly antidemocratic protections, like, say, a filibuster. Alcibiades, Caesar, Robespierre, Netanyahu, Trump, Modi, Farage, the list goes on.
It’s also worth emphasising the role of the far-right captured media headed by Murdoch and Russian disinformation attacks on democracies globally. Obviously, there is blame to be had with the people who choose to vote for these fuckers, but at the same time, it’s no coincidence that the right is winning across many Western democracies simultaneously with AfD, Reform, the GOP, etc. in recent years making significant gains.
It absolutely has, Scandinavian countries are good examples of democracy actually working. They rank highest on the democracy index, and they also rank highest in satisfaction in the population and quality of living, and quality of public services.
The better the democracy, the better the results.
Problem is that USA is an awfully bad democracy, and for half a century nothing has been done to improve it. Not even making gerrymandering illegal, or remove the idiotic FPP voting for federal elections. Which are so obvious and a bare minimum to move forward.
For now our democracy here in Denmark where I live is working very well, but that is not an automatic thing, it is something we need to continuously protect, and in general Europeans are better at that than Americans.
We (EU) have the same problems USA do, like AfD in Germany and Le Penn in France, the difference is that here those extremists although popular, cannot take total power of the system, because in functioning democracies you have representation of many parties, and no government is allowed almost total power like the US president has.
The US system with a very powerful president is based on an idea of efficiency to get things done, not an idea of democracy and fairness like most European democracies.
Don’t judge democracy based on the flawed democracies that exist, democracy is the least bad system we have, but a flawed democracies like USA and UK, are doomed to make HUGE mistakes in the name of efficiency, because too much power is concentrated with 1 person. Except when it comes to it, they are only efficient at maintaining the status quo of the power structure, and never really getting much done to benefit society as a whole.
I would argue the problem is merely of the scale of crazies. Granted, a lot of the European democracies are doing a lot better than the US or UK, but at the same time, fundamentally, no system other than a dictatorship that actively acts against its own people can withstand a large enough population that vehemently decides to be evil. Israel’s parliamentary system is a pretty good example. On paper not a bad system, the problem is that so many of them are completely captured by the right and far right that even the leftmost parties are still pretty damn horrendous when it comes to the West Bank and Gaza.
True, but USA has more crazies as a result of the society being sick. The inherent number of potential crazies is the same in all countries.
Like, I’m not saying a democracy can’t work, it obviously can and has for a good number of decades, but, like any other system of politics, it has a failure condition.