Can one still claim that the USA is a liberal democracy? Where do you draw the line?
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Yes, it has
Yes.
Really and truly, yes.
Yes.
Lol this post made me appreciate Lemmy so much.
There was a question on dead-it asking something about why the American middle class seemed to suffer so much since the mid20th century and it was full of obvious bots pointing to the positive but temporary effects of WW2. It took quite some scrolling before I saw any mention of the stagnation of real wages since then.
It’s been an open oligarchy since Citizen’s United. Seems like a lot of people are just now seeing the effects of what that decision allowed. Our Supreme Court was already corrupt, but because they at least maintained an air of dignity, people just looked past the death of our democracy.
You’re thinking of Kleptocracy, where politicians are mainly worried about extracting wealth from the country. Oligarchy has to do with class mobility and who is allowed to run for office. (Namely a financial and political class of “elites”) Citizen’s United kick started another era of politicians working to grab as much money as possible for their donors.
I would argue that Citizen’s United effectively made it impossible for non-elites to meaningfully effect the US political process, forcing us down a road where only those who can raise the most money are considered eligible for political office.
That was already the case though. I’m not arguing we aren’t living under some sort of Oligrachy, I’m arguing that Citizens United was a logical symptom of that Oligarchy, not the start of it.
Oligarchy, kakistocracy, kleptocracy take your pick.
The USA has always and forever represented the will of the Bourgeoisie. The issue we are seeing now is further and further separation between the Proletariat and a smaller and smaller concentration of the Bourgeoisie due to Capitalism’s centralizing nature. The silver lining is that this same centralizing process makes Socialism even easier to implement once the Proletariat siezes control, as these large intricate networks have already developed their own infrastructure for planning that can be folded into the Public Sector, the hard part is getting over that threshold of power.
The usa Is a fascist regime. Plutocracy and oligarchy are normal Components of fascism.
Astronaut Pistol Astronaut.
Can someone explain this comment? I can ask dumb questions here right?
“Wait, it’s an oligarchy?”
“Always has been.”
There are political cartoons from over a century ago where they’re talking about how much of an oligarchy it is. Look at this one: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/The_Bosses_of_the_Senate_by_Joseph_Keppler.jpg/1920px-The_Bosses_of_the_Senate_by_Joseph_Keppler.jpg
We’ve been an oligarchy since the Reagan years.
It has been an oligarchy for a long time. This has been studied and proven.
There was a study from Princeton showing that no major policy has aligned with public opinion since the civil rights era.
There is no measurable way that our government has reflected the will of the majority in over 50 years.
Someone also did the other side where they tied policy- and law-making to benefiting the ultra rich. I do not recall source so I can’t provide that, but I did read the paper at one time a few years ago. It was legit.
Link
Thank you!
proven
Please explain. I don’t disagree with the conclusion, but this supporting statement doesn’t ring true to me.
By demonstrating the facts which make the system meet the definition. Look it up there’s plenty of articles citing studies. Someone else linked a major one here.
“Look it up” is never a good argument. With that said, I understand what you mean now; Thank you.
“Look it up” is not an argument, it’s a suggested course of action. I explained my point and then suggested you look it up in order to see it more elaborated and supported.
I wasn’t aware there was an argument taking place; certainly not one involving me.
Sorry, I just assumed that you were being hostile for some reason.
Nope, just informative to the extent I could be.
I say this in nearly complete seriousness:
Always has been
🌎🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
Literally founded by slave owners
Only landowning or capitalist white men could vote and participate in politics…
According to Jimmy Carter it has beensince 2015:
Also the subesquent SpeechNow decision that pulled out the stops AND created precedent by citing Citizens United.
https://ballotpedia.org/SpeechNOW.org_v._Federal_Election_Commission
Classic. it is Obama fault.
Read Chomsky’s Understanding Power (2002) and Manufacturing Consent (1988). It’s been an oligarchy since at least the 1980s. It’s Reagan’s fault. Jimmy Carter — rest in power —was the last, best hope for the kind of America that humanity wanted.
Read the Fred J. Cook’s The Warfare State (1962).
President Dwight D. Eisenhower was right about the Military-Industrial complex. It used to just be weapons, technology, energy, and heavy industries. The associated industries have metastasized to include entertainment, finance, housing, and education.
Food
Pretty sure it crossed that line decades ago.
Late 19th century. There was some pushback, some anti-trust laws with teeth, and then decades of bloody union battles to secure rights workers and their elected officials have thrown away for 50 years.
The concentration of wealth and influence of 10-16 people trumps that of hundreds of millions and is as bad or worse than it was during the robber baron era.
Political representatives are bought and paid for which means the poor have no voice against the wealthy.
We have a justice system that is incapable of prosecuting the wealthy and powerful, when it isn’t being stocked by ideologues.
Meritocracy is dead; Birth has much greater correlation to wealth and power.
Media is fully captured by the wealthy; they own the vast majority of media consumed: TV, film, news, social junk.
Nice country you got here.
Remember when unions thought they were so Irreplaceable and important. That they would withhold Support for a second term from a Democrat, they didn’t think did enough for them. One of the biggest miscalculations and blunders of the post World War II era. Because first they came for the unions and labor power.
I’d say around the beginning of the 1900s is when we truly lost the plot. While we, the workers, were given a few breadcrumbs over the years to appease us, the Owner class was strip mining the wealth at every level imaginable, there’s a reason people like Rockefeller and Carnegie were richer than heaven at this time in history.
