[mikem170]

In the U.S. the president at the moment got to decide how we'd respond to the pandemic as it happened. Lots of people disagreed. They got to vote in a new president, but that one vote is for a whole basket of issues. Not exactly a referendum on the pandemic, more like a decision on which faction/ideology will be in control of the federal government until the next election. Calling the pandemic response a democratic decision seems like a bit of a stretch to me.

I'm sure the situation is the same in many of the elections that you linked, most countries are republics, not democracies.

Admittedly I wonder about the modern use of the word "democracy" being used to legitimize what was supposed to be a republic, was never meant to be a real democracy, and has drifted into being a plutocracy.

[triceratops]

> In the U.S. the president at the moment got to decide how we'd respond to the pandemic as it happened. Lots of people disagreed.

This is the case for every single decision that any election official makes. The general public doesn't vote on individual laws, unless you live in Switzerland. Calling quarantine measures "not democratic" is dishonest for this reason.

[mikem170]

If the people vote on something I'd say that is a democratic decision. Electing the U.S. president is a democratic decision. Referendums, where they have them, like in California, are democratic decisions. I would not say that quarantines in the U.S. have been democratic decisions.

Like I said, I think the word democracy is abused. Is the U.S. a democracy? The word appears zero times in the constitution. Is the Democratic Republic of North Korea a democracy, just because they say it is? Is Russia a democracy because people get to vote?

In the U.S. we don't vote on issues, we vote on which one of two factions will be in power any given year, the same two parties for the last 150+ years, increasingly the same people over and over, rotating in and out of corporate board rooms and the media, a political class bought and paid for, seemingly more concerned with keeping the population distracted rather than representing them, happy to take on more and more responsibility even thought the population trusts them less and less. Why the need to defend this hot mess and everything it does as democratic, when technically it is not?

Thanks for the Switzerland call-out, I'll be reading more about their system.

[triceratops]

> Why the need to defend this hot mess and everything it does as democratic, when technically it is not?

If we're arguing technicalities, the US is "technically" a type of democracy - specifically a representative democracy. If we go by your more exacting standards every government decision, ordinance, or law except those by referenda isn't democratic. Which is neither technically correct, nor is it correct as generally understood by laypeople. I agree with all the problems you pointed out but those are orthogonal to the question at hand.

DPRK is not a democracy because it fails several criteria. Russia is a de jure democracy but not a de facto one.

[mikem170]

I see where you are coming from, but I still object. Based on all the problems in our system I don't know that the U.S. deserves to be called a democracy, unless the word has lost much of its meaning.

Candidates are effectively preselected via funding by .02% of the population before people can vote, and gerrymandering districts is rampant so that political parties are selecting voters, instead of the other way around [0].

Would you say that things like that make the U.S. a de jure democracy, also?

I think the problems with our so-called democracy explain why Trump has had the following that he does. He had the money and media experience to get elected based on the outrage so many people have for all other politicians who do not really represent them. The establishment seemed more interested in getting rid of him than addressing the sentiment that brought him to office. I'm not a Trump supporter myself, and I loathe his demagoguery, but I think that understand why he got elected. He's popular with a lot of politically apathetic people because they really believed he would "drain the swamp" and that he wasn't like every single other politician - not another Bush, not another Clinton, another insider, not someone who was going to bail out Wall Street again, etc.

Apologies for nitpicking and spouting off a bit, but like I said this has all very much been on my mind lately. I know that I may be tilting at windmills here, but words are important and shape our thoughts, which led me to throw my original comment out there.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJy8vTu66tE

[triceratops]

> Would you say that things like that make the U.S. a de jure democracy, also?

I mean 2 choices is more than 1, which is usually the case in Russia. Could the US be more democratic? Certainly. Does it have 0 democracy? I don't think so.

[mikem170]

You make a good point. I appreciate the discussion.

This has been an interesting rabbit hole. I just took a look at democracy ratings, comparing different countries over time. I'm still reading about Switzerland, how it works, the pros and cons, etc.

Back to the original post in this thread, implying that governments were being totalitarian with lockdowns, and the reply saying that these governments were democracies... I would now say that being a democracy doesn't mean leaders couldn't implement totalitarian measures (using the term loosely), but it should be easier for a population to change course in a democracy than otherwise.