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by h0l0cube 447 days ago
Hot take: it's a failure of democratic competition. The US doesn't have proportional representation, and it's long maintained a duopoly of two electable parties, and a first-past-the-post system that makes any vote for a 3rd party a waste. This, coupled with the Democrats not fronting up a reformist candidate when they could have (Sanders shot down twice), permitted the only anti-establishment candidate to win, and that happened to be a callous individual that aligns with minds as cruel as his own. (By his own admission, 'the tougher and meaner they are, the better I get along with them'.) It's hard to believe that even die-hard Republican politicians are totally on-board with this reformist agenda that's going to completely decimate the economy, but most certainly, if anyone is winning by the end of it, it will be them.

That said, if there's ever another free and fair US election, the Democrats have a real opportunity to put a candidate that can actually deliver remaking the country, but in a way that lifts all boats, and without throwing out hard-won democratic freedoms. But I'm pretty certain they'll just front up another establishment candidate with a progressive face.
1 comments
cutemonster 445 days ago
Makes sense to me. I've been thinking: The US was doomed from the start? Because of the laws that makes it a two party country? It was just a matter of time, and for mass manipulation tools to appear?

Are there any more doomed two party countries waiting to go authoritarian / fascist?

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h0l0cube 445 days ago
Maybe. I'm not sure if FPTP necessarily leads to authoritarianism, but there's a whole bunch of countries that sill use the system

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting#Cou...

I think, though, that the US won't go full top-down authoritarian, because a large enough portion of the population is armed. Should some kind of coup ever be attempted, it could well spark a civil war – which is still doom, but not a subjugating kind of doom.

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cutemonster 445 days ago
The population is unarmed. Small arms don't count, they're good for the shooting range and mass shootings, but not against a modern military.

But yes let's hope there will be elections again

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h0l0cube 445 days ago
Numbers matter. Only a small amount of insurgents are needed to occupy the military, but if even 2% of the civilian population took up arms, the situation would become untenable. All the armed forces together constitute not much more than one million troops. And there would be also conscientious resistance within the armed forces to executive orders to shoot civilians.
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