[aredox]

>Does that sound like the kind of stuff that fair, well run by rule of law, stable democracies with lots of buy in from the populace do to you?

...Yes?

Or are you saying politicians can just barge in and say "the rules don't apply to me because I'm popular"? Because that's how you don't get stable democracies. What you get is Trump, or the Red Brigades, or the Brown Shirts running things to the ground. Because the motto of those orgs is "one man, one vote... One last time"

[s1artibartfast]

Are you okay with Trump having the power to do each of those quoted actions? To decide if the opposition is a threat to democracy or if elections must be canceled "as a last resort".

I read that list and it looks like instructions on how to end democracy, not preserve it

[frereubu]

Not advocating for that specific list of actions, but the idea is that the courts have the power to do those kinds of things, not politicians. That's the whole point - you set up the legal system in a way that helps to keep democracy stable and then the courts enforce that so politicians don't have untrammelled power. That's (theoretically) why the judiciary is a separate branch of government.

[guizmo]

But the question is still there. Are you comfortable with a Trump appointed judge having those powers?

[sham1]

To put the long story short: yes.

Americans made their bed, now let them lay in it. Ideally those tools would have been used against him, but since they weren't... now is the time to reap the results of that inaction.

[frereubu]

Every democracy has a failure point. The US seems to be past that now, where the executive is starting to ignore the judicial branch. In my view, if the institutions were working correctly, Trump would never have been able to stand again after January 6th, and this would have been as a result of judgements by judges appointed by the executive. But institutions are run by humans and sometimes nothing can save them.

[darthrupert]

Trump should have been the target of defensive democracy, not the abuser of it. At least if US would have had a working version of the concept.

So your question seems to evade the point.

[refurb]

As you said “no system is perfect” so you’d have to accept that it fails to stop someone like Trump from getting into office.

It’s like having a gun to defender yourself then the criminal takes it from you.

So are you comfortable with someone like Trump using those same tools?

[darthrupert]

Moot point as someone like Trump ignores existing tools and just makes his own.

Also, Trump could have been stopped by the processes in place in USA, they just were not properly used. There were several cases open against him, they just failed to do what they were supposed to.

[refurb]

How does Trump "make tools"? You think he can twist Congress' arm?

And no, Trump couldn't have been stopped because the US has very limited rules over criminal convictions preventing running for President.

This isn't Europe ya know.

[darthrupert]

That's not the problem. The US now effectively has a system where you don't prosecute presidents for any crime. You should note that the ongoing criminal investigations against Trump were mostly cancelled when it became obvious that he'll be the next president.

If this system had been in place when Nixon did his crimes, he would've just shrugged and kept going.

You are indeed not Europe now, not even close. Well, except for Hungary and Belarus.

[johnbronnan]

You are again comparing the flawed US "democratic" system to a real democracy. Trump should not be able to gain those tools because a functioning democracy protects the rule of law and holds justice to be above all other concepts. In the US, the legal system is a sham and the levers of power are easily taken for abuse (not to mention corporate capture of the two political parties which control all political life). So while Trump should not be able to capture those tools, it is only possible because the US does not have a real functioning democracy. In places like France, the state ensures that it is not possible to easily take complete power as Trump has in the US.

In short, no, Trump should not be able to take these tools. But in actual democracies they have checks to ensure that this is not possible while in the US no such checks exist.

[refurb]

I didn’t ask if Trump should be able to take those tools.

I asked if you would be comfortable if he did.

Either you believe it is possible to create a perfect political system which never makes a mistake, or you believe mistakes can be made thus those tools should never be available to those in power.

Which one is it?

[darthrupert]

That's easy. It's false dichotomy.

[machomaster]

>Or are you saying politicians can just barge in and say "the rules don't apply to me because I'm popular"?

I hope you misrepresent due to ignorance and not deliberately.

Nobody is saying that politicians should not be investigated. And nobody is saying that politicians should not be convicted and even put in prison.

What people are rightfully baffled about is the riddance of the passive election right - as in, inability to be elected. If a candidate was convinced and is in prison, then it's up to the voters to decide if they still trust that person and if they consider the conviction rightful and not bias.

Surely, if the conviction was pure as a tear of a newborn baby and there was no dirty persecution of the political competitors, surely voters would take that into account and there would be no need for artificial restrictions. But that requires the absence of political hunt. One needs to impose artificial restrictions only if there is fault play.

The EU is taking the tried and tested ways Putin used to destroy his opposition. First Romania, now France.

P.S. The same critique applies to the American democratic travesty of "current/former criminals are not allowed to vote".

[TFYS]

The trouble with this is that a criminal that has enough capital to back him/her can use the media to make it seem like it's a political hunt even when it isn't. Supporters of a corrupt criminal will benefit a lot from getting them elected, whereas the opposition needs to spend a lot of money just to keep things as they are. Usually these people are friendly to capital as well, and the opposition are the "little people" who can't organize enough money to campaign against these liars and their backers. I can't see better options here other than to use the state to protect themselves.

[Boldened15]

At some point we have to trust the electorate whether we like it or not, or democracy is impossible. If the populace is easily brainwashed by the media to believe in the innocence of a corrupt and extremist candidate they could just as easily be brainwashed on any issue or candidate so what's the point of letting them vote at all?

> Usually these people are friendly to capital as well, and the opposition are the "little people"

Don't know if this is actually true, I assume capitalists generally prefer stable market-oriented politicians and not far-right kleptocrats in favor of protectionist trade wars. And plenty of wealthy people value democracy for its own sake, Kamala outraised Trump in the 2024 election for example.

Also I doubt traditional media spend plays as large a role in a nationwide contest with a lot of eyes, if I recall during Trump's 2016 primary candidacy Fox News tried to go against him but was rebuked by their own viewers (who fell in love with him on social media) and forced to bend the knee.

Cults of personalities are more dangerous than other types of brainwashing though, and the right level of protection from the state here should be other checks and balances on the office's powers.

[TFYS]

I'm starting to think that current forms of democracy have become outdated and impossible due to the effects of social media and the levels of wealth concentration. When liars can spread their own truths through social media, and there exists such concentrations of wealth that they're able to buy the platforms, manipulate the algorithms, use bots etc. to boost the lies, it's become too hard for the average person to figure out what the actual truth is and base their decisions on that. The fact checking and bias in dispersed traditional media that we used to have was not perfect, but it was better than what we have now with the combination of concentrated traditional media and social media.

If we don't want to use the state to protect democracy by limiting it, then we either need to limit the concentration of wealth so that no small group of people has the power to spread the lies, or we need new forms of democracy that are resistant to such things.

[machomaster]

The essential part of democracy is the right for people to make bad decisions (and hopefully learn from them).

If people are allowed to choose only from preselected candidates, then that is no democracy at all. "You can choose any color of the Ford you want as long as it is black".

That's the same reason I despise the "minimal amount of votes/percentage threshold to be elected" shenanigans that exist in many countries (including Europeans). That's exactly how Putin started to take over Russia's democratic election system in the beginning of his reign.

System needs controllers. But who is going to control the controllers? And who is going to control the controllers of the controllers? Turtles all the way. And the only reasonable and workable system is when people have the control. Even if they sometimes/often make mistakes. It's still the best system we have.