Three major reports out this month say Trump has done serious damage to American democracy at remarkable speed since his return to the White House.
An annual report from V-Dem, an institute at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg, concluded democracy had deteriorated so much in the U.S. that it lowered the country’s democracy ranking from 20th to 51st out of 179 countries.
The U.S. landed between Slovakia and Greece.
I feel like this is giving him too much credit. His cronies are dismantling democracy. He’s just being steered from “issue” to “issue” like he’s in a wheelchair.
Once Trump is no longer in control I really hope that whoever inherits this mess will ensure these cronies who blatantly planned and are actively orchestrating the destruction of US democracy will be rounded up and prosecuted for what they’ve done.
Bin Laden’s threat to the US was a joke compared to what these people are doing and look at what happened to him.
We should start with the heritage foundation, and all those they’ve helped usher into positions of power.
So, billionaires?
Haha yeah, they’re pretty much the same picture.
That’s what we hoped when Biden got into office.
What did Biden and his administration do to people like Trump, DeJoy, Pai .etc?
Nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing. “Oh but but, Biden TRIED to get DeJoy to step down!” No, not enough. He should’ve been tried and convicted for knowingly trying to sabotage a general election. He got to walk clean. Trump, got away with initiating a huge Insurrection, he got to walk free and is back in power.
So, no, I don’t hope anymore for whoever to come in and hold these people accountable. What they’re going to do, is allow these cretins to go running free, not serve jail time, not face any punishment and still run with the shitty policies to build on. You can only do so much through executive orders, too.
We’re fucked. The time to remedy more damage was 2024 and it was fucked up.
I’m not holding my breath. If we get anything besides a Russian style dictatorship, it’ll be some useless Neoliberal who pardons everyone in the name of “peace” then leaves all but the worst Trump era policies in place
Unless the people actually do something, which is even less likely
Yeah, not Trump, the cadre of people who have been trying to do this since time immemorial, and the knobs who are constantly duped by them.
There is no war but class war.
Agreed. And I believe it’s being done so ‘easily’ because it was so very weak when he got to it.
“Terrorism,” as defined in the FRAA, is “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents.”
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF10613
At least there isn’t an organization of masked clandestine agents committing politically motivated violence against noncombatant targets in the US.
I mean, it’s certainly faster than the media and “watchdogs” are figuring out what’s happening.
Carey says autocrats try to co-opt or pressure government institutions that serve as referees but notes that didn’t work last month as the Supreme Court ruled against the president on tariffs.
“One of the things that the tariff decision suggested [is] he has not fully captured that set of referees,” said Carey, a professor of political science at Dartmouth, “and that’s the most important set.”
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what’s actually happening.
They ruled against Trump’s tariffs because this is a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and he isn’t allowed to touch the money. Trump is a figurehead that’s being granted power by the ruling class, he’s only allowed to do what he’s doing because it’s useful.
The US was never a democracy. They just let us pretend because it was similarly useful.
The US was never a democracy.
Of course America is a democracy. A flawed, and corruptible, and racist, democracy. Why do you think the right wing has to maintain such an enormous propaganda machine? Why do you think Republicans are clutching their pearls over the Iran war, and the spike in gas prices? It’s because they need votes. They need votes because they don’t have full control of the government apparatus, yet. That’s why they’re freaking out about the midterms, because they still don’t have their power fully cemented.
Yes, the supreme court is corrupted by the moneyed class. So are the lower courts, so is the congress, so is the executive. The same is true for state and local governments at every level. What about that makes it not a democracy? What democracy hasn’t had their institutions challenged, their power threatened, by the powerful? Of course they will try. They’ve been trying to hoard and amass power since day one, and when one falls, another power-hungry would-be tyrant will be next in line to try to seize more than their share. We do our best to stop them, sometimes more successfully than others. That’s democracy.
If democracy means anything at all, it’s a system where the people rule. By your loose definition, every country is a democracy! Every king and dictator has enormous propaganda machines because they need to keep their people from overthrowing them.
The Gilens and Page study gave the game away in 2005. “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” Policies are decided by the ruling class before a single vote is cast, the elections are simply another propaganda machine to trick people into giving their consent to be governed.
And right now the propaganda machine is telling you to just wait for the midterms and everything will be fine. You don’t need to do anything! Just sit back and relax, the system is working as intended, everything will work out. “Democracy”. What a joke.
I don’t think Mamdani is perfect, but I have a hard time believing his policies were decided on by the ruling class. Will they fight the implementation of those policies? Of course they will. Those with a need for power will never concedes an inch. That doesn’t mean that wasn’t a free and fair election decided by the people of NYC.
Also, IDK what propaganda machine you’re listening to but I have never heard anyone, of any political stripe, tell me “everything will be fine after the midterms”.
I’ve absolutely seen tons of astroturfed messaging saying “Let’s all wait for the midterms” since about when Trump took office. It has been the predominant message across so-called liberal media and so-called liberal groups. I have not heard that idea by anyone IRL. I have seen that message online stated many political accounts which popped up around January 2025 and caught the algorithm while everyone in the USA was rightfully freaking out about Elon’s Nazi salute, DOGE’s ransacking, and Trump’s absurd nominations.
I’ve definitely seen the “Now the Presidential elections are over, time to immediately focus on the midterms” variations that come about every four years, but they’re usually calls to action, not “just sit back and relax, the system is working as intended”. That… honestly just sounds like technically bad propaganda. If propaganists can’t get their targets in a rage about something, they’re leaving them open to someone who can.
Well, no, referring to our government as a democracy is factually incorrect. A democratic republic shares many things with a democracy, but the fact is a republic is built specifically to deny the public any actual direct voice in the government. So, not a democracy, no matter how much you dress it up to look like one.
I think what you’re describing is usually called direct democracy. If that’s the only kind of democracy you think is real democracy, I guess we’ll have to differ. I think there’s nothing inherently undemocratic about having elected representatives perform certain functions. I think at some scale it helps to have middle layers more than it hurts. That’s not to say direct democracy wouldn’t be preferable, I don’t know that I have a well-formed opinion on that. But if a system has consequential elections, no matter the structure of the government they elect, I’d call that a democracy.
As I recall, the technicality that separates the two involves any election done in the manner of our electoral college. The president is not elected by the people, by design.
Yeah the electoral college is a weird, poorly constructed indirect democracy. I think we should do away with it. Still, electors are elected by the state votes, and congressional representatives (state and national) are elected directly. I think there’s plenty to criticize about the American system, but to go from “it’s got serious problems” to “it’s not a democracy” seems like too far a reach for me. Elections still have consequences in America, and as long as that’s true I think its still technically a democracy.
Should be a wake up call to 100% of Americans, but I fear not enough.
I do think the democrats 50 state plan is making a difference. Hopefully it’s not too late.
Grab ‘em by the fringe. They let you do it when you’re a dictator.
If it is something that can be dismantled by one man, it never existed in the first place.
