This situation feels dumb. I feel like I am watching idiots cheer on someone doing parkor and that person getting his teeth smashed on a wall. Like, what is the point?
replies(6):
- H. L. Mencken
- Winston Churchill [disputed]
I'm serious.
(Mine is multi-member ranked voting (NOT IRV)).
The USA today will probably (and hopefully) not be considered a democracy by some future standard. Disqualifications may include:
* limited suffrage,
* limited or unequal access to health care and education for a significant portion of the population,
* convoluted voting system where certain demographics have little to no chance to pursue public office,
* large constituencies,
* non-state territories/districts with little to no representation at the national level,
* unincorporated populated areas, with little to no representation at the local level,
* a lack of clear separation of power between the different democratic institution,
* failure to enact popular policies,
* police violence,
* the death penalty,
* a large wealth gap,
* a lack of consumer protection,
* a lack of worker rights,
* failure to prosecute the rich and powerful for their crimes,
* a large nuclear armed military which constantly engages in imperialist actions,
* failure to respect the sovereignty of other states,
* etc.
I think describing this system as a Democratic Republic offers no insight into whether it is democratic or not (or how democratic it is on this spectrum). Republic just means that there is a president which holds some the executive power.
There is far more insight into calling the USA a capitalistic aristocracy, a two party state, a militaristic imperial superpower, a flawed, unequal, and underrepresented democracy, a police state, etc.
Just like how we don’t view pre-civil rights USA as democratic by modern standards. For example, we would never consider a country with legalized slavery to be democratic today. Similarly a future concept of democracy is unlikely to consider a country which practices the death penalty to be democratic by that hypothetical future standard.
This twisting of definitions is the same thing happening to "racist". Some people only consider what was previously called "systemic racism" to be the singular definition of "racism" and pretend the old definition does not exist.
In the 1970s people were debating whether Apartheid South Africa was democratic or not (it obviously wasn’t; not even by the standards of the time) and today people are debating whether Israel is a democracy (again; it obviously isn’t) but if we apply the standards of the 1940s to both Apartheid South Africa, and today’s Israel, they would both be considered democratic.
And just to clarify, the concept of racism is equally evolving. Much of what we consider racist today would not have been considered racist in the 1980s. The (then considered non-racist) behavior of the 1980s was equally harmful as the same behavior today. But humanity has simply learned, and updated the concept of racism to include this behavior. This is the nature of knowledge and the human experience, we learn more things, and adjust our concepts to fit with our ever increasing knowledge.