Has a functioning democracy ever feel like this
TIL the USA has had a functioning democracy.
As functioning as most others. I often point to the 70's as sorta an ideal but I don't really mean that. Its just that we mostly seemed on a path of improvement and that started to erode in the 80's onward and now is seriously eroded. As limited as american democracy was it was still, no pun intended, revolutionary for its time and for awhile was not expected to last. We were pretty much at the forefront until the post ww2 period where we got fat and lazy, but again the conversation was there and we continued to push for reforms. When we did not have universal healthcare by the 70's it was getting long in the tooth and honestly we were holding down europe at that point (out competition I think kept them from expanding further). Honestly if it was not for ww2 it would be more clear that europe was beating us. France had the 40 hour workweek a year before us and that is telling.
I mostly meant that a 2 party system consisting of 2 right-wing parties & a horrible voting sysem doesn't exactly scream "functioning democracy" to me.
We have 6 parties in our german parliament, from pretty left to extreme right. 75% of the population want to stop arms deliveries to Israel (only 17% want it to continue). Guess what is happening.
Yeah its hard to say how we came to this. The founding fathers thought every state would be running a candidate. This consolodation which continues (senators, house members, and even presidents used to look at the office they held in a way that they would break from the party. Its a bit hard to describe but like the house seeing the senate as overstepping with a bill that should be put for by the house because its budget oriented or such). I think they were worried about to much fractioning rather than such lockstep bs we have today. Granted though the rights were to prevent groups in power from oppressing other groups but again we have a situation were one party only cares about us vs them than rights, democracy, rule of law, etc.
@ferric_carcinization @HubertManne Oh shit, more "both sides same" bullshit.
Scientific evidence that they aren't: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/people-in-republican-counties-have-higher-death-rates-than-those-in-democratic-counties/
I'm not saying that they're the same, they're just both right-wing.
@ferric_carcinization Compared to you. Darn those Democrats for not wanting to smash the state.
Not compared to me, compared to the political parties where I live. From what I've read about them, the USA's Democrats are, at best, comparable to center-right parties here.
@ferric_carcinization It's a big tent, ranges from Republicans who only run as Democrats to get elected (DINOs) to social democrats who'd like a European level of safety net. But we are hamstrung by an electoral system that puts a lot of power in the hands of resentful rural voters (descended of one that protected slavers).
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