B0ycey wrote:Corporations are using their money to buy out your politicians for their advantage. You don't have that problem in Europe so think of it like that.
Really? People like Angela Merkel remain in power for such long stints because they are just so fantastically popular with the masses? It has nothing to do with corporate titans influencing the electorate, even though they are capitalist countries with capitalist companies too? Well, isn't that fascinating?
lancer345 wrote:Believe me, Europe is very corrupt too. Though I wouldn't call it corruption, that's very third world (officials taking bribes, etc). I would rather call it plutocratic democracy. That is, access to power is limited and controlled, and government itself is increasingly tyrannical to protect the political power of those that wield it.
This is a very concise description of establishment politicians in the United States. This is why anti-Trumpism is so rabid--they didn't control his rise to power, and he didn't do what they wanted.
lancer345 wrote:The type of reforms needed threaten the system, so its protecting itself against reform and becoming more tyrannical in nature.
That's why there is no celebration of any Biden victory, because it is obvious the populism behind Trump is not only viable, but stronger than it was in 2016.
lancer345 wrote:What I believe we're going to evolve towards is direct rule by corporations and even more crackdowns until every freedom is eroded.
That's the whole point of coronavirus, and why they're talking about a "reset," which will be characterized by a total loss of freedom. People who are afraid of dying of coronavirus are the kind of people who will willingly give up freedom for a false illusion of security.
B0ycey wrote:But it is more common in a one party system.
Including a one party system that purports to be a two party system.
B0ycey wrote:Because you can always vote out a corrupt official in a democracy.
Really? Biden came in 4th in Iowa, 5th in New Hampshire and 2nd in Nevada. Harris dropped out before polling even started. Yet, people with more delegates than Biden, for some reason, dropped out of the race and put their support behind someone they were beating at the polls? This theory of yours is why you can oppose the Iraq War and it doesn't matter if you continue to believe in a two party system. Who signed the "regime change" policy for Iraq? If you said "George W. Bush," take a bite of a shit sandwich. That was Bill Clinton in 1998. Who voted to give George W. Bush authorization to use military force in Iraq? Senators Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden among others. Did Obama promise to shut down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba? Yes. Did he do it? No.
Verv wrote:It would make sense to have very autocratic, rigid elements in place to protect the sanctity of the rights, and to make any attempts at institutional capture difficult. Since they themselves would be limited by tradition & caste to the roles that they have, they would also be incapable of taking over the institutions that share the other half of the power.
Sounds like a feudal system with a monarchy.
Atlantis wrote:What is destroying democracies are populism and conspiracy theories
Ha! Well, then democracies are too fragile to stand.
Atlantis wrote:Democracies require an independent media. That's why the populists attack the media.
No. They attack the media because it's controlled by six globalist corporations. That is, they aren't independent media at all. It's comical when Trump fans stop watching FoxNews and their ratings crater to below CNN levels, and the rest of the so-called mainstream media starts defending FoxNews. It tells you a lot about the nature the corporations.
Atlantis wrote:While the US plutocracy is steadily marching towards fascism, the EU is the last remaining bulwark of democracy in the world.
Nobody wants fascism. Even the people of Nazi Germany didn't really want fascism. They wanted an end to the depredations of globalists, be they capitalist or communist. Europe has seen the rise of all sorts of right of center parties recently.
Atlantis wrote:Why are you hell-bent on once again destroying your country?
Germany wasn't destroyed by Hitler, but rather by the allies--and not without good reason, as he was trying to destroy them too. People don't want to destroy their countries. They simply don't want to be ruled by neoliberal/neoconservative types anymore.
Wat0n wrote:I actually think there may be issues for which Western liberal democracy may be having trouble to deal with. But I don't think the alternatives are doing that much better either.
Well, there is always a persistent problem with a non-performing class of people, and it is in part because there are reasons other than Marxian analysis for these problems. Marxian analysis over simplifies and asserts that everything is class and economics and power struggle. For whatever reason, that's the sort of analysis that prevails in a so-called democracies as well as dictatorships in spite of rather obvious empirical evidence to the contrary that we need something beyond class struggles and so forth to address some of societies persistent problems. In a large population you will always have:
1. Anti-social Personalities: Sociopaths generally need to be imprisoned--no respect whatsoever for the life or property of others. Psychopaths often should be too, but they are frequently leading large organizations because they lie with alacrity and have an ability to manipulate people to work in larger groups. Then, you have your narcissists (they will never be compatible with socialism, except joining the party apparatus and self-dealing), people with borderline personality disorder (run hot and cold with people and parties), and oppositional-defiance disorder (always confront and reject authority).
2. Mentally ill: Chronic schizophrenics, manic-depressives, depressives, and perpetually anxious people generally cannot perform well consistently. Some can create great art works, etc., but many are non-functional and problematic in ordinary production environments.
3. Addicts: You have a class of people who are often co-morbidly mentally ill who cannot perform, because they are physically dependent on exogenous ligands that dissociate them from reality or over-stimulate them to the point of schizophrenic or manic-like behavior.
4. Low IQ/Mentally Handicapped: In a normal distribution (Bell Curve), you always have a percentage of the population that is mentally incapable of performing productive tasks. Frankly, they are just idiots.
5. Physically Handicapped: You will also have people who were born with congenital birth defects and people who were seriously injured at work or at leisure or otherwise; and, those who come down with a disease like Lou Gehrigs or MS or something, who are no longer able to perform some physical tasks.
6. Non-heterosexuals: Homosexuals, transgenders, etc. frequently struggle with mental illness, addiction or borderline personality and psychopathy. Forcing the rest of society to accommodate them does not address the problems they frequently face.
All of these people, at times, tend to be a drain on a society. Such people generally break the ideals of egalitarianism as well, because most probably about 80% of the society do not fall into that set of conditions and struggle with the probably about 20% who do.
Then, you throw in the race and culture mixing through mass immigration, problems of language adoption, acculturation and assimilation and you have yet another set of problems expressly created by the neoliberals. Much of a population can tolerate some of this. However, some significant percentage of the population cannot--very often including my enumerated list above--and it leads to further social problems. Increase it to a biblical mass of Babel where people cannot speak to each other, because they don't share a common language and you end up with very serious discord.
That's why I no longer have an deep faith in egalitarianism or in universalism, of which globalism is just one variant.
"We have put together the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics."
-- Joe Biden