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There Is No “Both Sides” to Donald Trump’s Threat to Democracy
(www.vanityfair.com)
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this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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politics
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I get where you're coming from but wanting an option other than corporate politicians is very different from willingly electing your last president as a childish incompetent dictator.
It's a bit too reductive to turn the statement "American democracy has been dead a long time" to "we want more candidate options".
The real problem isn't some rhetorical or presentation problem, it's that we have hard data that public opinion has actually no influence on laws. Only people within the oligarchy (e.g those with massive amounts of capital) influence the law. That's not democracy, even if you present it as such by having people tick a box every 2/4 years.
To have a real democracy you need voting in ways that actually impacts people's day to day lives. By far the most influential version of this would be democracy in the workplace, but we don't have that, we have authoritarian dictatorships in the workplace. It's still legal to rent people with capital, it's legal to own forms of private, non-personal property (e.g factories), and as long as we have rules like these, organizations will be led by authoritarian capital, and not by grassroots democracy.
Voting for Trump is a statement by the many that that since democracy isn't working, we might as well drop the pretense and go full autocratic. We've seen the death of democracy several times because greed always reigns.
And that statement is stupid as fucking shit.
It may well be, but people are looking for authenticity and economic security. People don't want politicians backtracking and giving empty promises. There's a reason people from the Rust Belt support Trump and perceives him who "says it like it is."
The Roman Republic fell because the elites pretended they care for the people, and the people want someone who would do things for them and "says it like it is." Same thing happened leading to the rise of Hitler.
I'm oversimplifying the reasons for the decline of Roman Republic and rise of Hitler, but the common denominator to democratic decline is growing wealth inequality and oligarch corruption. Sure, even before Trump's election and Brexit, many analysts have warned of widening gap between the rich and the poor, and predicted the consequences if these aren't addressed.
Another reason Hitler rose to power was even though the Nazi party only maintained something like ~30% of the government, the other factions of the government couldn't come together and unite against a common enemy, so it was easier for Hitler to cull influence and support. The US doesn't have as many parties as they did back in the 1930's, but within the Democratic party the centrists, moderates, progressives, etc ALL need to fall* behind Biden, as well as most independent voters, otherwise it could very well be game over for democracy in the US.
The Germans thought the same when they elected Nazi party officials in the early 30s. The problem is voting for trump is not a protest; it’s ushering in a bona fide fascist dictatorship.
If you want to make a statement, vote for RFK or something, not someone openly calling for executions, genocide, and the end of democracy. That’s not a statement, that’s voting to ensure you never get to vote again.
Trump is fully dry humping the greed