• Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Conversely, as democracy is perverted by moneyed interests, government will more and more resemble the will of the short sighted shareholders obsessed with the next quarterly gains. Leading to a useful idiot government selling the country to corporations through regulatory capture and privatization.

    That’s what happened in the real world. Not the will of the broader populace, but the will of the few people who pay the politicians in charge of both parties.

    • BreadOven@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      What about the Northern peoples? Sadly I think they may be voting for the wannabe Trump. I really hope not.

      • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        6 days ago

        What a dumb thing to say. Australia has the same things said about it, yet we aspire to be closer to the NZ system. Neither of us is anywhere close to the disaster of US politics. It would take fundamental changes to our voting laws to “catch up” to them.

  • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
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    6 days ago

    implying that an election to choose a single representative for 300 million people with a 2-horse race is particularly democratic

    • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Yep, America has only ever had the least democratic system that can possibly exist before it’s essentially classified as a dictatorship… and Americans are like “peak freedom”. Lol. No wonder it’s a failed fucking state.

  • TotallynotJessica@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Honestly, Trump isn’t that much dumber than most presidents. He actually understood how to break the system, mostly because he wasn’t clouded by love for it. I wouldn’t call him a mastermind, but he has better political instincts than anyone. He’s an idiot, but he’s fully aware what he’s doing.

  • psmgx@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Mencken had a lot of good one liners

    Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

    • BluesF@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      If the purpose of a system is what it does, then it seems the purpose of democracy is the self flagellation of the masses.

  • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    E.A.Poe had similar concerns. He called the then hypothetical president “King Mob”. On the other hand, he was a fan of Andrew Jackson.

      • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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        6 days ago

        It states that in a perfect democracy, the masses would elect morons because they themselves are morons.

          • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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            6 days ago

            It implies that the people are too dumb to govern themselves; that as they get get closer to a perfect democracy, the choose dumber leaders.

              • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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                6 days ago

                Apparently it’s too subtle for anyone who didn’t interpret it as antidemocratic.

                The joke is how unfortunately prophetic it is.

                Do you think the US is meaningfully democratic? When’s the last time any leader did something that favored the people over capital?

                • cannedtuna@lemmy.world
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                  6 days ago

                  I feel like the quote has gone over your head just a tad. The joke/quote is saying as time progresses people will continue to vote against their own best interest and eventually elect someone as moronic as the common people. And well here we are. It’s been a long time in coming yes, we’ve gone through a number of presidents who progressively did less and less in the interests of the people till we got here and elected the absolute worst person with only self interest at heart.

                • cannedtuna@lemmy.world
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                  6 days ago

                  Sadly it wasn’t exactly wholly undemocratic. It wasn’t even what you could call close. There were attempts voter suppression and intimidation, but in the end voter apathy won out. I don’t think there’s anything dumber than choosing not to vote in such an important election, but that choice in itself was a vote.

              • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
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                6 days ago

                No not at all, hence why I’m not antidemocratic. Democracy didn’t give us Trump, the dictatorship of capital did.

            • Fontasia@feddit.nl
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              6 days ago

              It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Perfect representation would actually by sortition (selection of public office by jury duty type random selection), but that scares people because “I don’t want just anybody to be in power” but that doesn’t stop people who should from getting it

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

        • Fontasia@feddit.nl
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          6 days ago

          Yes.

          “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” - George Carlin