this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
120 points (96.2% liked)

Ask Lemmy

30035 readers
1592 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

What is your line in the sand?

Edit: thank you all for your responses. I think it's important as an American we take your view points seriously. I think of a North Korean living inside of North Korea. They don't really know how bad it is because that is all hidden from them and they've never had anything else. As things get worse for Americans it's important to have your voices because we will become more and more isolated.

Even the guy who said, "lol." Some people need that sort of sobering reaction.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] FelixCress@lemmy.world 121 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

No. And I haven't for a while now. Looking at your electoral system (electoral college, gerrymandering etc.), it probably never was but it was never as obvious as it is now.

[–] tiredofsametab@fedia.io 36 points 11 hours ago

I grew up in the US and have lived outside it for 10 years now. I would agree with this. Voting and representation have never been total and is definitely less available for many groups. Further things are being stripped away.

[–] Gradually_Adjusting@lemmy.world 18 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Yeah. My wake-up call was quite early in life, when SCOTUS handed the election to GWB. If I was born a generation earlier I'd have called it with Watergate. If I was an ancestor currently dead, I would have called it around the time an assassin put the presidency in the hands of the opposite party, and a drunk asshole subsequently decided reconstruction efforts should fail. Or possibly just prior, when we somehow decided not to hang every man Jack of the confederacy for treason.

Edit: an earlier still version of me would have overseen the death of a culture brought on by poxy mad white religious extremists, and laughed ruefully to hear that centuries later the utter bastardy continues unchanged.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] DasFaultier@sh.itjust.works 88 points 11 hours ago

See, as a German, when I see a country go down the same route as the Weimar Republic after handing over the power to the Nazi party, I think it's just very obvious. Hitler took some two months to completely destroy democracy, and the US are juuust in the middle of that. History doesn't repeat, but sometimes it rhymes, and the similarities are just remarkable.

So yeah, I guess that would be a big fat trench in the sand.

[–] JacksonLamb@lemmy.world 53 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)

still consider

It has only two political parties, and a weird system where all votes are not equal and the actual vote majority doesn't always win.

It has frequently had multiple people from the same families running for office, and only wealthy people have a shot. Corporations get to lobby for laws in their favour.

It also spies on its own citizens, holds people indefinitely without trial, has a huge prison population, a militarized police with a high homicide rate, and is the only western nation with the death penalty.

Trump and Musk are laying bare how fragile the veneer of "democracy" really is in that country.

[–] Brownandoffended@lemm.ee 41 points 10 hours ago

A struggling democracy, in the beginning of an Orban/Hungary-like overtake of the country.

Its possible to revert, but you seem to have atleast a 1/3 of the country that would walk down a straight up facist line willingly and happily do so.

You need to fix your shit america.

[–] zonnewin@feddit.nl 37 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I consider it an autocratic regime with strong fascist characteristics.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 36 points 10 hours ago

Line in the sand? Going after political opponents. Censoring information. Dismantling media. Abandoning rule of law. Business and government mixing too much.

USA is speed running these.

[–] TeaWalker@lemm.ee 22 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Am Dutch. I have considered the US an incomplete democracy since I learned about voting in school. It’s not one person one vote, which to me is crucial for a democracy. The US right now is still a nation of laws, but democracy is sharply in decline. The voter-roll issues and Gerrymandering come to mind immediately. Not to mention the fact that guaranteed access to polls has been pulled by the courts. Which is insane to me.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 7 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Also president having so much power was clearly never democratic to begin with as we can see it all play out now.

[–] RupeThereItIs@lemmy.world 9 points 6 hours ago

The power of the president did not start out like this. Congress kept giving their power to the executive for political reasons.

It happened over centuries.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] tauren@lemm.ee 22 points 4 hours ago

The US had always been a questionable democracy with the hyperfixation on the president and just two parties setting the agenda, but I'd argue that it's still a democracy, though it is a rapidly deteriorating one.

[–] char_stats@lemm.ee 20 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

I consider it a faux democracy. It still has the semblance of one, with people voting, believing they matter and that they have actual free speech, but the masses are being, increasingly less subtly, controlled by media corporations and rendered incapable of critical, independent thinking by an ever decreasing quality of education.

Don't be fooled though! This isn't happening in the US alone. It is widespread all over the globe. The US is simply doing it in a smarter, more cunning way, while leading the wealthy 1% in other countries by example.

[–] UnfortunateShort@lemmy.world 18 points 3 hours ago
[–] coaxil@lemm.ee 18 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Not at all, you are just an autocracy now but don't fully realise it, and as the other commentator had said, not even really a good democracy in the loosest of terms before this entire mess going on ATM!

[–] XTL@sopuli.xyz 17 points 6 hours ago (5 children)

Absolutely not. A two party system was barely nominally a form of democracy. Current one quacks like a dictatorship and walks like a dictatorship. They might hold a fake election one day like many of those do, but still no.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] nonentity@sh.itjust.works 17 points 4 hours ago

Anyone who is eligible to vote, and chooses not to, implicitly throws their support behind whoever wins.

On 2024-11-05, ⅔ of US citizens who were eligible to vote told the rest of the world they don’t want to be taken seriously for at least 2 years.

[–] Greg@lemmy.ca 12 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

No but this isn't recent. My line in the sand was Russian interference in the 2016 US election that came to light in 2018.

collapsed inline media

*United States Democracy Index

[–] tortina_original@lemmy.world 12 points 7 hours ago

It was never a democracy.

[–] sem@lemmy.ml 12 points 10 hours ago

The answer depends of the reference point. I was born in Russia (I'm living abroad from 2022) and compared to the putin's dictatorship US is a democracy. You guys still have a freedom of speech, not fake opposition to Trump and independent courts. From the other side, most of the countries are democracies if compared to Russia..

[–] Mvlad88@lemmy.world 12 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

How can you be a democracy if you have only two political parties?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Propheticus@lemmy.zip 11 points 10 hours ago

Yes, but a bad example of one very quickly heading towards autocracy. Some characteristics like screwing up your own economy and blaming 'the foreigners' rings a distant bell.

[–] Freewheel@lemmynsfw.com 11 points 6 hours ago

First off, I'm an American. Born a stone's throw from the location of one of the critical events in the history of the American revolution.

To answer the question, no. Leaving aside the whole Republic versus democracy argument, my point of realization was when one party seized upon a minor technical issue and disenfranchised countless voters via lawsuit, sufficient to allow the race to be called in their favor.

I'm sure there are many readers who believe I'm talking about 2016. For those readers, your keyword search is "hanging Chad".

[–] Intergalactic@lemmy.world 11 points 8 hours ago (6 children)

Absolutely not. A country where two parties are the only two viable electoral options, is absolutely not a democracy. Doesn’t mean I’ll stop my membership for the PSL.

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] sinnsykfinbart@lemmy.world 9 points 8 hours ago

I really never did, not a well functioning at least. They've practiced voter repression for decades, and then they had fun testing how low they could go after 9/11, doing a lot of unlawful shit, going after citizens who spoke out against their policies and wars.

[–] nichtburningturtle@feddit.org 9 points 5 hours ago

I consider it a lesser democracy / something that barely qualifies for a few years now.

[–] Meron35@lemmy.world 9 points 9 hours ago

Not for a long time. The Economist Democracy Index demoted the US to a "flawed democracy" since 2016, where it has been ever since.

Democracy index, 2024 - https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/democracy-index-eiu

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 9 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Unfortunately, it's still a democracy. The electorate wanted what's now going on. That could rapidly change at this point, but for now not yet.

[–] MoonManKipper@lemmy.world 5 points 10 hours ago (4 children)

Democracy is a sliding scale and the US is still on it. Could the people choose something different without resorting to violent revolution and protest? Yes

load more comments (4 replies)

Canadian here.

Before Trump? Ehhh, not really. I've always viewed the US as a place where you vote for which oligarch-backed monarch you'd want to put in absolute power for 4 years. Every 4/8 years the new incoming overlord just rips up whatever the previous one did and nothing of substance is actually achieved.

After Trump 2.0? No. There isn't a snowball's chance in hell that Trump is going to surrender all that power he and the GOP have accumulated. And why would he? He doesn't have to. He literally controls every branch of government that he can and ignores those that he doesn't. If the US ever has another election it will purely be for show, like China's elections. The mask is now fully off and the charade of US democracy is over as those who actually wield the power now do so openly on their sleeves.

[–] sasquash@sopuli.xyz 8 points 10 hours ago

Maybe a flawed democracy at best and it's getting worse every day. At least on federal level, I don't much about states politics. Not really an expert but democracy can't really work that well if you are stuck in a two party system. Having more choice would sure help against populists and autocrats.

[–] sirico@feddit.uk 8 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

The next election will tell, my tin hat is on Puting the US into a situation where an election can't be held so they can have a third term.

[–] Kissaki@feddit.org 5 points 8 hours ago

I'm not sure even with a successful election and it going to the democrats we'll be able to tell. At least from today's view. It will largely depend on how institutions and the justice/court system can hold out against the current administration right now and during this phase.

I feel like they may have already created damage that won't be cleared just from one election or one election period's fixups.

At the same time, hopefully, this is the wake-up call for opposition and a transformation one way or another. It's plainly obvious what is happening now, and I am hoping opposition will become more apparent and prevalent because of it. Not just in citizens, but institutions too.

[–] gezero@lemmy.bowyerhub.uk 7 points 11 hours ago

I do. On my imaginary scale around 4 out of 10. So far the mess looks to me like it was voted in.

[–] Monkyhands@feddit.dk 7 points 11 hours ago

No. I agree with the comment about the electoral system and gerrymandering as fundamental issues. And the current administration does not respect the judiciary branch, that much is clear, and their actions are completely undermining the supposed divisions of power, without which there is no democracy.

[–] uhmbah@lemmy.ca 7 points 7 hours ago
[–] cronenthal@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 11 hours ago

No, unfortunately.

[–] Zoldyck@lemmy.world 6 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

No. I also don't consider the United States to be a democracy.

[–] rpl6475@lemmy.ml 6 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Elective dictatorship, there is no accountability. Is there even a mechanism for the public to recall the president? Or is that it for the next 4 years?

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Kidplayer_666@lemm.ee 6 points 10 hours ago

Yes. But becoming more flawed by the day

[–] javacafe01@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

I am inside and I want to get out

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] jabathekek@sopuli.xyz 5 points 10 hours ago

Never has been.

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRT

[–] echo@lemmings.world 5 points 10 hours ago
[–] rickdg@lemmy.world 5 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Is demos how you say money in Greek?

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›