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We coulda had Bernie...
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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The American supreme courts massive and 180 turn from the previous decades of law is the textbook definition of tyranny. America used to have a grand tradition of what to do with tyrants.
America always had big propaganda against other people's tyrants, never against their own.
And Truman would have something to say about all of the Russian-bought members of Congress. History is cyclical, and we’re approaching another authoritarian period for global powers.
I'm glad I'm not the only one seeing this happen all over the world. All over the world we have feckless neoliberal parties failing to represent their people and getting replaced with populist right-wingers.
Showing your bias here, because really this is only happening in Europe and the Anglosphere.
Not just Europe and the anglosphere. It's also happening in Latin America (ecuador), and that's basically all the regions where democracy used to be prevalent.
The middle east is still as dictatorial as it always was. Asia is still as dictatorial as it always has. Africa is still as dictatorial as it always has. I know all of these regions are huge and diverse, and that there are democracies. But none of them I can think of has gained democracy.
So the places that had democracy are turning less democratic, and the places that had little democracy still have little democracy. I'd say that's an "All over the world" thing.
At least there's Lula in Brazil. And I'm sure someone could come and tell me something bad about him, but not being Bolsonaro is a huge improvement, and I've heard other good things. In fact I believe the majority of Latin America is under leaders to the left of the US Democrats. And no I'm not counting non democracies like Venezuela or Cuba.
Meanwhile Brazil went back to their last progressive president after Bolsonaro's failure, and Bolivia has foiled two attempted coups by reactionary forces. Venezuela and Cuba also remain strong, with the latter being possibly the most democratic country on this planet.
In Africa, the most notable "democracies" that have been overthrown in recent memory were all client states of western countries whose previous governments cannot in good faith be said to have been representative of the people.
The Middle East is pretty bad, what with Israel going full fash in the past year. It's not like they haven't been edging for decades, though.
But in Asia, the only country that might be more democratic than Cuba is China, and they're as strong as they've ever been. Since that's 1/5th of the population of this planet living under one of its premier democratic governments, I'd say the prognosis for global democracy is fine.
So the most Democratic countries on this planet according to you are cuba and china. Both of them are 1-party states, and China is straight up a surveillance state. Ok lol.
Does china pay you or are you spreading their bullshit propaganda for free?
Cuba's democracy is actually a 0-party state. Candidates stand on their own for election, and most politics are run through local orgs and workplaces. They recently concluded one of the most democratic exercises in the history of the Western Hemisphere, when through a series of local referendums they amended their constitution. No lobbyists, no special interests, no controlled media - an almost totally pure example of a government run by citizens, for citizens.
As for China, the Chinese people have something like 90%+ satisfaction with their central government, as measured by independent observers. The reason for this is their commitment to Full Process Democracy, which means that your democratic participation in the system doesn't end with your vote for a representative - low and mid level officials are required to constantly be polling their constituencies, and they can be dismissed (either by a recall election or by higher ups) if they don't act in accordance with the desires of the people they're supposed to represent.
Furthermore, China's ruling party may be one party on paper, but it is "one party" that is made up of over one hundred million members. It has internal factions that range from neoliberal to anarcho-communist, and it is very intentionally embedded into every single Chinese institution. Most of the service that the CPC provides to the people is provided at a local or even individual level - for example, a Chinese worker's equivalent to a union leader is a coworker who's with the party, where if you have problems with your boss you can get it resolved through them.
I guess not having freedom of press and a very censored internet is an easy way to have the population like the government. You could feed people worms if you don't let them know there's other food out there, they'll like you if you tell them out there not even worms exist.
The people of Hong Kong absolutely LOVED having their democracy suppressed by china's (#1 best democracy of the world!!!).
I guess nobody even asked the Uyghurs how they feel about their government. Or they're <10% of Chinese population so who cares, they don't need democracy.
Do you think that there isn't independent press in China? You're not allowed to spread baseless conspiracy theories, but you can express dissatisfaction with the government or its policies. This 'aint the Cultural Revolution.
Hong Kong's system is still entirely intact under the one country two systems principal. China has shown more restraint in reintegrating it into the national system than pretty much any other country that has undergone something similar, like when East Germany was plundered and deindustrialized by West Germany.
The Harvard study was a study of all Chinese people, not sure why you think that Uyghurs would be excluded. They stopped collecting that data because, frankly, they didn't like the results they were getting, which is that China's government is successful and that the people living under it aren't trampled and downtrodden and miserable. Meanwhile in the "free" west, our population dutifully changes its opinion on foreign countries when it's commanded to by the ruling class.
There is no freedom of press because there isn't even freedom of speech. You can't mention tiananmen square. You can't show imagery of Winnie the Pooh (because it was used to depict the supreme leader of china in a non-positive way), and you can't show support for taiwanese independence. Neither of those are baseless conspiracy theories.
The topic of east-germany deindustrialization I've been recently aware of it, so I might be wrong about some of it. As I understand it, first, east Germany's infrastructure was stolen by the soviets (railways dismantled and sent to the USSR). Later, when Germany was unified, east Germans wanted to exit communism so hard (and they voted like so) that east German companies didn't have time to adapt to their new market. East German companies benefitted from protectionism and weren't competitive when markets opened up and they were competing with more efficient west German companies.
How is that fault of west Germany? They were crippled by the USSR, didn't improve due to the USSR's policies, and then they voted for a fast reunification. The deindustrialization of east Germany looks to me more like it was done by the USSR and east Germany, not west Germany.
The US is effectively a one-party system as well, because the rest of the world gets fucked over either way you guys vote.
I'm not a US citizen and I don't remember mentioning it in this thread.
That's not what one-party system means. The US is in principle a many-party system, but because of how their system works it means that voting anything that isn't one of the 2 top parties means throwing away your vote. Making it a functionally 2-party system, which is way more democratic than a 1-party system.
If you think a two party system is "way more" democratic than a one party system, there's nothing else worth discussing with you.
1-party = voters have no choice, therefore that one party can do whatever they want. 2-party = there is some choice. There's an "in power" party and one opposition. The opposition acts as a limit of what the "in power" party can do, because if people are unhappy, they'll vote for the opposition.
Sure, you can't choose what kind of opposition they want, which most of the times leads to a "least bad" voting. But you still have a way to influence government.
Having some choice >>>> having no choice.
I never 2-party is enough democracy, but it is still way more than 1-party. It's not just a 2x increase. "Democracy" doesn't scale linearly with the amount of parties.
Because in a lot of other places, or was already the case.
I’m not defending America’s actions. I’m stating that many members of US Congress are funded by Russian oligarchs.
The influence was apparent when Republicans withheld aid from Ukraine until they were forced to choose between funding Ukraine along with Israel, or leaving Israel without weapons.
Does that sound like a government body that is representing its constituents?
How about you tell that to The Speaker Of The House?
https://www.newsweek.com/who-konstantin-nikolaev-money-mike-johnson-1870600
Bother someone else with your agenda.
OK, but sending weapons to either of these places is bad, both for the people whose wealth is being wasted to blow up people on the other side of the world, mostly civilians (almost entirely civilians in Israel's case) and the people getting blown up
Supplying Ukraine with the weapons needed to defend themselves against a Russian invasion is bad?!?
The US is not supplying Ukraine with weapons because they have any interest in the well-being of the people in Ukraine. They are supplying the weapons to extend a war as long as possible to weaken Russia, at the expense of hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded Ukrainians and millions displaced.
This is infinitely worse for the people living there than if Russia won a quick victory or if we'd taken literally any off-ramp in the last decade.
Fucking what?
It doesn't matter what the US supplies Ukraine. It's Ukraines fight. It's up to Ukraine to decide to forfeit the fight or to keep fighting.
By your logic we (humanity) should just let any country invade any other country and take over it's people just because "it's easier to give in than fight." Giving in would be for the benefit of the people, right? That's what you're saying? Fuck right off.
Russia should not have invaded Ukraine in the first place.
The US and its allies have sabotaged peace talks between Ukraine and Russia on multiple occasions. European politicians have been talking about putting EU troops on Ukrainian soil in support roles so that more Ukrainian men can charge directly into Russian artillery fire for the past few months. In the months leading up to the invasion, the western media apparatus was braying for Russian blood with a fervor that I hadn't seen since the runup to the Iraq War - and for ten years now the US has been directly backing anti-Russian elements inside Ukraine, regardless of the fact that many of those elements were literally fascists, leading directly to the Maidan coup and the ethnic schism in Ukrainian society that resulted in the civil war.
It's a proxy war, always has been.
I'm not arguing that it hasn't been a proxy war. Of course, NATO doesn't want a global superpower to take over another country. It sets a precedence. Just like they(we) wouldn't want China to freely take over Taiwan.
Sabatoged peace talks? All the peace talks included Russia taking over at least some of Ukraine's land. At which point, they slowly move their borders, encapsulating Ukraine piece by piece, year by year. Submitting to "Peace Talks" in which Russia is able to take some kind of Ukrainian land is submission to Russia.
Ukraine didn't invade Russia. Russia should have simply never invaded Ukraine. Ukraine can fight this with whatever they can get from around the world.
Peace offer:
I receive: your land
You receive: I stop trying to kill you (for now)
I can't believe the only reason they're not accepting this deal so graciously offered by Russia is the US stopping them
You ignored the entirety of my point, which is that Ukraine has signaled that they want the conflict to end, but their masters in Washington and the EU are pressing them forward regardless. Donbas has been functionally independent from Ukraine for almost ten years now, and only two of those with Russian troops supporting it. It's not Ukrainian territory anymore in any way that matters.
Ukraine wants the conflict to end with its borders intact and the aggressors out of its territory. It has stated this multiple times, just like any other established country would. It shouldn't have to give up Donbas just for Russia to cease fire for X years and then creep on forward.
If Ukraine truly wanted the conflict to end and just wanted to be bent over by Russia they would send up the white flag. Luckily they won't; thankfully they're fighting; hopefully they continue to push back. Just giving Russia free reign over invaded land sets a bad precedence.
It was laughably corrupt before the war, and since it's literally suspended elections. It's a war between Russia and Ukraine's ruling classes, the people only pay the price.
Sure, but Russia's government doesn't pretend to represent you or me. The US government does. We could have also avoided this by not doing a coup in Ukraine and putting a hostile government right on Russia's border.
The US had nothing to do with Zelenski getting into power in Ukraine. That is a lie from the Kremlin. Thanks for taking the mask off Russian Shill
cmon do you really believe that the US had nothing to do with the 2014 color revolution or the government that formed after? I mean you can just google news articles from the time, even western news sources were reporting on how the US and EU were involved in the creation and makeup of the new government.
This was before Zelenski won on a platform of peace, and then failed to get the right-wing militias under control.
Are we really gonna sit here and act like Russia doesn't do the same governmental meddling in other countries? This is really just global politics 101, and it wasn't worth invading a country over.
Ukraine didn't invade Russia. Some countries have hostile borders, this isn't uncommon. Invasions to take over the government isn't the solution, but Russia has made the bed that they're gonna lay in. Allowing Russia to take Ukraine sets a dangerous precedence.
If you haven't yet, I recommend watching Traumazone. All 7 hours of it offers a beautiful insight in USSR 1980's to 1999.
Yes, USA supported shitty stuff. But the system rotted itself out first with corruption and production mismatching demand while fighting pointless war in Afghanistan, which created the power vacuum and collapse.
The west sure did buy a FUCKTON of oil from the Soviet Union for people who were apparently trying to bankrupt them since 1917
Oh, but the West only gave the money in order to bankrupt the Soviets, you see
America as a nation was created by a subset of landed gentry who didn't like paying taxes. They wanted to make Washington king. The founding fathers were basically the Megamind meme where Tighten (yes, it's spelled Tighten, not "Titan") says to the Mayor of the city: "More like under new management."
The founders were not a monolith and had mega-disagreements about how to proceed from day 1.
"okay, we're not gonna have political parties, right guys?"
Immediately form federalist and anti-federalist factions
Sure, and they still managed to pass the alien and sedition acts. Saying they weren't a monolith is a way of dismissing the mountain of evidence that suggests that, for most of them, participation in the democratic process of an inchoate American republic was intended only for a small segment of the population - literate (i.e. wealthy) white men. I'd suggest A People's History of the United States if you want a better perspective on that.
Yes, his name was Andrew Jackson, and he told the Supreme Court to go fuck itself, and we survived him too. This stuff changes and evolves.
Which is the same playbook as democratically elected leaders of foreign nations. Bombs, drones and CIA-soonsored assassinations