When I was growing up, they told us the US was the greatest country in the world. Now that I'm older, I realize it's one of the worst in the Western world in nearly every statistic.
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2024
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Maybe it's time you guys rewrote your constitution into something more modern instead of treating the old one as a holy scripture handed down from Olympus.
But I doubt that'll ever happen.
Trump is about to rewrite our Constitution, just not the way it should be written.
If he does, at least it'll show that it can be rewritten.
I'd believe it when I see it
To be fair we were lied to growing up. Be nice to others and santa.
A lot of people are being shown that a lot of stuff that kept their country going was decorum, shame and tradition, not rule of law.
Chink in that armor was allow people without education, attention, and just plain common sense to vote
Regulatory capture and citizens united both exist to undo those checks and balances. No system is immune to corruption.
Interestingly the US system was always more vulnerable to corruption, and everyone knew it. Our executive branch is far too powerful. That’s why when the US has engaged in nation building they never install governments like ours. Germany, Japan, Iraq, etc. the pentagon always insists on a parliamentary system, because they’re better in every way (less prone to grid lock, less prone to tyranny of the minority, weaker executive, etc.).
America was built on the ideas of freedom and equality by slave owners who didn't think women should be allowed to vote.
But they got it started and we changed some things. We just didn't change enough, or perhaps changed the wrong things.
Don’t forget they were also terrified of democracy. The Senate is one of the most comically anti-democratic institutions ever concocted. Wyoming has as much power as California. I mean it beggars belief that anyone but a complete imbecile could agree to something like that.
The founding fathers were correct. A pure democracy is also known as mob rule. Anytime you can get 51% to agree with you, you can do whatever you like.
If 51% vote to take the homes of black people, that's decided and done.
Which is why modern democracies are all some form of representative democracy. Which in theory is supposed to act as a sort of check and balance on the system.
It's not democratic from a person level, but it is more democratic from a state level. At the time they hadn't quite figured out if they wanted to be a country or a collection of states that sometimes work together.
The first two political parties were formed around that very debate.
I mean, they did give an earnest try at preventing a king from happening, and it did work for a couple hundred years.