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.

  • coaxil@lemm.ee
    191·
    9 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!

  • FaceDeer@fedia.io
    112·
    8 hours ago

    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.worldEnglish
      61·
      8 hours ago

      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

      • Kissaki@feddit.orgEnglish
        2·
        6 hours ago

        I’m a bit skeptical about this argument because autocratic states love to hold practically fake and forced elections with 90 or 99 % approval and use that as justification.

        • thebestaquaman@lemmy.world
          3·
          5 hours ago

          I think the possibly final test for American democracy will be the midterm elections in two years. By then, I think that either trump will have broken the system enough to get a sham election, or we’ll see real, verifiable push-back against him. International organisations that monitor elections will probably take part in shaping my opinion on whether the election is fair or not. I think it’s worth remembering that whenever countries hold “fake and forced elections” there are plenty of international observers that point out the major rigging going on.

      • LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works
        21·
        6 hours ago

        Unfortunately yes. People wanted this. They still want this. But people were also cheering for like, Mao even after he put millions of his own citizens into the ground, so who knows

  • TXL@sopuli.xyz
    142·
    4 hours ago

    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.

    • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
      76·
      3 hours ago

      Firstly, the USA is obviously not a “dictatorship”. Come on, be serious. Words mean things.

      Second, America’s two-party system also has internal factions and primaries, many of them completely open (you don’t even need to declare allegiance to the party). The primaries are effectively the first round in a two-round electoral system (of which there are plenty in the world). The whole point is to create a binary choice in the final round. For some reason this always gets missed by otherwise informed observers. “There are only two parties” is just not a valid argument in this debate.

      Of course, none of these facts will be popular here, since the real point of this thread is to allow participants to performatively dump on the shared hate-object. Classic social media, I get it.

      • TrippaSnippa@lemm.ee
        71·
        2 hours ago

        Firstly, the USA is obviously not a “dictatorship”.

        You sure about that? Have you read the news lately?

        • Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world
          15·
          2 hours ago

          Yeah I have and saying that kinda just makes you seem uninformed.

          Like the people who call the US “a 3rd world country in a Gucci belt”. It just makes it super obvious that you don’t understand how high quality of a life the average person has in the US. Especially globally.

          • thermal_shock@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            1 minute ago

            I’m not going to list all the red flags, but there is a reason people feel like this. A few major ones, president talking about taking over other countries out of the blue, attacking our allies to the point where Americans are suffering much more than necessary, his sidekick doing Nazi salutes on stage, literal commercials for his $idekick on the white house lawn.

            It’s pretty clear there is no rule of law for blatant corruption and no accountability. Replace USA/Trump with Russia/Putin or NK/Un, guess what, same shit, different smell. Either follow orders or get shipped out is the example they’re trying to set, as well as making free speech illegal.

            We’re FAR from a functioning democracy.

  • sinnsykfinbart@lemmy.world
    9·
    6 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.

  • Intergalactic@lemmy.world
    132·
    6 hours ago

    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.