It takes Russia pointing this out to make us lose trust in the U.S.? I think the U.S. has done this all on their own. Snowden was just the latest whistleblower showing the world they can't be trusted. There were others before him, but it got swept under the rug.
We all know the U.S. election system is flawed to a point of being broken and thus democracy as we like to believe it's supposed to work doesn't even exist. But everyone just accepts that's the way it is and carries on with life because "at least it's not North Korea." If you hadn't already lost faith in the U.S. election system years ago, then you've got your head in the sand.
It might be a hard pill to swallow, but I think if Russia's plan is to make the U.S. wake up and smell the coffee, they're actually doing the U.S. people a huge favour.
"The Puzzle Palace" was written in 1982. It's by an insider, James Bamford, and about his discovering by happenstance that people at the NSA listening post he was stationed at were listening in on american conversations illegally.
He also discovered that the Carter administration's justice department had opened a criminal investigation on the NSA, and through FOIA managed to get a copy of the file. It was pretty damning stuff.
That was the point I was trying to make with "unignorable public fact" - "we" don't "all" "know" that, for various values of those words. Would you expect TV anchors to say things like "Well, I'm standing outside this polling place, but I'm not really sure what the point is because elections are broken"? Millions of people get involved in fighting elections like they mean it.
Consensus about this kind of thing is a real problem, because the landscape is polluted with lies and delusions.
Edit: I specifically said "lose faith in the US election", not "lose faith in the US [generally]"; it's one thing if the bad policy is the result of legitimate elections, it's quite another if either the vote is widely rigged (hacking voting machines), subject to intimidation. People ending up believing it's rigged when it actually wasn't is just as bad, it's the kind of thing that leads to political violence.
Oh, I don't mean it's rigged or hacked or subject to intimidation. I feel like it's legitimately hamstrung/broken.
Equally I haven't lost faith in the U.S. - there are millions of amazing Americans. I've just lost faith in the U.S.'s a). ability to elect the person they really want in charge because the voting system is broken and b). the person they _do_ elect doesn't have any meaningful power anyway because the senate is purposely designed to restrict any meaningful power.
The US political climate is most certainly not in a great place, but I wouldn't blame our system of checks and balances. In fact, I'd say that it's working as intended. It would be a horrible scenario if a president could easily override the will of Congress or the Supreme Court.
Why do people insist on calling the US a democracy ?
It is a Constitutional Republic with the only democratic process being the representatives you elect .... represent you ... sometimes... if they feel like it.... unless they have been bribe^H^H^H^H lobbied to do otherwise.
It is a democracy. A Constitutional Republic is just one way of implementing a democracy, similar to how a constitutional monarchy is just one way of implementing a monarchy. Mob rule everyone votes on everything and even a majority by one decides everything is another (poor) way of implementing democracy.
Sorry... your logic is flawed at least semantically. If a "constitutional monarchy is just one way of implementing a monarchy," then presumably a "Constitutional Republic is just one way of implementing a" republic.
The only nexus between republic and democracy in this case would be the Constitutional Republican Guarantee clause. Since that has essentially never been adjudicated we can't know for certain whether - at least in Constitutional terms - a Republic does convey democratic rights.
A republic is a land where political authority isn't formally heritable personal property (e.g., basically a not-monarchy), a republic can also (like the US) be a representative democracy. It can also be an authoritarian dictatorship. It can also be a direct democracy.
> A republic bound by a constitution cannot be a democracy of any sort.
You clearly are using "democracy" in a very peculiar sense. If you narrowly define "democracy" as "lawless mob rule", then your statement is true, but that's not what the word democracy is generally used to mean when discussing political systems.
Even accepting your personal definition of "democracy" to mean "pure majority rule", constitutions typically have provisions for modifications by majority vote. So a being "bound by a constitution" does not eliminate majority rule.
That definition is anything but personal and carries the history of the democratic system prevalent at the time the term was coined. Just because you decide to use the same term for everything now doesn't mean that the original definition is "personal".
Democracy never meant "mob rule". Even in Athenian democracy, few things were decided by actual majority rule. Never in history has there been a democracy where pure majority rule was the typical case.
So yes, it is a personal definition. Scholars don't use this definition. Pundits don't use this definition. The common man doesn't use this definition. It's a BS definition, and if it weren't, it would be pointless and redundant because "majority rule" captures this already.
That's where you're wrong. A democracy is a state where people have (or nominally should have) equal power to affect society's collective decisions. Not all implementations of "majority rule" meet this criterion.
Political decisions affect everyone, thus everyone should have an equal share in determining which ones we take - at least a priori.
We can cede some power if we decide that a certain class of questions are none of our business (for instance, delegate some decisions to a local level, or give Sharia courts jurisdiction over their adherents to take an uglier example). Or declare that some questions are non-political in nature, and should be decided by some sort of experts. But the decision about what is our own business must always be our own business.
Another way of saying the same is that all legitimate government comes from the people - as opposed to e.g. the divine right of kings, or a "natural" aristocracy.
How can you have that without at least a one line constitution that says, more or less, "The majority rules"? You beg the question, sir.
You very narrow definition of "democracy", majority rule without a constitution, isn't possible. Thus your definition is useless and therefor meaningless.
You don't get to narrowly define democracy to mean "mob rule" and expect people to use your meaningless definition. This is not the original nor the currently accepted definition and pretending that everyone should use your personal definition will not make it true.
It doesn't matter what the founders wanted, they're dead and buried. Their whims and dreams codified in this Constitution that everyone lives and dies by.
What matters is what the people want now and for the future of their United States... are you going to live forever more adhering to the rules of dead people? Seems er... pointless.
Doesn't that depend what the representatives then do? Also, what about federal judges? None of those are democratically elected, and they get to interpret all the laws in ways that have great consequence. Hence, America's government is a little more complicated than "democracy", although some parts of it are surely "democratic" (e.g. the house of reps).
> Doesn't that depend what the representatives then do?
No. If you democratically elect terrible representatives who eat puppies, it's still democratic.
> Also, what about federal judges? None of those are democratically elected, and they get to interpret all the laws in ways that have great consequence.
You don't have to elect every government official for it to be a representative democracy. Democracy means that the ultimate power is vested in the people. If you elect representatives who appoint judges, the judges are still appointed by the power of the people.
> Hence, America's government is a little more complicated than "democracy", although some parts of it are surely "democratic" (e.g. the house of reps).
No government is simple. America is very clearly not a direct democracy, nor are all officials elected, but it is still a democracy.
While I see what you are saying, the OP to your post has it correct. You can say a republic is a bastardized form of democracy, but the reverse is not true. You can look at one of the few true democracies that has ever existed as an example - ancient Greece. Every citizen[1] could vote and put forward changes to laws or even create new laws (obviously with a majority vote).
[1] A citizen was considered to be any person born of Greece, white and male.
I doubt that the Athenians had the present-day concept of "white people". Wikipedia says that citizens "had to be descended from citizens", so maybe at least in a certain era nobody known to be descended from people coming from outside of Athens could be a citizen.
Edit: looking at one of the references, it seems that there was a year when explicit citizenship lists were drawn up based on all free men who lived in Athens (maybe with some kind of ethnic exclusion at that time too?). From then on until Pericles, children could be added to the list if their fathers were on the list. After Pericles, children could be added to the list if their mothers and fathers were on the list.
First, it was Athens, not Greece as a whole. It was free, male descendants of Athenians who were allowed to participate - their degree of whiteness was not an issue independent of that. They had a large class of immigrants and descendants of immigrants who were not allowed to participate.
Most importantly, while there were a few questions settled by referendum where all citizens could vote, most were settled by randomly allotted juries. This meant there was little advantage to forming political parties around popular demagogues, or run well-funded propaganda campaigns.
Athenian democracy got knocked down many times and came back every time, except the last. The second-to-last time, a bunch of immigrants had fought for the liberation and restoration of democracy, and some leaders argued forcefully that they should be awarded citizenship for this. But they didn't get it, the existing citizens voted against.
The reason democracy finally failed was probably this. The Athenians knew (especially the poor) just how unusual and lucky they were to have political freedom, so they were fiercely protective of it - and didn't want to dilute it by sharing it. Eventually a large part of their society had so little stake in democracy that they didn't bother to restore it.
> Why do people insist on calling the US a democracy ?
Because it is designed as a (representative) democracy. Its also a federal republic whose constituent units are mostly-representative [but some with significant aspects of direct] democracies.
What do you think the representatives doing when they're trying to fuel up the corporations in your district? They're representing your interests by making sure that the jobs stay where they are, just not the interest of the American people.
The senators represent the state's interest, the representatives represent the district's interest.
off topic, but I keep seeing things in the format of "word^^^^^" and "bribe^H^H^H^H" things like that. In your case it seems to indicate sarcasm, but that doesn't always seem to be the case.
>> If you hadn't already lost faith in the U.S. election system years ago, then you've got your head in the sand.
The only check on this is the separation of powers, and even then, career politicians, special interests, and tons of money have way too much influence. Add in the fact that the press were supposed to be the check on government and now they're firmly in bed with the political parties. All you get is the incredibly slanted, biased, and spun stories to influence you so all you get is their viewpoint. I can't imagine how I would see the world if I only read the New York Times and only watched MSNBC.
If some of the fringe third parties would all come together and find a common platform, it would certainly replace my faith in the current system.
Career politicians, special interests and tons of money got comprehensively spanked in the Republic Primary process. Trump is an even worse choice - but he demonstrated that it is possible to beat the machine. Sanders came very close to doing exactly the same thing. The US system is significantly more favourable to insurgents than many.
It was interesting to see how the "establishment" Republicans tried at every turn to thwart and remove Trump from the process, but in the end relented (however much it pained them) because that's what the voters said they wanted.
The "establishment" Democrats were the same except they succeeded in placing their candidate ahead of what many believe their base really wanted.
> But everyone just accepts that's the way it is and carries on with life because "at least it's not North Korea."
They aren't Brazil either, or even most places in Europe.
Were I an US citizen, I'd be very wary of people trying to fix Democracy¹. They have a pretty good quality of life, and any attempted change can go very badly very easily - the more "let's fix things" is the change, the easier it could go badly.
1 - Hell, I'm wary of them here at Brazil! Because, you know, we aren't North Korea either, nor Venezuela. That said, we recently got a very good and very safe fix applied - the trick is that nobody was claiming it was a fix for Democracy, it was some people "just doing their work" on unforeseen ways.
Part of the question is the basic mechanics of democracy: does everyone actually get a vote, and does the count accurately reflect votes cast? "Fixing" that should be less controversial than it is.
Far too many voting machines are still insecure, and one of the candidates is pre-accusing the other of fixing the election.
But it is not whether it should be fixed that is controversial. It is how you fix it. And there's plenty of danger with most fixing procedures.
And yes, there's also some propaganda for not fixing it at all. That's what support voting machines (at least here). But, again, how do you fix the problem that makes propaganda viable?
For the specific problem of voting machines, candidates accusing others may be the best avenue for moving people in the correct direction.
Look, even if you believe that dark, unseen forces control the world using the US as a conduit - it would appear that the world has been the better for it. Given a choice of world management between Russian and US in this regard, the choice is pretty straightforward.
People who complain about Europe, the US and the general Western alliances management of the world are selling a pretty ugly alternative.
I think many people of vietnam, cambodia, laos, indonesia, angola, nicaragua, grenada, most of the middle east, afghanistan, pakistan [1] and so on would strongly disagree. Potentially lesser evil out of 2 evils ain't no good choice.
Most of these countries (or regions) never took up capitalism, free markets, and liberalism. Being partners on either side of a proxy war obviously didn't help.
So they deserved it then? Please keep in mind you're talking about many innocent bystanders being killed as an outcome of US foreign policy.
I don't think it's entirely black and white in the other direction either but your comment strikes me as crass and indifferent towards human life, dehumanizing, confusing people with their larger society and government.
The classic example of a generally stable and democratic country being overthrown into illiberalism and mass murder by the US is Chile, which was missing from that list.
If, you believe what you say. If you believe Russia releasing hacks and influencing US elections -- how is that any different than what the US does?
If you believe all that, you have to consider the results of Putin's Russia: Oligarchy & Nationalization, direct imperialism (Ukraine), the support of extremists/facists in foreign countries...
Yes, Putin's Russia is terrible, and exporting problems. They're a contributor to the Syrian mess as well.
That doesn't make it OK for the US to do it as well! This is what I meant by "false dichotomy". If anything, the US (and especially UK) use of domestic surveillance and extraterritorial interference makes it harder for us to argue that Russia should not do those things either.
#1, Yes, I specifically called out his argument as being hollow, and supported only by an appeal to "everyone knows" - he's self selecting his audience.
Even within that audience which implicitly accepts the government is more directly engaged in protection of sovereignty via clandestine means against it's own citizens -- that audience should probably consider the goals of the sources.
We all know the U.S. election system is flawed to a point of being broken and thus democracy as we like to believe it's supposed to work doesn't even exist. But everyone just accepts that's the way it is and carries on with life because "at least it's not North Korea." If you hadn't already lost faith in the U.S. election system years ago, then you've got your head in the sand.
It might be a hard pill to swallow, but I think if Russia's plan is to make the U.S. wake up and smell the coffee, they're actually doing the U.S. people a huge favour.