Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[Al_U_Card]

stochastic

Perhaps that lapsus was apt as well. An effort to terrorize AND school your opponents ... uh, no bombs actually exploded? No horrible injuries and maimed bodies? Kinder and gentler terrorists that just want to show you what they can do? I wonder when was the last time that such a thing happened? Should be interesting to see who the DHS and the FBI end up blaming.

[Winstonm]

Actually the USA is a Representative Republic, not a democracy (where the majority always rules).

 

 

Actually, the framer's created a representative democracy rather than a direct democracy.

[Chas_P]

Are you accusing Chas_P of being a racist?

 

If damphools like Jeremy and John can be classified as a race unto themselves I plead guilty.

[johnu]

If damphools like Jeremy and John can be classified as a race unto themselves I plead guilty.

 

With that said, I think I will follow Ken’s lead and exit this forum. I’m not going to change your mind and you aren’t going to change mine. And when you get right down to where the rubber meets the road nothing that either of us says on an internet message board will have any more effect on the great scheme of things than a fart has on a tornado. So I bid you adieu and wish you well with your future endeavors.

 

Apparently you have Dennison's disease and can't remember that you quit this forum. Or maybe you just don't have any integrity and your word means nothing. :rolleyes:

[helene_t]

Actually the USA is a Representative Republic, not a democracy (where the majority always rules).

What's the point? All countries that call themselves democracies have some kind of constitution that prevents 51% of population to decide to turn the other 49% into dog food, or to nuke Greenland.

 

Whether they are also republics or not is a matter of whether the head of state is elected or not.

 

I have a suspicion (correct me if I am wrong) that the cliche that USA is "a republic, not a democracy" is a word play intended to make it sound as if the Republican party is more loyal to the constitution than the Democratic party is. (Of course, they may well be, but that's another issue, since both parties are pro democracy and pro an elected head of state).

[ldrews]

What's the point? All countries that call themselves democracies have some kind of constitution that prevents 51% of population to decide to turn the other 49% into dog food, or to nuke Greenland.

 

Whether they are also republics or not is a matter of whether the head of state is elected or not.

 

I have a suspicion (correct me if I am wrong) that the cliche that USA is "a republic, not a democracy" is a word play intended to make it sound as if the Republican party is more loyal to the constitution than the Democratic party is. (Of course, they may well be, but that's another issue, since both parties are pro democracy and pro an elected head of state).

 

Wasn't there a lot of whining about the 2016 election not being decided by national popular vote? The argument is that the US wasn't really democratic since the Electoral College determined the winner and not the popular vote.

[helene_t]

Wasn't there a lot of whining about the 2016 election not being decided by national popular vote? The argument is that the US wasn't really democratic since the Electoral College determined the winner and not the popular vote.

Whether the president is indirectly elected or directly elected is not a test for democracy. The Netherlands has an indirectly elected senate. Germany has an indirectly elected president. UK has a House of Commons in which a party can obtain a majority of the seats with a minority of the votes, in theory even without being the biggest party in terms of popular vote.

 

All of those countries are generally considered democracies.

 

Switzerland is the closest you can come to a direct democracy. It is also a republic, as it happens. The two have nothing to do with each other. North Korea and Finland are republics, Denmark and Saudi Arabia are not.

[jjbrr]

well, let's start at 2nd grade level with you. Reread your original post. By implication the wording assumes Chas_P is a racist. I suggest you learn a little bit more about writing before posting further.

 

yikes. ldrews, were you ever diagnosed with a learning disability?

[jjbrr]

If damphools like Jeremy and John can be classified as a race unto themselves I plead guilty.

 

I know both my parents, have a fine job, and have never murdered anyone in Chicago. I'm one of the good guys, right?

[hrothgar]

yikes. ldrews, were you ever diagnosed with a learning disability?

 

I must admit that it was glorious reading Sid's post when the exchange was clearly far over his head...

[hrothgar]

 

I have a suspicion (correct me if I am wrong) that the cliche that USA is "a republic, not a democracy" is a word play intended to make it sound as if the Republican party is more loyal to the constitution than the Democratic party is.

 

You're wrong on this one

 

This distinction was made explicit way back in the Federalist papers, 80+ years before the foundation of the Republican party.

[awm]

Wasn't there a lot of whining about the 2016 election not being decided by national popular vote? The argument is that the US wasn't really democratic since the Electoral College determined the winner and not the popular vote.

 

Keep in mind that this is not an isolated incident. In two of the last five presidential elections the candidate with fewer votes has been the winner (the other being 2000). This also happens in the House of Representatives, where in 2012 Democrats won the popular vote and Republicans retained control. Of course the Senate is not even designed to be majoritarian, where California has two senators just like Wyoming despite some 60x the population. At the level of individual states things are even worse; in North Carolina the Republicans were able to control a super majority (2/3 of the legislature) with less than half the votes.

 

When this sort of thing is happening a LOT, and almost always to one party’s advantage, and that party further works to change the rules to make this situation even MORE common (making voting more difficult by cutting down polling places and early voting hours, removing people from voting rolls, creating extreme gerrymanders and appointing judges who strike down the voting rights act, and even suggesting we should let senators be chosen by gerrymandered state legislatures instead of statewide popular vote) things look less and less democratic (or Republican if you prefer) and more like an oligarchy.

 

Keep in mind that Iran and Russia have regular elections too! We don’t think of them as “democracies” though... what should we think about a USA where one party frequently wins elections (in some states virtually always wins elections) despite getting fewer votes than their opponents?

[jjbrr]

Apparently you have Dennison's disease and can't remember that you quit this forum. Or maybe you just don't have any integrity and your word means nothing. :rolleyes:

 

to be fair...

 

My friends, I've done the unthinkable and resigned my position at a company some of you may be familiar with; I've moved in with my girlfriend and her 2-year-old son. This is my formal goodbye.

 

For anyone keeping score at home, we're no longer together and I now live in California. Life is weird, you know?

[y66]

From Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg:

 

Let’s talk about President Donald Trump’s decision to leave the INF treaty.

 

Unlike, say, the Paris climate pact, or the trade deals Trump has criticized, the INF treaty wasn’t something the president particularly seemed to care about. (It’s an agreement with Russia to ban mid-range, ground-based nuclear weapons.) What’s going on instead is the increased influence of National Security Adviser John Bolton who, as Dan Drezner puts it, “never met an international agreement that he did not want to depart.”

 

I’ll leave the pros and cons of the decision to the experts. What’s interesting to me is the process, because it perfectly embodies something I expected to see from this administration: random results based on personnel decisions.

 

For most people in government, Bolton was a known quantity. He would have predictably hawkish policy positions (which haven’t served him very well in the past) and he’d be an experienced bureaucratic warrior. Choosing him to replace H.R. McMaster, then, amounted to a fairly major change in the administration’s national-security outlook.

 

Yet there’s no evidence Trump thought of it that way. By most accounts, Trump chooses officials based on his impression of the person, not on the policies they’d pursue if hired. He is said to mainly value superficial traits, such as whether the potential hire “looks the part.” Trump is also susceptible to flattery and has blacklisted most people who have criticized him. As a result, the applicant pool for any top opening is far shallower than it would normally be – both because so many governing professionals have criticized Trump and because he seems to be less tolerant of past slights than most presidents.

 

Bolton’s hire was one result of this unusual process. And so now, more or less at random, the Trump administration is exiting the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. (Or at least announcing that it intends to do so.)

 

Granted, there are limits to how random things can get. Any nomination that needs confirmation must be acceptable to Republican senators, for one thing. Although it may seem like they’re willing to go along with anything Trump does, it’s quite likely that they’ve shut down many potential picks behind the scenes. Even those high-ranking positions that don’t require confirmation may still be subject to a party veto. And veteran party operatives within the White House are most likely controlling the pipeline of personnel, so the president generally sees only candidates who are within the party mainstream.

 

For all his distance from the formal Republican Party, Trump has turned out to have too few people loyal to him personally to really run an old-style personal presidency – and those who are personally loyal to him, such as his daughter and son-in-law, aren’t exactly known as masters of office politics.

 

So Trump winds up with a weird hybrid of a personal and a partisan presidency. From a limited set of partisan options, he selects personnel according to his somewhat arbitrary personal criteria. And because Trump doesn’t have strong feelings about many areas of policy, and appears to be easily rolled by his staff, his presidency is even more dependent on personnel than normal. That generates a lot of fairly random policy outcomes.

[Winstonm]

It appears that the NRA and the Republican party have been busted.

 

.

...Yet at a moment when the stakes were high — Republicans needed six seats to claim a majority — the firm had come out of nowhere to become the NRA’s top election contractor.

 

Acquiring business of this magnitude would be an incredible feat for a firm with no reputation. The question is whether it was really accomplished by Starboard, or another outfit called OnMessage Inc.

[johnu]

Perhaps that lapsus was apt as well. An effort to terrorize AND school your opponents ... uh, no bombs actually exploded? No horrible injuries and maimed bodies? Kinder and gentler terrorists that just want to show you what they can do? I wonder when was the last time that such a thing happened? Should be interesting to see who the DHS and the FBI end up blaming.

 

I assume you are parroting Fox Propaganda Channel airheads whose first thought, without any evidence to remotely support their ridiculous fantasy, was that the bombs were a false flag operation by Democrats.

 

The question the right fringe talk show hosts didn't ask was why somebody would take the time and effort to manufacture fake pipe bombs and risk going to Federal prison for a very long time just to prank the public. I guess they didn't want to know the answer.

 

In any case, somebody has already been arrested:

 

Florida man arrested in probe of bombs mailed to Dennison critics

 

From the article:

 

Agents who took Cesar Sayoc into custody in Plantation, near Fort Lauderdale, also hauled away a white van that was plastered with pro-Trump stickers, the slogan "CNN SUCKS" and images of Democratic figures with red crosshairs over their faces.

 

According to public records, Sayoc is a registered Republican and has been arrested numerous times over the years including one case in which he was accused of making a bomb threat.

[PassedOut]

The FBI has arrested a Florida member of Criminals for Trump for sending pipe bombs to prominent democrats:

 

Next to the pro-Trump stickers plastered all over the white van that authorities believe belongs to Cesar Sayoc are the names and photos of dozens of prominent Democrats and media figures former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, former first lady Michelle Obama, former attorneys general Eric Holder and Loretta E. Lynch, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, filmmaker Michael Moore, Meet the Press host Chuck Todd.

 

Several of them are framed by gunsights.

 

Authorities on Friday arrested Sayoc and identified him as a suspect in the sprawling mail-bomb scare that included at least a dozen suspicious packages sent to political and media figures, including many pictured on the van.

 

Sayoc, a 56-year-old registered Republican, lives in Aventura, Fla., near the facility from where many of the packages were mailed, authorities said.

But will this stop the 'false flag' idiots? Fat chance...

:rolleyes:

[Winstonm]

I assume you are parroting Fox Propaganda Channel airheads whose first thought, without any evidence to remotely support their ridiculous fantasy, was that the bombs were a false flag operation by Democrats.

 

The question the right fringe talk show hosts...

 

Florida man arrested in probe of bombs mailed to Dennison critics

 

From the article:

 

The tragedy is that that Fox has gone from simply right-wing propaganda network to now lunatics' mouthpiece. Have they no shame?

[Winstonm]

The FBI has arrested a Florida member of Criminals for Trump for sending pipe bombs to prominent democrats:

 

 

But will this stop the 'false flag' idiots? Fat chance...

:rolleyes:

 

This bomb-builder may well turn out to be Dennison's undoing because Dennison won't be able to continue his relentless attacks without looking like he is promoting criminal behavior, and without his ability to incite hatred and division he has nothing to offer.

[johnu]

to be fair...

 

 

 

For anyone keeping score at home, we're no longer together and I now live in California. Life is weird, you know?

 

Sorry to hear things didn't work out for you.

 

Of course, the facts of your return is nothing like chas_p's. You were going to start a new family with a 2 year old that was going to keep you too busy to spend any time on the BBO forums. Totally understandable. Countless bridge players have given up the game while they are starting new careers and families. And when circumstances have changed and you presumably have time to post on BBO, why not rejoin the forums.

 

chas_p quit the forums with a petulant post because nobody except the 1 or 2 posters who already agreed with him thought he made any sense, and many other posters correctly and accurately refuted his Fox Propaganda Channel talking points. Of course, nothing changed in the long 3 days between the time chas_p quit the forums, and then went back on his word by posting more nonsense.

[johnu]

The tragedy is that that Fox has gone from simply right-wing propaganda network to now lunatics' mouthpiece. Have they no shame?

 

The answer is obvious. The Fox Propaganda Channel has no shame and will do and say anything to keep their viewership numbers high. They already promote fascism, racism, white supremacy, any kind of conspiracy theories about the left. I'm actually befuddled that they haven't advocated the return of slavery which would certainly raise their ratings among their target demographics.

[barmar]

This bomb-builder may well turn out to be Dennison's undoing because Dennison won't be able to continue his relentless attacks without looking like he is promoting criminal behavior, and without his ability to incite hatred and division he has nothing to offer.

Dream on. Trump is impervious to any such criticism. He publicly derided the bomber, that will satisfy his base.

[barmar]

Dream on. Trump is impervious to any such criticism. He publicly derided the bomber, that will satisfy his base.

To amplify this -- remember that he survived saying that there were good neo-Nazis at the Charlottesville rally that turned violent.

[Winstonm]

Dream on. Trump is impervious to any such criticism. He publicly derided the bomber, that will satisfy his base.

 

There will always be 20-25% on the country who will be staunch defenders, but that "base" isn't enough to keep him in office past 2020. The choir isn't big enough to drown out the sound of crashing waves.

[johnu]

There will always be 20-25% on the country who will be staunch defenders, but that "base" isn't enough to keep him in office past 2020. The choir isn't big enough to drown out the sound of crashing waves.

 

I hope your view is correct, but fascism is on the rise from Australia to most of Europe. Look at Austria, Germany, France, and Italy which are at the forefront of the movement.