When did America give up on Democracy????????

I think a lot of it has to do with the insane amount of wealth concentrated in the hands of major conservative brokers. The right had been dreaming about undoing the New Deal for years but didn't have the means, especially since the programs were popular. All they could do was rant about welfare queens, student demonstrators, uppity Negroes, and tree huggers. But this changed in the '80s with the growth of financial schemes and lax regulation of the financial industry. Short selling, hedge funds, and the growth of computerized stock trading resulted in an unprecedented accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few.

Not all the new billionaire class were conservatives, of course, but the rightists were the ones who used this money to used to fund the conservative think tanks. Organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society realized that the best way of achieving their ends, which still weren't particularly popular with the masses, was to change the makeup of the judicial system. And, bit by bit, they were able to install judges, and eventually Supreme Court justices. And the attack on the administrative state, begun by Justice Powell (who was appointed by Nixon), went into overdrive.

But they had one problem. Their cause still wasn't that popular. And that's where the religious right played such an important role. Getting everyone mad about abortion, sex ed, and homosexuals started bringing people to the polls who never voted that much before. The real enemy wasn't the USSR, it was the "liberals" who were busing your children, producing godless movies, and extolling women's liberation – and a bit later, coming to take your guns. As blatham mentioned last week, most of these upper crust conservatives never gave a damn about abortion, but cynically used the issue to gather votes from outraged church-goers and back country good ol' boys. But their ultimate goal isn't a Christian state – it's a de-regulated one. And, having the money to stack the courts, they now have the chance to succeed.

Hmmmm! You’re making far too much sense. ‘After the ‘60-70s ‘Us’ Liberals got established, richer, more passive, older and took government for granted. The leaders got co-opted and took the easy way out.

Well…Gotta sip some more tasty Hawaiian coffee, play some computer games before I think some more about it. Tsk, tsk…where has democracy gone, Joe DiMaggio?

The Republicans in 21st century America on the one hand and the Prussian landowners in the 19th century German Empire on the other have a lot more in common than you might think when you first read this sentence:

In times of rapid social change, there are always groups that see themselves as the losers of this change. In the late 19th and early 20th century empire, the landowning elite felt threatened by industrialisation and the onset of democratisation. Politically speaking, they were a minority. In the USA today, we live in a system in which all adults have the right to vote and in a society whose demographics are changing rapidly. This change often threatens traditional, white, Christian voters for whom this identity is very important - especially in rural areas. They no longer represent the majority of the population. And so there is a fear of the rule of the majority and a backlash against democratisation, as could also be observed in the late 19th century, particularly in Prussia. As was the case here back then, there is a danger today in the USA that this backlash will cause democracy to fail.

Apparently, many people who are deeply rooted in their white and Christian identity feel that they are in decline.
This is a minority of voters that I believe is favoured by the American electoral system.


Not only for the US citizens the Constitution is a remarkable and defensible document. But it is the oldest written constitution in the world and - you don't need to have studied history to know this - dates back to a pre-democratic era.
It is therefore not surprising that it was not democratic in the modern sense from the outset. But it was changed, exactly 27 times, and it was made more democratic. However, it has been modernised much less frequently than other constitutions; indeed, it is probably the most difficult constitution of all to amend.

If no thought is given to how to make the constitution more democratic, then - to exaggerate - Trump will become an authoritarian 'surrogate king'. And the then ruling 'minority' will be satisfied.

I was born during FDR's time in office and though my family made dirt poor look comfortable, I could see how The New Deal benefitted us as a whole. I was conditioned to believe we would continue in that vein until a perfect society was achieved. I believed the Democrats and Republicans might disagree but in the end wanted to improve us all. I didn't begin to feel concern over the actions of government until it seemed we were unfair to Cuba. Then Vietnam and the handling of The Black Panthers showed me that we may be allowed to disagree with government but were not allowed to organize the poor or publicly disagree by having demonstrations. Bombing a houseful of citizens in Philadelphia, murdering MLK and Malcolm X. Reagan, the willing stooge of big money turned me off of voting for any Republican. My conditioning had not fully worn off and I believed Clinton would turn us back to FDR's America. Instead, the Clintons turned me off voting for Democrats. I had a hard time processing the ascendance of Bush and then Trump and Biden. It all leaves me wondering When did America ever have democracy?

Good points, everyone.

This topic could be more effectively covered in a book!

I have to amend the above. I first realized that the government will often take no proper action when my teacher taught us about Emmitt Till.

Heritage Foundation president celebrates Supreme Court immunity decision: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution”

“We're in the process of taking this country back ... we ought to be really encouraged by what happened yesterday”


mediamatters

In short, be still as we shackle you. There will be no freedom until the empire falls. This new Reich smells victory.

Translation: I "love the Constitution", but we need an emperor.