America's Finally Realising Its Democracy is Dying -- But Is It Too Late?

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://eand.co/americas-finally-realising-its-democracy-is-dying-but-is-it-too-late-27192735df57



The last week should have made it crystal clear. America’s present and future goes like this. 30% of Americans want to take away the rights and freedoms of the other 70% — and they have only just begun. The repeal of Roe isn’t just the end of abortion — it’s even more than that, the trigger for a chain reaction of attacks on rights and freedoms all the way back to education, segregation, and bodily autonomy for all.

30% of Americans want the other 70% to live under their thumb. That’s not the future — that’s the present. They are making it happen. So why are the 70% — who vastly outnumber them — so powerless?

That’s not some kind of rhetorical question. It’s a real one. The 70% of Americans who don’t want to live in a dystopian authoritarian theocracy really are powerless, at this moment, to prevent one. They have no power to stop the process of implosion described above right now — none — which is why they are so angry. How did that happen?

The 30% of Americans who are already taking away the rights of the other 70% of Americans are not normal people, in modern terms. They are a combination of religious fundamentalists, violent far right extremists, supremacists, open fascists. They are the dregs of the earth, America’s equivalent of Putin’s ideological and social shock troops. And yet they’ve come to wield outsized power in society, to the point of being able to wreck it wholesale. How? Why?

*snip*

[uponit7771]

1. K&R, the right to vote should be MORE SACRED than the right to own a gun and easier to do !!!

[Novara]

17. I absolutely agree

Too bad Manchin and Sinema protected the filibuster rather than our right to vote.



Face it (and I hate to say this), certain Democrats are willingly giving up democracy. They're holding the matches for the arsonists. They're helping them torch democracy.

[roamer65]

2. The 70 percent isn't powerless.

It’s just reluctant to truly use it.

[Magoo48]

9. Our general unwillingness to be inconvenienced may well be our downfall.

Our progressive leader’s general unwillingness to encourage us to demand our freedoms through peaceful direct actions and peaceful civil disobedience may well be their failure.

[NowsTheTime]

3. We need to Persvere!

Already some of the media seems to be trying to cast doubts that Democrats will lose interest and not vote this issue!
But it's the most important issue ever!

Democrats in Congress are doing all they can, and we need to support them.
Maybe we should take a page from the Republicans and start referring to them as the Radical Right...

That abortion rights are on the table is more than enough, but the minority wants more than that.
We need to site that we don't start to become like the other Owellian like countries in this world (Russia, N Korea, China etc) and note what Russia is Doing Now!

[KS Toronado]

12. Welcome to DU!

I've been calling reQublicOns...... Fascists for some time now.

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Democracy always relies upon public opinion and the margins of society - the passive citizen

Public opinion is always behind the curve because the last 20% that pay attention are none too bright or interested. You have to hit them with a 2x4 over the head before they wake up. If we're going to salvage democracy, we're going to do it at the last minute. But look at the bright side, we are winning elections, except at the state level with some exceptions, and we finally realize what is happening to us. We didn't know that in 2016. We pulled together in 2020 and in Georgia. Do we have any gas left in the tank?

[LetMyPeopleVote]

5. I admit that I am scared that we can easily lose our democratic form of government

[taxi]

6. Does this make us an autocracy like Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Russia?

He doesn't seem to like us.

But sitting above America’s thinking class is an even more powerful one — it’s political class. And the biggest reason of all that 70% of Americans are powerless at this point to stop 30% from taking their democracy away — not theoretically, not in the future, but as in, this is happening, right now — is that the Democrats are a party which ideologically believes in powerlessness.

It’s as striking as it is perverse. Think about it, because it has been drawn in stark relief for the world to see this week. The Democrats are the governing party of the most powerful country on planet earth. That makes them the most powerful political institution on planet earth. Yes, that is really what they are. And yet, because they believe in powerlessness, they didn’t lift a finger to stop the greatest attack and erosion of rights in half a century, and one of the greatest in American history. That is why Americans are furious.

Other titles include: 'Why a Furious America Feels Betrayed By the Democrats' and 'What America's Death Spiral Teaches Us About How Societies Die'

[betsuni]

10. Democrats "a party which ideologically believes in powerlessness"? Ugh what?

[shrike3]

14. Don't they ever think to maybe blame the people who are actually taking away rights?

He sounds exactly like the lefty/progressive types who blame it all on Dems.

A few I've talked to have been quite defensive as to their votes for Stein. According to them, all the Ds had to do was codify abortion during Obama's first term and we wouldn't be here.

When you bring up Loving, Obergefell, etc., they don't say much.

[taxi]

15. Let them think what they want, we only need to change the outcome

The OP addresses the problem of an imbalance of political power. Their solution is to blame someone and point out how easily that imbalance could have been avoided, to replace the devil they know with the devil they don’t. Some understand it only creates a different imbalance, some see it as short sighted, and some see that brings them back to where they started and find themselves on the opposite side when they get there. They then move on to something else, set a new date for doomsday, find another fault, and walk along the mobius strip once again.

In close races when every vote counts as in the 2016 election, the Stein votes mattered but this time it’s not a candidate or policy they’re focused on. They aren’t using long term goals and generally ignore the fact that reaching their goal (eliminating the imbalance of power) destroys their movement. This group of voters will always exist in some form and warrant being watched. The planners and the voters are not the same people and cannot be treated like they are. Suppose there were two Stein campaigns - one to run her and one to elect her. The campaign to run her would have a purpose and a goal, to prevent Hillary from taking office, the campaign to elect her wouldn’t give a damn. It may not be possible to possible to prevent campaigns like the OP presents but we can stick a card in the tickler file to remember it exists with a short-term goal of taking away votes on a given date. Timing is everything. No matter what happens on election day there will still be an imbalance of power and all the lost votes are meaningless.

[betsuni]

16. +1

[CentralMass]

7. Yes.

[moondust]

8. Give some people a little power...

and they're going to want it all.

[struggle4progress]

11. Freedom is a constant struggle

[Wounded Bear]

13. K & R...nt

[Buckeyeblue]

18. This has really been in the making for 42 years, since Carter lost in 1980

In 42 years, we've only had 17 years with a Democratic president. And we went 12 years, from 1981-1993 with Republicans. That's crazy. And if we want to go back further, we've only had 21 years of Democratic presidents in the last 53 years, since 1969.

Just think what this has done to the federal courts. And we've gotten lucky. Souter turned out to be more left than right. And O'Connor protected women's reproductive rights. Roe could have flipped years ago.

And During this time Southern states have become very red. Florida seems to have become very conservative. The midwest seems far more conservative. The population as a whole is still more left than right but they seem to be clustered together. Which has allowed Republicans to win the senate fight. In the house, Republicans stay close because we don't have true apportionment due to the 1929 law that keeps the house from getting bigger.

I write all of this to point out that this didn't happen overnight. The Trump years did seem to be the turning point. 3 SC picks, two of them stolen, one of them worked out under strange circumstances. We should have gone to the matrices over them, truth be told. Schumer should have punched McConnell in the face, if Democracy is worth fighting for. He didn't.

Now we have a real fight on our hands. I think 2022 and 2024 will end up writing the next several years of US history.