You’d think a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players, would have some mechanism that would prevent itself from throwing down it’s key ideology.
Is it really that the president is all that decides about the future of democracy itself? Is 53 out of 100 senate seats really enough to make country fall into authoritarian regime? Is the army really not constitutionally obliged to step in and save the day?
I’d never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile.
It’s funny that Germany has safeguards against nazis in power in it’s constitution which was designed
byin cooperation with the USA, France and GB, yet afaik all three don’t have similar mechanics in their own constitutions because they never belived to have to deal with the next hitler themselfs.Germany has a modern constitution created in response to nazis.
USA has extremely outdated constitution created by proto-nazis.
Those same safeguards that banned AfD years ago, thank god they exist!
Lets take out the politics for a moment, and just look at railroads
This is what I call the “Old Railroad Theory”:
The US build the railroad/subways so long ago, that most of it is now in decay and as far as I know, none of the US has any Platform Safety Barriers, and people could just fall on the tracks (see NYC)
In constrast, in China (PRC), because most subways are only recently built, they are much more modern, air-conditioned, and have Platform Safety Barriers, preventing any “fall on tracks” incidents. (I’ve seen first hand the subway in GuangZhou, they look much nicer than NYC, when I first got to NYC, the tracks were terrifying for me, I always have intrusive thoughts about falling in)
Its because once you build a system, its unlikely to get replaced even when better technology comes along. Too much cost to replace, politicians don’t care.
Same thing with Constitutions.
It was written so long ago, now its too late to add new ideas like Defensive Democracy. 3/4 of US legislature means its almost impossible to add it as an amendment.
(Btw, Germany has a AfD problem, that they still haven’t banned yet… 👀)
Edit: typos
PS.: With the current trend we will find out in about the next decade if the safeguards work …
Decade? More like 3 months. He’s already doing wildly unconstitutional things. If the Supreme Court refuses to take on challenges to it or outright approves it, well, they didn’t work.
Ich sage: nieder mit diesen Gesetzen!
Macht Deutschland wieder Groß
You mean that way, approximately?