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| ▲ | tensor 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Given the current situation in the US, it's a huge cautionary tale for how not to do democracy. To non-ironically hold it up as an example at this point of time is truly amazing. No, the rest of us don't want current US style dictatorship in our countries. While the EU certainly has its issues, its protection of democracy is still one of the best in the world. Democracy is something we need to keep working towards. There is not one simple set of rules that will keep it healthy, at least as far as recently history shows. | | |
| ▲ | femiagbabiaka 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > While the EU certainly has its issues, its protection of democracy is still one of the best in the world. Don’t let defensiveness lead you to say nonsensical things. Nearly every single country in the EU has a worse-than-trumpian party waiting in the wings, or even in power, see Hungary. Ascribing some sort of special property to the EU, a region with absolutely terrible standards for personal liberty, because at the moment there is more respect for liberal democracy there than elsewhere.. well it’s just waiting for the other shoe to drop. | | |
| ▲ | tensor 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Yes, but many places in the EU use proportional representation or something close to it, so even if those parties gain significant traction, there is still protection as they are forced to work together with the rest of the parties. In contrast, my own country Canada is far more at risk of the rise of an authoritarian adjacent party. A party with majority control has too much power here, and lack of proportional representation also means that majority control can be achieved with less than 50% of the voting population supporting you. This is why I say the EU has better protections. The existence of parties that want more authoritarian control shouldn't be a measure of the health of a democratic system. In fact, somehow forcing these parties out would be pretty against the principles of democracy and free speech. I do suppose its worth asking the question of whether democracy should allow the voting down of democracy itself, but I don't think the EU is at risk of that as a whole, even if a few member states are. |
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| ▲ | engineeringwoke 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Could you describe with specific examples what qualifies the USA today as a "dictatorship"? | | |
| ▲ | yibg 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Executive orders to ban something explicitly deemed legal under the constitution by the supreme court? https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/25/trump-flag-b... | | |
| ▲ | engineeringwoke 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah, it's politics. He assumes it will get appealed to the supreme court who will take his side. I personally don't like the Texas v Johnson decision. Burning flags is un-American and should be illegal. How is that dictatorial? | | |
| ▲ | shazbotter 4 days ago | parent [-] | | It's an executive order that contravenes existing legislative and judicial precedent, sets penalties, and is expected to be unchallenged. It limits free speech by fiat because a single man wants it to be so. It's clearly dictatorial, you'll have to demonstrate why it's not an act of a single person dictating policy. | | |
| ▲ | engineeringwoke 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Burning American flags is free speech? It's definitely an interpretation... and one that many legal scholars disagree with, similar to Roe v Wade. Not that repealing Roe v Wade was a good thing, but it didn't have a solid legal foundation. It's not all about getting your way... well maybe the better way to say it is that the left got their way, for sixty years. And some of those wins from that period for the left were built on shaky ground. There has to be give and take in any healthy political system. | | |
| ▲ | shazbotter 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Yes. The Supreme Court affirmed this in Texas v Johnson. It is an act that expresses a political view through a symbolic act. It might be offensive to you, but "I find it offensive" is not sufficient defense to stop political speech. And the left did not get their way for sixty years. The left is predominantly socialist, communist, anarchist. Democrats are not a leftist party. The left hasn't held many political positions in the US. But we on the left hate the democrats as much (or more) than folks on the right. We also tend to be broadly supportive of individual freedoms (most of my leftist colleagues are anti gun control, for instance.) | | |
| ▲ | engineeringwoke 3 days ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | shazbotter 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Yes. Of course it failed. It also succeeded several times. I'm not a communist, though. (I do have communist friends, however.) Most of my communist friends are not authoritarian communists (aka tankies). A tankie is a very specific type of communist who believes in central autocratic power and a single party. I think you'll find most modern communists tend to prefer a worker led democratic government. And people like myself prefer a syndicalist democracy without a central government. I consider tankies my opponents, just like I consider all authoritarians my opponents. | | |
| ▲ | engineeringwoke 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Without some kind of coherent post-Marxist revolutionary understanding of what communism is, this is just pure delusion. Most people don't have the ability to synthesize grand ideas for the direction of society, no offense. There's like dozens of people in the world that can do these things, and they need to want to use their intellect for such a thing. Unfortunately, communism is just philosophically derelict, until another great thinker comes along. | | |
| ▲ | shazbotter 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Good thing I'm not a communist or I might be upset. You keep moving the goal posts all over the place. I was just saying I'm not a tankie, lol, and you've pivoted to philosophers. But what about Bookchin, Kropotkin, or the people of Rojava? Bakunin? Thoreau? |
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| ▲ | laughing_man 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's a little more subtle than that. His executive order doesn't ban flag burning as an expression of speech. It only bans flag burning as part of an incitement to violence. I expect the courts will strike it down, but even if they don't it won't be something you get arrested for. It'll be something you get extra time for, like hate speech. | |
| ▲ | 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | ToDougie 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A better example might be the treatment of whistleblowers? | | |
| ▲ | engineeringwoke 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning were both pursued aggressively during the Obama administration. Next, please. I can go all day | | |
| ▲ | shazbotter 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Obama also engaged in dictatorial policy... Just because two people have done it does not make it "not dictatorial". Or, using logical constructs - "A therefore B" is not made invalid by "C therefore B". | | |
| ▲ | engineeringwoke 3 days ago | parent [-] | | But it's obvious when people say "dictatorship" or "fascism" today in the USA it is just a dog whistle for not liking Trump. Nobody called Obama a fascist for how Chelsea Manning was treated. | | |
| ▲ | shazbotter 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | It's absolutely not the case. The US is an empire with increasingly dictatorial power centralized in the executive. Clinton increased prison populations and increased police power. Bush increased executive power during his post 9-11 presidency. Obama regularly enforced U.S. policy at the end of a drone strike and shut down U.S. domestic agitation. Biden increased police funding and continued to sell surplus military equipment to cops. He also shut down a workers strike. Trump is a symptom of a general slide towards dictatorial policy. If it wasn't him this time it would have been one of the next 5 presidents from either policy. Trump is doing some fucked up shit, but he doesn't get to be able to do that without decades of groundwork from both sides of the aisle. | | |
| ▲ | engineeringwoke 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Okay here's a secret that you probably won't hear other than in some books that are hard to find. The youth desire a strong executive. They don't yet understand why it can be a bad thing, because they have little experience with people having power over them that aren't their parents or teachers. The middle aged desire a strong legislative branch, the most fair branch of government. They have enough life experience to understand why. They are not quite old enough to be set in their ways just yet. The elderly desire a strong judicial branch. Judges are almost always old, and biased towards the opinions of the elderly, left or right. There is nothing wrong with a strong executive. It is just completely at odds with those who still control the vast majority of the money and power, and of course, mainstream media: the Boomers. JFK, Great Society, these are marked by a desire for a strong executive. Ironic, of course. A strong executive can stop them, and the Boomers have never been told 'no' in their entire lives. Really truly, everybody was young in the 1960's. They warped society to their will, just like the people in every baby boom in history. You misinterpret their tantrum as something substantive. | | |
| ▲ | shazbotter 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm old (50s), I don't want a strong any of those. I especially, however, don't want a strong executive because I don't think decision making should be strongly centralized. I'm a syndicalist anarchist, who believes communities should be primarily bottoms up driven, democratic, and cooperative. I argue we don't need any of those branches to be strong. | | |
| ▲ | engineeringwoke 3 days ago | parent [-] | | It's really fundamentally unimportant what you specifically believe. What is important is what people your age in the aggregate believe. This is an undeniable truth. It's therefore silly to engage in a conversation about you and your beliefs specifically. I recommend trying to understand Plato's ideas first. | | |
| ▲ | shazbotter 3 days ago | parent [-] | | > This is an undeniable truth. Well, I disagree. What evidence do you have to demonstrate that a) this is true and b) it's so unassailable that one could not deny it? Because it sure reads like, "I have a worldview. I will assert that it is true and talk down to anyone who does not accept my worldview as truth." It's a way to paint your discussion partner as an intellectual lesser, while adroitly dodging critique. You'll have to do better than just asserting something is true because you said so. | | |
| ▲ | engineeringwoke 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I mean arguing with tankies is just No True Scotsman ad infinitum, so I'm good to stop this here. Best |
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| ▲ | yibg 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | A few things are different. 1. Degrees / magnitude. How many cases of dictatorial behavior were there with Obama vs Trump? Every president signs executive orders, but trump signs a lot more of them. 2. Defiance to checks in power. The current administration seems uniquely defiant of both the legislative and the judicial branches, both in rhetoric and act. | | |
| ▲ | engineeringwoke 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | And in turn federal district judges have signed a lot more nationwide injunctions? Orders of magnitude more than had ever been issued? And now they are using a protected class loophole to keep doing it? After it was struck down by the Supreme Court? No, but it's different when my opponent does it. | | |
| ▲ | shazbotter 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | You have to stop thinking it's us or them. You have to stop imagining that somehow any of this is ok because my team or your team did or didn't do something. I certainly hope I've been clear that this isn't some D vs R conflict. Both parties are at fault, both parties own some blame, but the situation today is not ok. It was also not ok under Biden, Trump 1, or Obama. We should be looking at ways to get the working class to look past our differences and securing more of the pie for ourselves. We should be reducing the power of the executive, no matter who is sitting in the seat. We should be focusing on the wellbeing of all. Stop making a team sport, or at least correctly identify that you have way more in common with me (a working class anarchist) than you do with the people in power. | | |
| ▲ | engineeringwoke 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Politics is a team sport..? I have nothing in common with tankies, sorry. | | |
| ▲ | shazbotter 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm not a tankie, and if you think all leftists are tankies you definitely need to refresh some definitions. Unless you are saying, "I have nothing in common with the narrow subset of leftists that are tankies" rather than implying I'm a tankie then, sure. I guess you could make that case. |
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| ▲ | yibg 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > And in turn federal district judges have signed a lot more nationwide injunctions? Orders of magnitude more than had ever been issued? that by itself doesn't mean much. More EOs and especially illegal ones produces more injunctions. > No, but it's different when my opponent does it. No it's not different but the amount that's done matters. I for one have no issues calling out overreach by "my" side as well (which is more than can be said about most MAGAs). But I'm also going to call it out when the "other" side is doing it as normal course of governing vs being the exception. How many legislations has this administration proposed let alone passed? vs how many EOs signed just since Jan? |
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| ▲ | ToDougie a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | The Obama administration wielded the power of the executive branch against its political opponents. And then the media ran cover for them -- "the Obama administration had no scandals!" Using the IRS to target your political opponents should have been disqualifying. Running guns to the cartels should have been impeachable. |
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| ▲ | xyzzyz 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Just for context, what Trump tries to (illegally) ban in US, flag desecration, is already a crime in most of Europe. You can get 3 years for burning the flag in Germany, 2 years in Portugal, 3 years in Switzerland, or 1 year in Poland. Worth keeping in mind when comparing democracy and individual liberty between Europe and US. | |
| ▲ | kryogen1c 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Boy if you think non-constitutional executive orders are new or a trump thing, you're in for quite a surprise. |
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| ▲ | fknorangesite 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Today? No, maybe not yet. But you'd be a fool to look at the actions of the current admin and not see that that's where they're headed. But here's something from today: "A lot of people are saying maybe we'd like a dictator." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koruWF1cfyc | |
| ▲ | tensor 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Texas gerrymandering with an overt publicly stated goal to bias the election is enough evidence. But if you want more: sending the military to intimidate politicians (Newsom), deporting and arresting people with permanent residency or other forms of legal immigration, arresting citizens without cause, intimidating law firms, journalists, and news companies by using the power of the executive branch to punish individuals and organizations, illegally dismantling congressionally established governmental organizations and branches. This is just a small summary. Foreigners are not visiting the US, not because they don't want to or don't like the US, but because they are afraid of visiting a non-free country. It's not worth the risk of getting detained because you posted a negative comment online about a government official. | |
| ▲ | kjkjadksj 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Militarizing law enforcement to go after entire classes of people who aren’t politically aligned. | | |
| ▲ | engineeringwoke 4 days ago | parent [-] | | The executive branch has that right. It's happened many many times in the past. I recommend reading a history book and not MSM or social media | | |
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| ▲ | fogx 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | yea right.
Privacy is a fundamental right in the EU (GDPR, Charter of Fundamental Rights), while the U.S. legal system offers almost no general privacy protection. On top of that, the NSA has a long history of warrantless surveillance and backdoors (Snowden, PRISM), with very limited oversight. In practice, it’s far costlier to push mass privacy infringements in Europe than in the U.S. | | |
| ▲ | rdm_blackhole 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > Privacy is a fundamental right in the EU (GDPR, Charter of Fundamental Rights) A fundamental right that is being challenged every 6 month or so for the last 3 years with the push for Chat Control. > In practice, it’s far costlier to push mass privacy infringements in Europe than in the U.S. Absolutely false. With the way the EU commissions work, all you need is to buy or lobby your way in single one place and then you can push for any agenda that you want. | |
| ▲ | AdrianB1 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Privacy does not exist in reality but in a very limited form. For example you can be stopped and identified on the street by a policemen in most EU countries with no reason, where is your privacy then? Also EU has a lot of rights on paper that don't exist in reality. Free speech? Come in my country, you can go to jail for speech, there are several ways, way too many. Rights to property? Good joke. What rights do we really have in EU? I don't know any. |
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