You’re using the term “democracy” in an Orwellian way. The people voted for the guy who promised mass deportations. There were signs and everything. Multiple surveys have found that, if everyone had voted, he would have won by an even larger margin. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/26/nx-s1-5447450/trump-2024-elec...

A non-functioning democracy would be if the people voted this way and mass deportations didn’t happen. Like how immigration went up in the UK after Brexit.

Democracy isn't supposed to be two wolves and a sheep voting on who to eat for dinner. There are supposed to be checks and balances.

One reason we are in the current situation is because we have discarded these checks and balances, allowing for the president to behave more like an autocratic monarch. If the other branches of government were performing their constitutional function, and if the executive observed the norms it's supposed to that's when you would have a democracy not just in letter but in spirit.

(Ironically I myself am an immigrant and a naturalized citizen, yet I find I know more about American civics than most US-born.)

No, I'm using democracy in the regular way that ordinary people use it: representation through a voting process, non violent transfer of power because it is better than the altneratives. That means that you expect your government to take care to some degree of the interests of all subjects, not just of those that happen to be 'on top' in this cycle.

Your endless efforts at pretending that this kind of cruelty is what 'America' wants - rather than that it is just a reflection of what you want - are painting the majority of the country with a color of paint they do not deserve.

You speak for yourself, and as such you have - repeatedly, incessantly - shown yourself to be roughly HN's resident Ali Alexander. I refuse to believe that the majority of the United States voted consciously for 'mass deportations', and everybody that is cheering this one should think carefully at which point they will find themselves on the receiving end of the cruelty.

I suspect that you will continue to dig in on this until the very moment that you become personally affected, and maybe, just maybe then you'll have the guts to admit that you were wrong all along.

You're using "Orwellian" in an Orwellian way. What do mass deportations have to do with this bizarre sudden policy change that leaves people scrambling with a 15 hour window? You're claiming this is exactly what people had in mind when they voted?

Democracy is broken because here's a candidate whose entire premise (that America somehow isn't great and needs to be made great again) is made-up, and a significant proportion of the population just believe it.

Democracy is when my candidate wins and does things I want.

When 51% of the eligible voters voters cast their votes to genocide the remaining 49% percent of eligible voters (which is not what happened of course), it doesn't matter whether genocide actually happens or not to determine that it's not in fact a functioning democracy.

It sounds like a contradiction, but it's not, because the critique of a democratic society doesn't have to be limited to a decision process that leads to certain behavior, but both to the problem that triggered it and the solution that the system had produced.

Democracy is little more than a mechanism for non-violent transfer of power among elites.

We rely on things other than democracy to protect minorities. Institutions, laws, restraints on power; things the committed democrat believes are unjust constraints on the Will of the People.

It's Tyranny of the Majority - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_the_majority

I propose a new form of government. I call it "liberal democracy". The gist is that when liberals are in power they make sure that fascist never get in power again. (So it's not a democracy, only in name.) E.g. they can make fascism illegal, and don't allow them to run for seats. This has the following advantages:

Over democracy: no danger for it to swing into fascism or autocracy.

Over autocracy: bad governments can be replaced.

Additionally, in practice, it should feel the same that we were having for ages when liberal parties were on power. (Proof?)

Probably this is the mythical "better than democracy" form of government that we are all waiting for?

Thoughts?