Comment by epolanski
7 hours ago
How?
I'm European, and from my point of view:
- despite the current executive and its lackeys clearly stating they were going to do exactly what's happening (the dismantling of institutions, the violent, word-wise, targeting of any criticism, the tariffs, etc).
- despite the open attack to US democracy on January 6th 2021
Americans voted for all of this to happen.
What's happening isn't exposing a fault in a particular individual, that's way too convenient.
Not only they voted all of this, but keep believing this paranormal constitutional nonsense where winner-takes-all elections where you rule under no oversight, you have no opposition, and don't even depend on your own party support is actually a sane democratic system.
Of all the countries that slid in authoritarianism during the last 4 decades (from the Philippines to Russia, from Nicaragua to Belarus, etc) not one was a parliamentary republic.
All of them, literally all, where presidential republics.
Serbia used to be parliamentary republic. Nominally it stil is. In fact it is currently governed by SNS, former political party turned criminal organization.
> Not only they voted all of this, but keep believing this paranormal constitutional nonsense where winner-takes-all elections where you rule under no oversight, you have no opposition, and don't even depend on your own party support is actually a sane democratic system.
Honestly I’ve been filled schadenfreude with as the American civic religion collapse. Even the right is giving it up as they view it as too obstructionist.
The silver lining in all this is that the American people might come out a bit less retarded. It’s been fascinating to see the explosion of political thought amongst Americans in the last few years.
> The silver lining in all this is that the American people might come out a bit less retarded
I don't buy it, after January 6th and Trump getting re-elected, despite everything it will have to get much much worse before there's a conscious change.
difficult to have a change when you control just about all of the media. every decision now has a “reasonable” explanation and we past the point where people will en masse admit they fucked up. I have numerous friends who voted to the right in 2024 and it is fascinating to hear narrative after narrative and “excuses” why this is all good for us. nevermind that we had discussion in 2024 before election where just about every single reason they debated for voting to right has been shown that it was all BS… I am past the point where I believe there will be a change (it is not helping that alternative to this madness ain’t that great either)
The right have always had racetardism in them, they are just more blatant about it now.
It’s less about any of that. It’s more that I’m glad I won’t have to hear them deify the constitution anymore because they don’t care for it much anymore.
2 replies →
>Americans voted for all of this to happen.
We did. And if anyone would stop to actually analyze it, instead of just insinuating that we're all yucky poopooheads for doing so (in the futile attempt to shame us into stopping), they might come to understand why. Whatever the alternative is to how we're voting, as exemplified by Europe, we don't want it. Maybe there are more options besides those two, but no one's offered those or even described what they could be. Europe certainly hasn't.
>not one was a parliamentary republic.
And thank god that we're not one then. We'd truly be hopeless.
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You've been breaking the site guidelines quite badly in your recent posts. Can you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stop this?
Since "by whatever means necessary" is usually a phrase by which people advocate violence, that's particularly not ok here.
Sorry, I deliberately left it open as while violence is a valid solution in extreme cases, but I meant it more as using all the faculties available to us. In any case, I will try avoiding statements that could be seen as violating site rules.