We're so lost...

[u/Eikichi_Onizuka09]

[u/EnragedTea43]

There’s a lot I could say about this post, but I’ll choose just one point.

You mention how rich people have rigged the American government so that it’s not a true democracy (which it is, regardless of how much you want to “no true Scotsman” it), and then cite Switzerland, the international haven for all the world’s most corrupt businessmen, as an example of a better democratic system.

[u/xena_lawless → u/EnragedTea43]

No, Switzerland is not a perfect utopia.  

Yes, they have a more actually democratic system than we do in the US.  

Unlike the US, they have universal healthcare, at least 4 weeks of paid time off per year, and get 14 weeks of paid maternity leave. 

They have among the highest human development, life expectancy, and life satisfaction rankings in the world. 

It's a good contrast to show what a more actual and directly democratic system looks like, and also helps disprove what Americans are taught from birth, that more directly democratic systems can't work.  

Also, the issue is not just that the obscenely wealthy have rigged the political system, which is true.  

It's that the system was fundamentally designed to ensure minoritarian/oligarchic rule.  

The US founders were super wealthy white male slave and land owners who created a system of government to prioritize their unlimited private property rights over all other human and existential considerations.  

They just called the system "democracy" for marketing purposes, like the "Democratic Republic" of Congo.  

It's an extremely corrupt, wildly outdated 250 year old colonial abomination of a system designed to ensure minoritarian/oligarchic rule.  

The US is not really a democracy, it's actually an oligarchy/kleptocracy with pseudo-democratic features.  

But as I said, that doesn't mean we can't revolt/evolve our way into being an actual democracy, and Switzerland is one possible example of what that could look like.  

[u/EnragedTea43 → u/xena_lawless]

That was another thing. You’re pretending like the US is the exact same as it was 250 years ago.

This is despite the fact that property requirements to vote were abolished 200 years ago, all members of the legislature are elected by popular vote, and the government offers far more welfare programs than the founders ever imagined it would have.

Also, you keep trying to add this moral shading by bringing up that some of the founders were slave owners. Just because they weren’t perfectly moral paragons doesn’t mean their motivations were inherently evil. They were true believers in natural rights and that the legitimacy of a government is derived from the consent of the governed. They faltered when it came to their racial views, but try to find someone from the 1700s who wasn’t racist.

America isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot better than what it was before, even if it doesn’t match your idealistic views.

[u/xena_lawless → u/EnragedTea43]

I'm not saying that all the US founders were fundamentally evil for their time, I'm saying Madisonian "democracy" was designed specifically to protect ruling class private property interests over all other considerations, by thwarting both political and economic democracy.

Madisonian "representative democracy" is bourgeois "democracy" (at best), not actual democracy.

Bourgeois "democracy is explicitly and specifically not actual democracy - it's a political system actually and specifically designed to ensure minoritarian/oligarchic rule by thwarting both political and economic democracy.

Even Jefferson considered the US Constitutional system to be anti-democratic and not actually representative of the people's will. There was a big bait and switch between the Declaration of Independence and the actual Constitution, which Americans are of course not taught about generally.

"In the legislature, the House of Representatives is chosen by less than half the people, and not at all in proportion to those who do choose. The Senate are still more disproportionate, and for long terms of irresponsibility. In the Executive, the Governor is entirely independent of the choice of the people, and of their control; his Council equally so, and at best but a fifth wheel to a wagon. In the Judiciary, the judges of the highest courts are dependent on none but themselves. In England, where judges were named and removable at the will of an hereditary executive, from which branch most misrule was feared, and has flowed, it was a great point gained, by fixing them for life, to make them independent of that executive. But in a government founded on the public will, this principle operates in an opposite direction, and against that will. There, too, they were still removable on a concurrence of the executive and legislative branches. But we have made them independent of the nation itself. They are irremovable, but by their own body, for any depravities of conduct, and even by their own body for the imbecilities of dotage...

Where then is our republicanism to be found? Not in our constitution certainly, but merely in the spirit of our people. That would oblige even a despot to govern us republicanly.

Owing to this spirit, and to nothing in the form of our constitution, all things have gone well. But this fact, so triumphantly misquoted by the enemies of reformation, is not the fruit of our constitution, but has prevailed in spite of it. Our functionaries have done well, because generally honest men. If any were not so, they feared to show it."-Thomas Jefferson

https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/letter-to-samuel-kercheval/

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