kevin_strom on Nostr: I have publicly criticized the current US President for about a decade now, so please ...
I have publicly criticized the current US President for about a decade now, so please never interpret anything I say to mean I support him -- I don't. But you bring up some interesting questions.
Is the US a democracy? No nation is. Democracy is always fake, except perhaps in small, ethnically homogenous states, like ancient Athens, before the invention of mass media and their capture by special interests and outsiders. So, since no nation is truly democratic, the US obviously isn't either. It would take a book or two to explain this in full, but the short explanation is: 1) The credulous are always ruled by the clever. No exceptions. 2) Sometimes the clever are of the same stock and have the same interests as, and good intentions toward, the rest -- but that (obviously) isn't always the case. 3) Modern "democracy" pretends that items one and two aren't true, and that "the people rule." This makes the entire social structure dishonest and fake and based on deception. Scoundrels love this, as it gives them many options for grift, and deceptive scoundrels inevitably rise to the top in such a dishonest system. 4) There could never be such a thing as "democracy" when a small elite has the exclusive right to create money out of nothing.
Lastly, does every country have the government it deserves? I have a hard time believing that the East Germans or Russians deserved decades of Communism and gulags and knocks on the door at midnight, or that the Cambodians deserved the killing fields, but maybe you can argue that they did, since they were a bit slow in making revolutions. I still find it difficult to accept.
Is the US a democracy? No nation is. Democracy is always fake, except perhaps in small, ethnically homogenous states, like ancient Athens, before the invention of mass media and their capture by special interests and outsiders. So, since no nation is truly democratic, the US obviously isn't either. It would take a book or two to explain this in full, but the short explanation is: 1) The credulous are always ruled by the clever. No exceptions. 2) Sometimes the clever are of the same stock and have the same interests as, and good intentions toward, the rest -- but that (obviously) isn't always the case. 3) Modern "democracy" pretends that items one and two aren't true, and that "the people rule." This makes the entire social structure dishonest and fake and based on deception. Scoundrels love this, as it gives them many options for grift, and deceptive scoundrels inevitably rise to the top in such a dishonest system. 4) There could never be such a thing as "democracy" when a small elite has the exclusive right to create money out of nothing.
Lastly, does every country have the government it deserves? I have a hard time believing that the East Germans or Russians deserved decades of Communism and gulags and knocks on the door at midnight, or that the Cambodians deserved the killing fields, but maybe you can argue that they did, since they were a bit slow in making revolutions. I still find it difficult to accept.