You’d think a hegemony with a 100-years tradition of upkeeping democracy against major non-democratic players, would have some mechanism that would prevent itself from throwing down it’s key ideology.
Is it really that the president is all that decides about the future of democracy itself? Is 53 out of 100 senate seats really enough to make country fall into authoritarian regime? Is the army really not constitutionally obliged to step in and save the day?
I’d never think that, of all places, American democracy would be the most volatile.
Just to be clear, your solution to saving democracy would be for the military to usurp a president who received the majority of the vote less than six months ago?
Sometimes a voting population needs to be protected from the consequences of their vote, right? A good chunk of the German voting population in the 1930 voted the NSDAP and Hitler into power, and we can agree that it would have been for the best if that party and its leadership had been deposed ASAP. Now, the US isn’t quite that far down the slide yet, but they’re certainly slipping, and the worst part is that the checks and balances that are supposed to keep a president in line are also failing. Not to be alarmist, but we’re in for a wild ride.
Your first question is pretty philosophical. All I can say, is that most representative governments place a huge emphasis on giving the people the power to write their own collective destiny.
A military takeover based on the desires of a minority of citizens would violate that principal. I don’t think any reasonable person can call it saving democracy.
Sometimes a voting population needs to be protected from the consequences of their vote
Who should have the power to make that decision?
Do you want a benevolent king at the top that can dissolve parliament, dismiss government, call for new elections, make parties illegal, and censor the press?
Or maybe have something like an electoral college?
Or the army coups, if things get too far?
The ultimate check on power is the people. A general strike, large scale protests, and occupation of public buildings can topple a government. Institutions from military, police, local government, government agencies, and so on value their positions and won’t go down with a sinking ship.
In a functioning democracy, there are legal systems already in place that prevent extreme negative consequences for the population and the democracy itself. The US just isn’t a functioning democracy, and the checks and balances that are supposed to protect the system have been eroded. Impeachment is one such mechanism that’s become dysfunctional - a democratic process to protect the democracy from autocrats. I do hope you’re right and the American people manage to pull through this somehow. But failing that, an intervention from either domestic or foreign forces can be justified depending on how severe the threat to the population is.
The mechanism was the election.
I mean, sure, impeachment and whatnot, but it’s not like people didn’t know who this guy was. I can give other institutions a whole bunch of crap for not getting rid of the guy the first time, but when you’ve given him a Supreme Court supermajority, both chambers of Congress and the presidency AFTER he attempted a coup I’m gonna say that’s on you, guys.
We’re ignoring the constitution already.
14th Amendment. Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
The man is an adjudicated insurrectionist. Congress just ignored their duty.
So yes, there “are” protections. Said protections are simply being ignored.
The problem with 14th amendment is that the people who wrote that never specified an enforment mechanism. So we don’t know how to properly invoke it. Any attempts to invoke it would just result in the supreme court spontaneously “invent” a method of enforcement. They could say that the supreme court get to decide if someone is ineligible, then rule that trump is eligible because the supreme court doesn’t have enough evidence to prove trump was involved in Jan 6, or just declare Jan 6 to be a “protest” not insurrection.
I mean “No man shall hold office who committed insurrection” seems like a mechanism in and of itself. Dude just can’t run/be on a ballot. We just have two branches of government bought and paid for by the insurrectionist and America’s richest and most fanatical scum who refuse to follow the law.
Dude just can’t run/be on a ballot.
We tried that. The states, ostensibly, run federal elections independently of the federal government and decide who goes on the ballots. Colorado, Illinois, and Maine removed trump from their 2024 ballots on the grounds that he was ineligible under the 14th amendment. SCOTUS struck it down saying that the states (who, again, are supposed to have authority to run and administer federal elections within their territory) do not have the authority to enforce the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment.
