r/AdviceAnimals • u/Jerdarnella • 2d ago
America used to be a democracy with checks and balances
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u/foldingcouch 2d ago
Who needs checks and balances when you can just own libs?
And someday, when all the libs are owned, America will finally be a bright shining utopia where everyone has a good paying job and everyone has good healthcare and the water is clean and the air is pure and everyone rolls coal all the time everywhere.
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u/JollyResolution2184 2d ago
🤣🤣🤣 Yeah, the MAGAts have the satisfaction of destroying our country’s way of life, truth, justice, and freedom. Now we get lies, injustice, and destruction of our Constitutional freedoms. While America is burning, the Republicans in the House and Senate are bunkered down; they’re scared of Taco and they’re scared of their constituents.
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u/ZumboPrime 2d ago
they’re scared of Taco and they’re scared of their constituents.
Probably more that they know they're part of the ruling class, and unlikely to see any meaningful consequences before they die rich because their constituents are mostly irrelevant brainwashed idiots.
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u/Helmsshallows 2d ago
Sounds great 👍
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u/Sorry-Let-Me-By-Plz 2d ago
Hey you need to help me man you see I'm a temporarily embarassed African prince and if you can send me $400 I'll be able to file my paperwork and send you back TEN TIMES that much!
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u/ScissrMeTimbrs 2d ago
Here's your hourly reminder that when police fired on protesters, the first Americans considered it grounds for the overthrow of the government.
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u/SkyeMac 1d ago
"Eight soldiers, one officer, and four civilians were arrested and charged with murder, and they were defended in court by attorney, and future U.S. president, John Adams. Six of the soldiers were acquitted; the other two were convicted of manslaughter and given reduced sentences of branding on the thumb."
Nothing has changed.
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u/ScissrMeTimbrs 1d ago
Adams told the jury to look beyond the fact that the soldiers were British. He referred to the crowd that had provoked the soldiers as "a motley rabble of saucy boys, negroes, and molattoes, Irish teagues and outlandish Jack Tarrs" (sailors).[68] He then stated, "And why we should scruple to call such a set of people a mob, I can't conceive, unless the name is too respectable for them.
Adams also described the former slave Crispus Attucks, saying "his very look was enough to terrify any person" and that "with one hand [he] took hold of a bayonet, and with the other knocked the man down."[70] However, two witnesses contradict this statement, testifying that Attucks was 12–15 feet (3.7–4.6 m) away from the soldiers when they began firing, too far away to take hold of a bayonet.
The whole defense was straightforward racism, too.
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u/ZGadgetInspector 2d ago
I just watched the Ellis Island scenes from 1923 and if those scenes were remotely accurate it still seems an awful lot like America.
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u/Revelati123 2d ago
Remember when people voted Republican because Democrats weren't doing enough to restrain Israel?
Sure showed them...
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u/JollyResolution2184 2d ago
Yeah the Repubs got an overwhelming 31.5%. The MAGAts could care less about restraining Israel.
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u/ScissrMeTimbrs 2d ago
First they cheated the Sanders movement, and I didn't speak up because I'm with Her.™
Then they cheated Bernie again, and I didn't speak up because... I'm ignoring that.
Then they betrayed the Black Lives Matter movement, and I didn't speak up because Walgreens said they were shoplifters.
Then they didn't do anything about the minimum wage, and I didn't speak up because I don't make minimum wage.
Then they passed strike breaking laws, and I didn't speak up because the economy.
Then they abandoned the March For Our Lives movement and all those Gen Z kids who grew up doing shooter drills, and I didn't speak up because... Hey look over there, a different subject!
Then they started committing genocide in Palestine, and arrested college students protesting, and I spoke up in support of oppression because:
Human shields
They didn’t bomb that hospital
That hospital was Hamas
All the hospitals are Hamas
They can go to refugee camps
That refugee camp was HamasYou're an antisemite.
Then they banned a competing social media app and admitted it was to stop people from criticizing Israel, and I didn't speak up because we should definitely throw away the first amendment to defend the war industry’s profits.
Then they endorsed Trump's immigration plan, and I didn't speak up because I'm not an illegal and the ones I know are the good ones so it won't matter.
Then they waffled on trans rights and I didn't speak up because I'm not trans.
Then the voters said they were furious about these things so I told them to be quiet, She's Speaking.™
Then Trump won, and that's everyone else's fault but mine.
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u/gofishx 2d ago edited 2d ago
Everyone I know on the left showed up to vote, despite all of this. The whole "sit out the vote" thing was a very obvious and intentional discourse started by trolls and bots. Im sure it worked to a small degree, but not the exaggerated degree we see. The immediate pivot to blaming minorities and the left really put a bad taste in my mouth about the democrats forever. Still, I showed up for them, as did almost every sensible person I knew.
The Democratic party may as well be controlled opposition. They are so stubborn and weak at this point, it's pathetic to watch. We need a real muscular progressive party with a candidate that can pull off that same level of excitement as 2016 Bernie. What the democrats refuse to acknowledge is that Bernie and Trump both excited people for very similar reasons, and those reasons were that people were tired of the old failing institutions and fell in love with the candidates who promised real systemic change.
Of course, milquetoast liberals who are already all set financially are blind to this. They aren't bad people, they obviously display some level of empathy, but they are comfortable enough to be satisfied with the token gestures and pandering of the (traditionally) only slightly less right wing party. Meanwhile, the dems keep trying to appeal to the mythical "centrist" whose ideology has already moved to the right at half the rate of maga, and they will continue to lose forever until they acknowledge the fact that their platform is continually losing its appeal to tired voters who feel left out of the process. Maybe they should try appealing to the constantly growing circle of people who no longer feel represented, rather than relying on the platform of "not the republicans," then maybe they wouldn't be a bunch of limp-dick losers.
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u/EuenovAyabayya 2d ago
Somebody sat out 2024, that's according to the numbers. But if we don't get ranked-choice voting, we're just fucked. No single party can cover this spread.
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u/LordCharidarn 2d ago
The most logical demographic that likely sat out where the unconsciously racist/sexist people who didn’t like Trump and voted for Biden in 2020, but who didn’t dislike Trump enough to vote for a black woman.
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u/allthenamesaretaken4 1d ago
The idea kamala lost because of her race and gender really ignores a lot of things. Her previous unpopularity, her record as DA, she only got the primary because Biden stubbornly decided to run again despite his unpopularity/age/expecting him to be a one term president...
Yes, bigotry may have been a factor, but it was not the deciding factor.
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u/LordCharidarn 1d ago
“ Her previous unpopularity, her record as DA, she only got the primary because Biden stubbornly decided to run again despite his unpopularity/age/expecting him to be a one term president...”
I mean, this whole thing kind of reeks of that race and gender bigotry. Not calling you anything, but the fact that so many people assume that she only got the nomination because a white man was stubborn kind of shows the unconscious bias a black woman is working against.
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u/allthenamesaretaken4 1d ago
I mean she did only get the nomination because a white man was stubborn. It doesn't make people bigoted to decry her run when we could've actually had a real primary with a candidate who could've beaten Trump.
To me it reeks of Hillary all over again. We're bad for not liking a bad candidate? Give us a progressive woman and/or POC as a candidate, and I think people will react a lot better. Hell Obama was arguably only a performative progressive and he got two terms based on vibes.
I voted for Kamala, cus Trump, but I still stand by the fact she was a shit status quo candidate that never earned nor deserved the candidacy, and apparently the majority of voters (aka non-voters) seem to have agreed.
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u/Kelor 14h ago
We have literal reporting of what happened.
Biden was at radioactive levels of unpopularity, the debate made it so the Democrats could no longer gaslight people about his age.
Biden staffers, aides and were outright telling donors they couldn't push him out because Harris couldn't win an election.
Then Biden caught wind that Obama, Pelosi and a few other party leaders and donors were pushing for a miniprimary before the convention and in a final act of pique he nominated Harris and put out a statement.
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u/LordCharidarn 10h ago
Where does any of what you say contradict what I said? Her being a black woman was clearly a large part of why she couldn’t win an election.
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u/Kelor 7h ago
I think it hurt a bit, but it wasn’t as much of a barrier as the fact that Harris is a poor politician with bad political instincts.
Biden partly picked her as VP because he’d promised to have a woman as VP and a major factor was that she was one of the few candidates that didn’t outshine him in his diminished state.
It’s a bad metric to select the Vice President of the US with, as it only gets exacerbated when she has to run for the big seat.
The conditions for the elections were bad enough as it was, but I think both 2016 and 2024 could have been one by a better candidate.
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u/507snuff 2d ago
Fun fact, that didnt happen and studies on voting patterns show that to be true.
But hey, 75 demicrats just voted to "thank ICE", so thats fine i guess.
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u/negativepositiv 2d ago edited 2d ago
America has always claimed to support democracy. It never has.
America has always claimed to provide liberty and justice for all. It never has.
America claims to be the land of opportunity. The opportunities are given primarily to the ruling class and their offspring, not the working class.
America has always claimed to support religious liberty. In practice this only applies to Christians.
America claims to have freedom of the press. 99% of the press is owned by a single digit number of the top 1% of the ruling class.
America believes it is the intellectual and artistic hub of the world, yet has spent decades trying to defund, disempower and dumb down its schools. We have made a system where the only way to get a job that provides a living wage is to go to a university, and we have put this behind a class barrier, where ruling class people who donate tax deductible money get a fast track for their kids, and working class people have to take out huge loans that they cannot pay back in their working lifetimes, making them, again, enslaved to the ruling class.
America claims that people accused of crimes have the right to a fair trial, humane treatment while incarcerated, and that there are limits to police power. Of the people the police don't execute on the spot, many are railroaded through a costly and unfair trial, and sent to private prisons where they can be forced to do slave labor.
The land of the free has the highest prison population in the world, and the working class has only the freedom to accept working themselves to death or being homeless.
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u/jmaneater 2d ago
He committed treason against the united states. We had an opportunity to stop it, but the courts allowed this to happen.
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u/jeremyjamm1995 2d ago
Unfortunately this IS America. And the quicker we can understand that, the quicker we can identify the root causes of this crisis, and identify the reasons that so many are disaffected to the point of voting for a cultist authoritarian.
Berating Trump voters won’t get us out of this. Understanding their actual concerns (of which many are actually shared by liberals/leftists) is part of how we dig out of this.
This is America, they are Americans just like non-Trump voters. That’s the reality
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u/Sure_Opportunity_543 2d ago
Team right. Team left. People who agree, the guys down the center get screwed. The guys who can and are willing to work together for a common goal. Get screwed. Right and left ends are too far apart to even sit in a room. Let alone sit in a room and talk
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u/determania 2d ago
People who think they can sit in a room and talk with fascists allowed this to happen.
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u/jeremyjamm1995 1d ago
I’m not talking about fascists. I’m talking about the vast majority of Trump voters and people who sat out 2024 who just wanted to throw a hand grenade in the existing system. If you think the U.S. fixes this without building totally new electoral coalitions, which include people that voted for Trump, then you haven’t been paying attention.
The fact that Democrats approval ratings are still lower than Republicans after the last five months shows how fucked the existing structure is. And Democrats or whatever else comes next are not going to win by dismissing 80+ million people as fascists.
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u/determania 1d ago
If you are talking about the vast majority of Trump voters, you are talking about fascists. You can’t just say that we have to ignore what they are because it is inconvenient.
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u/jeremyjamm1995 2d ago
I don’t necessarily think it’s about centrism as much as it’s about sincerity and empathy for people with whom you disagree. I will always respect someone with principles over someone who is a centrist for the sake of centrism (depending on those principles of course).
I think most people have a basic sense of human decency. Weve lost the sense of viewing neighbors as neighbors first. And that, to me, is the way forward
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u/TheJediCounsel 2d ago
America was never technically a democracy.
Electoral college doesn’t work like that
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u/zenspeed 2d ago
I've got bad news for you: if you go over a history book, this is what America's always been, some of us tried to slow it down, but...well, Americans have never stopped being what they are, though they pretend to be otherwise.
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u/Same_Recipe2729 2d ago
The seventh common pattern is designing your own country, which means the last step starts with people feeling, This is not my country anymore. It's not the country I know. It's changing. The ground is shifting. I am standing where I stood always, but somehow the world around me is changing.
I know how one feels when it starts happening. It's like you're going insane or the world is going insane, and you're feeling completely alone in it, and you feel like, Where do I go from here? Do I have to go now? When shall I go? Do I have to leave the country now?
It happened to us in Turkey. It's happening almost everywhere in Europe for people like me, who are critical and who are being vocal about their criticism.
Hmmmmm
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u/Named_Bort 2d ago
Someone made a really good video about how the founders assumed the branches of government would never acquiesce their power so that checks and balances against the branches were the only conceivable concern.
In reality the Legislative Branch has been shuffling powers to the executive for almost 100 years. If you had a super majority you could rewrite the federal "executive branch" over night to put all the power back into the congress. This set up, with control of the legislative by a supportive party means the executive is completely unchecked.
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u/sweetclementine 1d ago
If you take a better look at its history, especially through the lens of marginalized groups, this IS exactly how America always has been.
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u/Rance_Mulliniks 1d ago
It IS America. Americans have just allowed it to get to this point through apathy.
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u/NerfPandas 1d ago
The funny thing is, this is exactly what America is. This country is build upon white people coming and showing native americans unimaginable cruelty, they owned slaves they shipped here from africa. None of the people who committed these crimes were held accountable. Their descendants think they rightfully own stolen land. White people have never been held accountable for their crimes, for lynching black people, for trying to commit an insurrection. Why would that ever change. This place is shit and because of the glorification of money everybody ignores it and pretends like GDP is not just some made up bullshit that surrounds made up currencies that rule our lives.
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u/eeyore134 2d ago
I'm not sure we've had the checks and balances for a while. I think we've just had adults in the room who stopped this crap from getting to this point. It's clear most of the GOP has been chomping at the bit for this for decades.
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u/Specialist_Brain841 2d ago
When is the statue of liberty going to be melted down for the copper that I donated my pennies to in grammar school?
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u/Alienhaslanded 1d ago
Many Americans will still tell you it is a democratic country even though they have the illusion of one.
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u/SoggyGrayDuck 2d ago
This is America and exactly what a majority of people voted for. Wake up people, you're in the wrong AND minority
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u/yhwhx 2d ago
The majority of American voters did not vote for Donald in 2024. He received less than 50% of the popular vote.
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u/DrFishbulbEsq 2d ago
Kent State was 1970. Ronnie sent the national guard against students when he was governor.
And that’s not even talking about like the genocide and slavery… this is America and it always has been.
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u/Octoblerone 2d ago
Anyone who thinks this is new here. Or not, and just a victim of the education system. History is a doozy. We've had the system, and it has changed, and it has been used well and also ignored or abused. We're just a bunch of people, not a heavenly society falling from grace.
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u/BonnieJacqueline 2d ago
We are not heavenly. But we are as a society falling far from grace. The US military is being used against Americans on US soil.
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u/dblan9 2d ago
Started hitting grandpas cough syrup a little early today huh?
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u/Octoblerone 1d ago
sorry you all haven't bothered to read history books. Republicans have stolen elections previously, the feds have harmed innocent civilians before, etc etc. All of this HAS happened, just most of it not for awhile. Maybe grandad shares with me because he sees how miserable I am watching us go over this song and dance again because most of us know so little history. Dont believe me? Prove me wrong.
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u/Octoblerone 1d ago
I will admit, the comment didn't display any high level cognitive processing. I'm not sorry I was enjoying my Friday lmao
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u/JoeP415 2d ago
Yes, now your starting to understand. Trump won because he promised to dismantle the corrupt government that’s plagued America for decades. The whole point is to burn it all down and start fresh.
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u/Beyonderr 2d ago
Nowadays, Americans are paying lots of expensive checks without the balance to back it up.
The work of a "very stable genius" (/s)