E.A.Poe had similar concerns. He called the then hypothetical president “King Mob”. On the other hand, he was a fan of Andrew Jackson.
Conversely, as democracy is perverted by moneyed interests, government will more and more resemble the will of the short sighted shareholders obsessed with the next quarterly gains. Leading to a useful idiot government selling the country to corporations through regulatory capture and privatization.
That’s what happened in the real world. Not the will of the broader populace, but the will of the few people who pay the politicians in charge of both parties.
If only us North American scum could perceive this idea of proportional representation.
What about the Northern peoples? Sadly I think they may be voting for the wannabe Trump. I really hope not.
Well, us Kiwis are following not that far behind and catching up quickly.
What a dumb thing to say. Australia has the same things said about it, yet we aspire to be closer to the NZ system. Neither of us is anywhere close to the disaster of US politics. It would take fundamental changes to our voting laws to “catch up” to them.
That’s what we thought.
implying that an election to choose a single representative for 300 million people with a 2-horse race is particularly democratic
Yep, America has only ever had the least democratic system that can possibly exist before it’s essentially classified as a dictatorship… and Americans are like “peak freedom”. Lol. No wonder it’s a failed fucking state.
Hnngh hnngh yes yes quite the unwashed masses need to be kept far from power hmm yes Tallyho good man hmm hmm.
Honestly, Trump isn’t that much dumber than most presidents. He actually understood how to break the system, mostly because he wasn’t clouded by love for it. I wouldn’t call him a mastermind, but he has better political instincts than anyone. He’s an idiot, but he’s fully aware what he’s doing.
Mencken had a lot of good one liners
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
If the purpose of a system is what it does, then it seems the purpose of democracy is the self flagellation of the masses.
holy crap and that was before nixon.
Nixon was smart and ruthless.
Evil, sure, and an alcoholic, but no moron.
What kind of antidemocratic horseshit is this?
Can you describe what about this quote is antidemocratic?
It states that in a perfect democracy, the masses would elect morons because they themselves are morons.
Yes.
“Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.” - George Carlin
It’s a fucking joke. And what about that is antidemocratic?
It implies that the people are too dumb to govern themselves; that as they get get closer to a perfect democracy, the choose dumber leaders.
It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Perfect representation would actually by sortition (selection of public office by jury duty type random selection), but that scares people because “I don’t want just anybody to be in power” but that doesn’t stop people who should from getting it
Implies? It’s not exactly very subtle about it. The joke is how unfortunately prophetic it is.
Prophetic because it calls people stupid after an undemocratic election?
Sadly it wasn’t exactly wholly undemocratic. It wasn’t even what you could call close. There were attempts voter suppression and intimidation, but in the end voter apathy won out. I don’t think there’s anything dumber than choosing not to vote in such an important election, but that choice in itself was a vote.
Apparently it’s too subtle for anyone who didn’t interpret it as antidemocratic.
The joke is how unfortunately prophetic it is.
Do you think the US is meaningfully democratic? When’s the last time any leader did something that favored the people over capital?
I feel like the quote has gone over your head just a tad. The joke/quote is saying as time progresses people will continue to vote against their own best interest and eventually elect someone as moronic as the common people. And well here we are. It’s been a long time in coming yes, we’ve gone through a number of presidents who progressively did less and less in the interests of the people till we got here and elected the absolute worst person with only self interest at heart.
You think that the US is actually a perfect democracy, that’s sweet.
No not at all, hence why I’m not antidemocratic. Democracy didn’t give us Trump, the dictatorship of capital did.
The US is not a perfect democracy lol. I’d hardly even call it an imperfect one, atleast for the working class.
Did you even read the quote
he is the quote
Did I misunderstand it? He is claiming that in a perfect democracy the leader would eventually be an idiot because the people are idiots no?
I’m claiming that thats a stupid fucking way to view society and that it isn’t even close to being reflective of our reality.
Lotta scratched liberals around these days.
