345
Has the USA turned into an oligarchy?
(lemmy.zip)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 01 Jan 2025
345 points (95.3% liked)
No Stupid Questions
36280 readers
1460 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I mean, no country truely had 10/10 democracy.
The US literally started out from people in chains, but eventually free the enslaved people (with the prison exemption), then black men could vote, then women.
Segregation was legal, then it it was outlawed.
Civil Right Act was passed
The level of racism began to deminish, not completely gone, but deminishing
I would say the US was at 1/10 democracy at the beginning, it was at 5/10 before trump, then it was at 4/10 right after Jan-6, now its at 4.25/10 (because some judicial appointments were made by biden as a counterbalance to republican judges).
Is it an oligarchy? Not really. I would say it's a democracy in which rich people have an advantage in money and influence. So I guess you could call it a semi-oligarchy. Because in a real oligarchy, the media would've been censored, and you wouldn't be seeing my comment, you wouldn't be able to ask such question, there'd be no free(ish) internet access. There's be no somewhat protected union activity. There's be no somewhat protected protests. There are often violations to those rights, but back then, it was way worse.
We never really had a true 10/10 democracy, but as time goes on, it tends to trend toward becoming more democratic. (We'll see what happens with Project 2025. Could be just another period of recession as it has happened many times throughout US history, or it could be Weimar 1933, only time will tell)
I'm here hoping to any god that is watching that Project 2025 becomes something like a dog catching the car situation. The Republicans are the dogs and now they are arguing amongst themselves what to do with the car.
I'm planning as if Project 2025 goes forward. If civil war is in my lifetime, the shots will start with the alt-right.
There is a quote that's been ringing through my head ever since the CEO murder: "Those who make peaceful reform impossible make violent revolution inevitable."
The Republicans have made any meaningful reform impossible through half-assed negotiations, bad faith arguments, and "fEeLiNgS pOlItIcS" over the last 50 years.
Democrats like AOC and politicians like Bernie are the acute minority. The DNC has moved more toward the right and given workers the middle finger.
Almost every regulatory body has been captured. The overturn of the Chevron doctrine made the rest completely powerless. We now have a fucking lunatic whispering into Trump's ear to remove accident reporting requirements for his shitty cars. We will have an anti-vaxer running the CDC, a supplement pushing hack running Medicare, and a man who overpaid for Twitter running the fucking "Department of Government Efficacy."
This is the tip of the iceberg. They aren't even in office yet and they are already stirring shit.
Agree. Though the felt level of democracy and freedom seems pretty low. A lot of people feel disadvantaged. People are getting ripped off for example with healthcare payments by the (rich) establishment. I hear a lot of complaints here for example you absolutely need a VPN because all internet service providers spy on you. There seems always to be a choice, but a fake one. In the end, it's all the same and you can't really choosse anything but the label that gets slapped on. Same for the politicians. You have like 2 candidates to vote for. Probably neither of those does you any good. And they're both part of the oligarchy and they put in quite some effort to not offer you any third option.