The one thing great about being an American (USA) was the ability to do better as a democracy. Was that trust misplaced, are we nothing more than murderous colonialists?
Yes.
The shocking truth is that the US is just one of many, many, many democracies. There’s nothing uniquely American about democracy.
The American system was based on the French implementation, which in turn was based on the British implementation.
What is unique about American democracy is the scale. The biggest issue that America has is that the current incarnation is not fit for purpose - it’s a system that when used like it is, creates massive vote inequality, gives some “elected officials” what amounts to jobs for life and spreads blame so thin that (heaven forbid!) should someone try to create a dictatorship, it would be very hard to stop it.
It was never really that much of a democracy.
Unfair. The USA is treating its own citizens awful as well.
Sigh… that’s fuckin’ true isn’t it?
The US has never been a democracy, it’s always been a genocidal settler-colonial project under a dictatorship of capital. Currently, it’s the world’s largest and most brutal empire.
I’m not an US citizen, never been in the US. But as far as I know, your country never was a real nice place. Slaves, first nations, Mexico, Hawaii, Tuskegee (and Guatemala), Condor Operation, Camboja, Palestine… The list goes on, and on, and on…
Of course I don’t blame the everyday citizen, but your rulers are terrible for the rest of the world, since ever, and the people are blinded to it. And about democracy, the electoral college system is pretty much the opposite of democracy IMHO, and the most powerful force driving the country is not what people needs or want, is money (and capitalism).
(Again, IMHO) The US image outside its borders is not “inspiring”, it is terrifying.
Name your country…
Edit: i dare you
Brazil, does it make any difference?
You could say it started with Eisenhower lying about a U2 spyplane being a normal weather flight, then Khrushchev producing the pilot and exposing the truth of the espionage campaign. Supposedly, the U.S. more or less trusted its government up to that point, but that big lie started deflating the post-WWII belief in an honest democracy.
If you watch old movies from the 1940s and even into the 1950s, you will find a substantial number where “Rule of Law” and general ethics were central and critical parts of the story. The populace expected liars, cheats, and scoundrels would be outed, convicted where there was crime and ostracized where there was not. Of course there have always been greedy bosses, but the U.S. has vacillated between imposing extreme taxes and regulations to doing nothing at all about social imbalance.
Most recently, everything got disrupted by Citizens United wherein the Supreme Court ruled that money is speech. Money is the opposite of speech. Money is power. The point of Constitutional ‘free speech’ was that speech be allowed despite a lack of power and influence – not because of it.
In the aftermath of Citizens United, the ultra-rich have swayed the elections of judges and politicians with special attention to given to writing policies and eliminating restrictions. This was made easier by earlier elimination of the fairness doctrine and the 1996 Telcom Act that loosened limits on how many news outlets an entity could own. (extra info)
– But no, it was NOT naive way back when. The U.S. used to be a country that would (generally) hold bad actors to account. Nixon resigned when impeached because he understood that he could not lead after being caught. Trump knew he could lead despite his crimes. Perhaps we’d have been better off in Nixon had remained president such that the country would have been forced to take action back then.
