Breaking 1-06-21: MAGA terrorist attack on Capitol

This! You can't let the leader of an insurrection and coup go free while prosecuting the troops following his orders to storm!

 

I thought that way 4 years ago. But what I am seeing, is a degradation of the election system. It's under attack at all levels by those who are willing to bend rules and integrity for a short term win. The fact that there is any erosion is disturbing.

 

We did survive a civil war. Yet, even during the civil war we didn't have leaders trying to undermine the democracy and a mass effort to discredit and cause disbelief in our Democratic system.

Certainly the Civil War was a greater immediate threat to the survival of a United Union, but that doesn't mean this isn't a real and dangerous threat to our democracy.

 

well to paraphrase Tom Robbins in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, the situation is, as usual, desperate

 

A big part of what makes a democracy work and not be a Russia or banana republic is that people believe elections are fair and that officials do not try to tamper with results.

That used to be true in the US. it's not any longer. A big chunk of this country believes that if their man loses, the election must be fraud, and officials should do whatever it takes to overturn the result. We also see officials working to game the system to help their candidates win more and more. Gerrymandering was bad enough, but we've gone to levels that are making a mockery of the very notion of free and fair elections.

These are dangerous times.

 

But this goes beyond run-of-the-mill political manufactured crisis.

 

I think the bigger crisis is the threat to basic freedoms such as free speech

 

I think that may a bigger issue, but it isn't currently as in much peril as democracy itself. The more immediate threat is to our democracy.

 

Once you lose true democracy (and we're already an unsteady kind of oligarchy), free speech won't be far behind.

Like,... you completely "free" Twitter and Facebook, free garbage of Medieval-thinking counterfactual swill, but get another version of Trump, and that person would soon ban criticism of their kingsomeness. Whoops.

 

Once democracy goes, free speech dies quickly. We've seen it with Trump - express any idea contrary to his, and he takes revenge in all sorts of ways.

Once you are able to fix elections and hold onto power, you've already abused it, and will continue to abuse it, including degrading all human rights free speech being the first. This playbook is well defined, and any American who believes that we're immune from that doesn't know history nor understand humanity.

All these things with Twitter are a red herring. What conservatives mean by free speech, is the freedom to spread propaganda and lies to manipulate people so they can consolidate power and have a greater hold on it.

Our biggest problem aren't comics getting blasted for their stances on LBGTQ, it's the amount of money being used to undermine the truth and how effective those efforts have been.

 

I think you have that exactly backwards. Once you lose free speech, democracy won't be far behind.

 

It can be either or.

 

Actually it works either way. One is dependent on the other. Corrupt democracy, bye bye free speech.

But both are happening. While the right focuses on "cancel culture", the Republican party is attacking actual free speech. Restrictions on peaceful assembly have been done in 20 states in the last year alone. This including giving immunity to drivers who hit protestors - meaning there's a green light now to run into people.

The attack on free thinking on Universities is ominous. Any discussion of race or social justice is being banned, and university professors and students are being polled by the gov't for their views - if that's not a step towards 1984, I don't know what is.

 

You can lose democracy before you lose free speech or vice versa. Right now, democracy is in more jeopardy. If free speech still exists and our democracy is no longer in existence, then free speech will fall rather quickly. If free speech goes away first, it will be hard to maintain a legitimate democracy for any length of time as well.

 

You can have free speech without democracy. Pretty hard to run that experiment the other way around.

 

Give a historical example. An example of how a country operates outside of a democracy while providing free speech in which you'd be content to live in it's historical setting.

 

https://lawreview.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/49/1/Articles/49-1_Bhagwat.pdf

 

I gotta disagree on this statement here. There's no instance of free speech without democracy. In non-democratic systems, free speech is a threat and quickly snuffed out.

But you can have democracy without free speech. Indonesia is an example. It turned into a democracy after the overthrow of Suharto, but it took longer for speech laws to be freed up, and even to this day there are blasphemy laws restricting free speech. But it is a democracy.

Once a democracy is dead, it's easy enough for those in power to end free speech. Again, just look how easily DeSantis is restricting free speech in Florida.

 

So, selective free speech from autocratic leaders is what you'd favor over the current status quo? And you'd favor living in these three countries over your current present situation?



I'm more interested in why you think it'd be better to live in modern day Communist China, modern Qater and the USSR during the Glasnost era under Mikhail Gorbachev. I mean I did ask you specifically to cite non-democratic countries you'd be content living in given their historical setting. This is what you link.

 

and you'd like to put words in my mouth? or make assumptions about where I want to live?