Will Bunch expresses what I’ve been thinking since Trump was elected. American democracy is under attack from within. The fascists who yearn for an authoritarian government in the media are promoting it, and the media who supposedly don’t support it fail to recognize it. They are busy trying to follow the political playbook of the 20th century.
Both questionable statements, considering massive systematic voter suppression that has been going on for decades, and also on account of the US political system, not least first-past-the-post and the electoral college, your vote may easily end up not mattering at all (as compared to countries with proportional representation).
Sure. But it’s not like they announce the election results before the election. Not everyone’s votes count, and there’s a lot of bullshit, but the results are still fundamentally influenced by the voting. That’s “flawed democracy” vs. “pretend democracy”.
The difference is that occasionally you can get upsets like the Roy Moore vs. Doug Jones election. Even with all the knobs and levers twisted to give Moore every advantage possible, the allegations that Moore had been having sex with numerous underage girls was enough to derail his run. In a properly functioning system it shouldn’t have even been close. But, in the end, it was very close.
I don’t think we have to get even as far as the technically-legal but obviously shady as fuck outcomes like this, but just look at the last presidential election. Our votes only mattered because they didn’t manage to get away with ignoring them, and that’s largely just because a couple of people found the barest of morals and they were rampantly incompetent.