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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   33714 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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That is cynicism gone too far. People care about living in a democracy because democracy appears to work better than the alternatives. I'd rather live in a democracy than a dictatorship whose policies match my beliefs, because in the latter case, if the government changes, I'll have no recourse. Do you think that is so unusual as a position?

You also have no recourse in a democracy -- if Trump does in fact enact Gay-O-Caust in the next four years, there won't be anything you personally can do about it. If this turns out to be a popular policy, there won't be anything anyone can do about it.

You also have no recourse in a democracy

There's a huge difference between tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of an actual tyrant. For one thing, the tyranny of the majority requires the majority of people to actually want these things. For another thing, it's a lot easier to change public opinion than it is to change one person's mind.

There's also, you know, a large number of legal systems that do ostensibly prevent Trump from just killing everyone who is gay - if he gave that order on his first day of office, I think people would just laugh nervously. Conversely, when Hitler said it, the Germans built concentration camps.

Even if people are pro Gay-o-Caust, a lot of them are going to be less enthusiastic about "dismantle our entire system of legal protections and install a dictator."

But supposing that we do get to the point that all of that happens... then I'm not living in a democracy. The worst possible failure state of a democracy is simply that we vote to stop having one. Maybe it's not quite so formal, but realistically the Gay-o-Caust can't happen until we're already living in a dictatorship.

You are confusing 'liberalist state with robust rule of law' with 'democracy' -- the two are pretty orthogonal, although in practice they are often seen together these days due to accidents of history.

To some degree - but the ability to sway popular opinion and thus affect the outcome of a vote is pure Democracy.

Yes, and those options are equally available to good and bad people alike -- indeed I suspect that Bad People are usually a little better at them.

I never said otherwise. I just said that democracy offers more avenues for recourse than a dictatorship. The bullet box is available regardless of government. The ballot box is unique to democracy.

I do not think it is an accident that countries with the ballot box also exhibit the other protections I mentioned. Democracy certainly isn't sufficient, and it might not technically even be required, but it certainly seems to help.

What do you mean? I can vote against him and campaign against him. Maybe I'll stand for office, I think my 'Stop the Gay-o-Caust' messaging would be quite popular. That is all the recourse I am entitled to.

For real? If a plurality of Americans vote for a guy who is literally putting gay people in camps and gassing them, you wouldn't think that you were entitled to any further recourse than at the ballot box?

Fascinating.

Legally, yeah.

So since you have approximately no recourse either way, wouldn't a dictatorship that matches your beliefs be better for you? (probably other people too -- you seem compassionate and normal enough)

I'm torn! In this thought experiment the dictatorship still has a majority population that is bent on genocide and they may get their way in time (else the dictator may have to genocide them to maintain power). But anyway, you can't go from 'prefers a benevolent dictatorship to a genocidal democracy' to 'doesn't care about democracy at all'. I didn't say democracy was the ultimate and only value I have, I just don't agree that no one cares about it.

Interesting because most people in my filter bubble would take- well not the gay-o-caust, but maybe door to door gun confiscations or serious infringements on the 1a or something like that- to mean the constitution has lost the mandate of heaven(they wouldn’t use those words) and therefore it becomes legal to open fire on government officials acting under orders because there’s no social contract anymore.

Would they actually do it? I dunno. Probably most wouldn’t. But equally, if the government actually did enact robust hate speech laws or something, they wouldn’t inform on people who did.

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