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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   33693 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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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.

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