How Does That Democracy Thing Work Again???

Posted on by under Election 2024, Global Issues, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

The United States could take a lesson from Brazil.  Today the Supreme Court in Brazil voted to ban Jair Bolsonaro from running for president for the next eight years for making claims he knew were false about the integrity of the nation’s voting systems.  Like a certain ex-president here in the U.S., Bolsonaro, who lost his bid for re-election last year, claimed that it was fraud and flaws in the election system that caused him to lose.  His claims led to an insurrection on January 8th when his supporters stormed the Presidential Palace, Congress, and Supreme Court in hopes of overturning Bolsonaro’s loss.  Sound familiar?

In the ruling, presiding Judge Benedito Gonçalves wrote that the former president “was fully, personally responsible” for attacking the electoral system and “violated his duties as a president”.  They make it sounds so simple, right?  And it should be simple … Donald Trump did far worse than what Bolsonaro did … Trump has spent more than two years inciting violence, claiming mass voter fraud despite all the evidence to the contrary, and has praised those who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, 2021, causing murder and mayhem.  And yet … he is being allowed to run again next year and is, for some reason beyond my ability to understand, the front runner for the Republican Party.  Donald Trump also was fully, personally responsible and violated his duties as a president, but he is treated like some sort of a hero rather than the criminal he is.  It is said that even if he is convicted on the charges of seditious conspiracy and goes to prison, he will still be allowed to be on the ballot next year.  Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this picture?

Would our Supreme Court ever have the cojones to bar him from running again for eight years?  HAH!!!  Our Supreme Court doesn’t even have the cojones to uphold rights for minorities, but instead has caved time and time again to the white evangelical bigots!  Points in case are the overturning of Roe v Wade last year, stripping women of the right to make their own healthcare decisions, yesterday’s decision in the case of Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard that gutted affirmative action, and today’s decision in the case of 303 Creative LLC v Elenis that gives people the ‘right’ to discriminate against the LGBTQ community if they are against serving gay people based on their religion.  Each of these decisions strip away the rights of one group or another, the common thread being bigotry.

In global rankings that measure democracy, the United States fell last year from a previous ranking of 32nd to 41st, worldwide, and is now considered a ‘flawed democracy’.  By comparison, the United Kingdom is ranked at #11 and is considered a ‘working democracy’.  Is it any wonder?  We take away the rights of women, Blacks/Hispanics/Asians, and the LGBTQ community, while at the same time glorifying a horrible ‘man’ who has torn this nation apart with his lies.

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26 thoughts on “How Does That Democracy Thing Work Again???”

    • The thinking, I imagine, is that the nation will have moved on by the time the 8 years is up and Bolsonaro will no longer have the following he has today. I hope they’re right. I just wish we could bar Trump from running for the next 8 years, for he’d likely be dead by that time! But apparently Brazil takes democracy more seriously than the U.S.

      Liked by 2 people

  2. Jill, thanks for sharing this. Not only have we fallen in the ranks of democracy, people are unable to pick out the US in economic distribution charts , as we do not look very egalitarian and have far too many at or beneath the poverty line. And, just to show the future is is of concern, we rank 23rd and 27th in math and science in schools and have greater debt than we can handle.

    These are not recipes for American exceptionalism which has long been a misnomer. In the books “That used to be us” by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum and “The world is curved” by David Schmick, we have forgotten basic principles that fueled whatever greatness we achieved. Pooling multiple public and private investment sources to fund major things, embracing a productive, fair and easy to use patent system, welcoming immigrants who are more innovative and entrepreneurial than the average incumbent, investing in education to train and attract innovators are just a few.

    We spend too much time on blocking growth than enabling it. We spend too much time restricting the rights of some citizens rather than giving opportunity. The best leaders, in the view of these authors, help open markets and fuel the economy. Commerce can lift many boats with greater opportunities. Its absence can kill off the vibrance of communities.

    Keith

    Liked by 2 people

    • You are so right that where we stand today is not in keeping with ‘exceptionalism’ or a ‘great’ nation. But then again, no nation on the planet is ‘great’, for they all have flaws, being run and populated by humans who are flawed. But at one time, we did have a lot going for us, the government worked for the people and for the most part it was a decent place to live, to raise a family. Today, though, I find more wrong than right. Far too many of our politicians fail the ‘adult’ test, bigotry in all forms is on the rise, we are downgrading education, the highest court in the land is compromised, we have a very serious gun problem that is not being addressed, and violence seems to be the answer many people turn to whenever they are not satisfied with someone or something. If I had the magic wand, I would start with a housecleaning in Congress and the Supreme Court, then teach people love and acceptance rather than hate and violence. But alas, my magic wand got lost in the mail!

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  3. Despite being ranked at 11, the UK doesn’t currently have a real working democracy, as the present government has a unusually large majority that means it can pass almost any law it sees fit to invent. Our system can work well sometimes, but when you combine a party of rich people with such a powerful mandate, you get a situation that can only be reversed by another General Election. Naturally, the Conservatives are going to hang on until the time that becomes mandatory.
    Best wishes, Pete.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Sigh. Your problems are similar to our own, though at least your politicos have a bit more … um … decency? Intelligence? Decorum? All of the above? No system is perfect, but more and more ours seems to be falling below the mid-point … I hope yours rights itself before that happens there.

      Liked by 2 people

  4. And, based off of what’s posted here, the U.S., is, way less, democratic than Brazil, and the U,S, should BAR any former president who’d ever had an indictment charge against her/him to run for presidency again, to ensure, that there aren’t any risk of, corruption happening in the government…

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    • I fully agree! No person who has been convicted of a felony of any sort should be allowed to hold public office! The funny part is, you couldn’t be considered for a lower level federal job with a felony conviction, but you could run for president! What sense does that make???

      Liked by 1 person

  5. I noticed that Sweden, my native country, was #4, the UK #17 and the US #36 on the democracy matrix (2020).
    https://www.democracymatrix.com/ranking
    I did not find your list. But anyway, since I came here I’ve seen the democracy continuously worsening. I hope the trend will turn. You are right, it is not just Brazil. Heads of state are held accountable for crimes and bad behavior the world over. It seems like Trump is an exception in the entire world. It’s like having a mafia boss as the leader of a party.

    Some misinformed people may say, United States is not a Democracy, it is a Republic. It is both, or trying to be. There are a lot of Representative Democratic Republics around the world including the United States and they are all Democracies.

    Liked by 3 people

    • Different organizations will come up with somewhat different figures, but the trend is the same. We are losing ground. Bottom line is that the U.S. is can no longer lay claim to “leader of the free world”, if in fact it ever actually deserved that title. The trend toward a less democratic system and leaning toward an authoritarian one will only change when the people of this nation open their eyes and stop praising those with the loudest voices who make promises they could not possibly keep … at least not under a democratic system. It almost feels as if nearly half the people of this nation no longer value democratic principles, but would prefer an autocrat in the White House. Trump does indeed often remind me of a mafia boss!

      Technically, the U.S. is a democratic republic. It is not a full-blown democracy, but has strong democratic underpinnings as per the Constitution. But today, even the Supreme Court is chipping away at those underpinnings, at the very foundation of the democracy. Where this ends is anybody’s guess, but I have nightmares about where it appears to be heading.

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  7. Again, increbible! This Court is so compirmised! I normally hate the word douls becsuse of its religioys overtones, but see as this Court is being religious in its decisions. the douls of 6 jystices are blsvker than sin and headed straight to hell, which I do not believe in either.
    “LET THEM BURN! LET THEM BURN! LET THEM BURN!”

    Liked by 4 people

  8. So the time has come for All Good Men and True to stand firm at the ballot box and show the GOP just how beneath contempt they are and allow a Democrat Majority to work on sorting out the mess the Supreme Court are making of Justice. Hugs

    Liked by 5 people

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