Most Westerners are drilled from a young age to only ever think of democracy as an outcome, and to never question its outcomes so long as the process looks okay.
And for good reason. All across the Western world people are facing the same problems of housing crises, incredible inequality, real wages stagnating, homelessness, and erosion of social services due to austerity. If any non-indoctrinated person looked at these outcomes only to see the same neoliberal technocrats playing with fractions of percentage points as "solutions", they would likely conclude that the political system as a whole is broken.
Yeah. It's bewildering. One example is how "democracy" and "multiple parties" are considered synonymous, since they exist in wholesome liberal democracies (pls ignore dominant party states like Japan and Malaysia). We here know what load of rot that is but Redditors are always ready to bust it out as a thought-cancelling cliche against any notions of Chinese/Cuban/Soviet Democracy. Which is odd since another common sentiment I see on Reddit is "George Washington was right, partisan fighting is going to destroy us".
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"If anything, that proves we are more democratic because at least we aren't afraid to question our government."
God I hate that argument. So what they're basically saying is a government's only legitimate if people hate its guts?
You know your government is democratic when everyone is miserable and sad all the time, because that's what compromise looks like.
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It’s the enlightened centrist mindset. The only correct position is the one that everyone hates the most
No. If the Chinese hated their government, that would be proof that they're tired of their illegitimate government. :parenti:
No matter what they say or do, the propaganda machine will spin it into something worth condemning.
Yes. When you're so infused with Capitalist Realism and American Exceptionalism, any possible alternative is simply non-existent.
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No, you see the fact that public opinion has no correlation with policy outcome means that the checks and balances are working
By a large margin, too.
Most Westerners are drilled from a young age to only ever think of democracy as an outcome, and to never question its outcomes so long as the process looks okay.
And for good reason. All across the Western world people are facing the same problems of housing crises, incredible inequality, real wages stagnating, homelessness, and erosion of social services due to austerity. If any non-indoctrinated person looked at these outcomes only to see the same neoliberal technocrats playing with fractions of percentage points as "solutions", they would likely conclude that the political system as a whole is broken.
Not even. We're taught to recognize correlates of democracy and then think dogmatically about those.
Yeah. It's bewildering. One example is how "democracy" and "multiple parties" are considered synonymous, since they exist in wholesome liberal democracies (pls ignore dominant party states like Japan and Malaysia). We here know what load of rot that is but Redditors are always ready to bust it out as a thought-cancelling cliche against any notions of Chinese/Cuban/Soviet Democracy. Which is odd since another common sentiment I see on Reddit is "George Washington was right, partisan fighting is going to destroy us".