alt Hacker NewsUS is in almost no way democratic. There is not enough unity for that. The idea and reasoning behind Democracy was that a people (i.e. a demos) rules itself. But in US there is no longer one people, and it's fracturing even faster and more.
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prasadjoglekar • today at 7:03 AM
All the more reason to let states and local governments do more. Rather than a unitary congress or executive that only 1/2 the people (+/-) like.
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psychoslave • today at 7:09 AM
There is not much example of actual democracy at scale though. Even Switzerland which is often cited as the closest form of actual democratic governance is still not ticking all of the basics of a democratic checklist.
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I don't think it's helpful to be flippant in this analysis. The US falls in the category of flawed democracies, together with Botswana, Indonesia, India, Mongolia, Philippines, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, and many other countries with, shall we say, significant potential for development.
I don't think anybody who has actually lived under a pre-democratic regime would call the US "no way democratic". There are many democratic aspects of the US, and it has reasonably strong institutions. But it seems that most Americans have not yet realized what category they're in, and think that the US is some kind of front-runner.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economist_Democracy_Index