Not really. Compromise and nuance have always been necessary features of democracies. This has also frequently been seized upon by autocratic apologists with this framing (“it’s actually worse here because of our idealism!”) and yet autocracies remain reliably worse off than democracies in practice.
It’s actually not a sign of intelligence or honesty to be able to squint so hard that you see no meaningful differences between e.g. the US and Russia/Iran/China. It’s just called closing your eyes.
Did American citizens directly vote for the level of imprisonment in the country?
The game is rigged: any political system that allows any voting at all can be "accurately" described as "being democratic", and this (especially when combined with non-stop supplemental propaganda) is more than adequate to satisfy the heuristic based thinking of most people (and to pull the wool over their eyes).
Noteworthy: who sets educational curriculum (which is what enables people to think skilfully about such things) in schools in "democracies"? How likely does it seem that among thousands of people over decades, no one connected to the department of education noticed that the basic skills for practicing critical thinking are not contained within K-12 curriculum?
Directly voting on laws is neither necessary nor ideal for a democracy.
Again, squinting too hard. American democracy is extremely flawed, yes, but no that doesn't make every other self-proclaimed democracy actually the same.
Your noteworthy note is not that noteworthy. Curricula are almost entirely controlled by state and local school boards. The federal DOE has extremely limited requirements by design to prevent the exact thing you're accusing them of doing.
Thank you for sharing your opinion! It's not a very commonly held view or intuition that directly voting on policy is a prerequisite for democracy. Of course you can use whatever exotic definitions you want to trick yourself into believing you've won an argument, but it will do nothing in terms of actually creating the type of world you'd like.
I don't think we'll see eye to eye on this and that's okay.
> Directly voting on laws is neither necessary nor ideal for a democracy.
a) That depends on which subjective definition you are using, and also whether you realize your definitions are subjective.
b) It isn't possible for you to know what is "necessary" or "ideal", thus you are speculating.
> Again, squinting too hard.
Speaking (and perhaps even thinking) in popular but misinformative catchphrases may not be ideal.
> American democracy is extremely flawed, yes, but no that doesn't make every other self-proclaimed democracy actually the same.
This is true if considered independently (not in the context of this conversation), but what is the "but no" part referring to?
> Your noteworthy note is not that noteworthy.
Your subjective opinion appearing to you as an objective fact is noteworthy.
> Curricula are almost entirely controlled by state and local school boards.
There is how things are supposed to work, there is how things are claimed to work, and then there is how things actually work (and even this is a substantial simplification). Talking about that last one is...culturally frowned upon.
> The federal DOE has extremely limited requirements by design to prevent the exact thing you're accusing them of doing.
Maybe this is part of the problem!
Regardless: I think it is time the public stopped taking all this nonsense lying down, and behaving as if we are helpless observers trapped in a stream of reality in which we have and can have no control over.
From below:
>> Thank you for sharing your opinion!
Very interesting. Is this interesting to you?
> I don't think we'll see eye to eye on this and that's okay.
When you say "that's okay", what is it you are referring to? Reality?
Democratic, rules based order, freedom: all words used to paint oneself in the good and others in the back. They barely have meaning in political discourse nowadays.
Go to Qatar and strike up a conversation like the ones that are had millions of times per day in the US about how awful/incompetent/evil/illegitimate the government is.
It's you who is degrading the meaning of these things. You can go experience the difference for yourself.
> Go to Qatar and strike up a conversation like the ones that are had millions of times per day in the US about how awful/incompetent/evil/illegitimate the government is.
What is the point of this with respect to the comment it is replying to? Is it intended to be a disproof of some kind?
And while we're at that (comparing Qatar to the US), should we also consider other metrics? Like, oh, I don't know...say Total Body Count on the International Stage? I'm fairly certain being alive is at least as important to most people as Freedom of Speech.
> It's you who is degrading the meaning of these things.
Appeals to the perfection of one's own cognition are getting a bit old. It's 2024 ffs.
> You can go experience the difference for yourself.
Realistically, most people are mostly stuck where they are, and I would rather not engage in illusory thinking about the quality of my country to make myself feel better. But of course, each to his own.
Uhh yes, it's to say there are actually real, practical differences in daily life between countries on the dimension of "freedom" and that these are not merely artifacts of one's own cognition or of rhetorical gotchas. They do not "barely have meaning" and one can travel to various places on the earth and try simple experiments to prove it.
Absolutely wild to be saying "go travel and try to exercise a freedom there" is seen as an appeal to cognition while "I would rather not engage in illusory thinking" is... what exactly?
> ...and that these are not merely artifacts of one's own cognition or of rhetorical gotchas.
A non-"pedantic" person might read this and accidentally form the belief that they are not often just rhetorical gotchas, or that they are not artifacts of one's own cognition (which they are....but they are not only that....and, it is fairly well known even by science how unreliable our Narrator of Reality is).
The relative perfection of the US and other "democracies" is what it is, and that perfection is plausibly substantially influenced by the degree to which citizens collectively buy into the stories of how good they are ("if it ain't broke...").
Do you disagree that most people's models of the quality of various governments rest upon a bed of stories? Or another way of asking the question: do you believe that there is an accurate methodology in existence to objectively determine with high accuracy the quality of each nation in this regard (and also that most people utilize such a methodology, as opposed to believing the stories that please them)?
> They do not "barely have meaning" and one can travel to various places on the earth and try simple experiments to prove it.
It's a fair point, but the claim was: "They barely have meaning in political discourse nowadays". There is a difference, and the importance of the difference is very tricky.
> Absolutely wild to be saying "go travel and try to exercise a freedom there" is seen as an appeal to cognition while "I would rather not engage in illusory thinking" is... what exactly?
Also wild: you sidestepping the other metric I mentioned, and leading out with supreme self-confidence. But then, truthfulness and accuracy is perhaps not the game being playing here, considering the topic.
I was in China, they called democracy "hopelessly inefficient, will not work for a large population like ours".
What you describe is mostly western/NATO rhetoric, after which they can influence the election (which drives them to tears when it supposedly happens back home).
