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@realcaseyrollins At this point I kinda welcome a civil war. It would be a hell of a lot better than whatever the fuck we are currently doing about this nonsense.
Democracies aren’t meant to negotiate conflicts between groups, they don’t serve that function at all. They’re meant to be a kind of crowd sourced decision making for a group of people that have the same fundamental interests. Diversity and democracy are incompatible on a fundamental level.
It’s why we don’t resolve conflicts between countries by just having their populations vote. When there’s a conflict between groups that cannot be resolved through negotiation, the only viable resolutions come from war, terrorism, or soft power.
I'm not sure about the "meant to" part, I'm pretty sure people try to design governments (historically) with at least some intent that it will resolve disputes between disinterested parties. Especially the USA which was founded with an exceptionally diverse group of peoples.
Now are they effective at it (despite intent)... apparently not, then again a government can only do so much, at a certain point there is an obligation on the people to just grow the fuck up and get along :)
Democracies aren’t meant to resolve disputes. That’s what courts and war are for. The USA’s system of governance ultimately comes out of the European tradition of Things, or layers of representative Congresses that made laws and decided on war against collective enemies. It’s the same system that Athens’ and Rome’s forms of democracy ultimately were derived from. The Things were used to make laws which were agreed upon and decide on war against common enemies. They didn’t resolve disputes between tribes or nations because they are incapable of doing that and those groups simply went to war with each other if there was a dispute that could not be resolved through negotiation.
Non-Whites were scientifically classified as different subspecies at the time of the USA’s founding.
It’s why there was no contradiction in the law when European Jews established slave plantations in the USA since the laws of the USA at the time did not apply to non-Whites in the same way they would not apply to bears.
courts are part of the government. So saying "Democracies aren’t meant to resolve disputes. That’s what courts and war are for." is self contradictory in the sense that courts are the part of the government for resolving disputes, ergo governments are intended to resolve disputes.
You’re confusing the decision making scheme of democratic republic with a government that uses it as an element of it’s decision making processes.
We’re talking about the function of various forms of democracies, which are a method of decision making.
The USA has a separation of powers. The court system is supposed to be entirely separate from Congresses which create federal and state laws. Courts are not democratic.
The USA’s government is not entirely structured around democratic republic operations. Only three elements of it are: city, state, and federal congresses or councils which rely on all qualified citizens to be elected as a representative.
When you get pulled over for speeding, you don’t vote on whether or not you get a ticket, so it should be clear to you that there is no democratic function in that element of government.
It’s a subtle nuance I guess, but what I’m saying is this decision making scheme of voting to make decisions is not meant to resolve disputes between groups since if they feel strongly about something they’ll just reject the outcome of the vote and go to war.
I’m kind of out of it right now, I could be making errors, and I do see what you’re saying. We have conflicting definitions of democracy. If we both voted with everyone in the fediverse on this dispute, would it resolve it? And if it was a matter of life or death, would you accept the result if it was not in your favor or would you go to war?
I'm not confusing anything, you just used non-explicit terms :) But I see what your trying to say. I just like to nit pick.
I think a considerable amount of the USA’s political problems come from varied definitions and vague terms.
What do you think is the solution to varied definitions and vagueness? Even if you published an authoritative dictionary of political terms, most people wouldn’t read it.
Shifting definitions is pretty much a standard thing in US politics because it’s easier for bad actors to argue against their own definitions, people don’t seem to notice by and large, and it creates tremendous friction for anyone that wants to come to a resolution through talking. Whoever controls the media in that kind of environment can just disrupt people’s ability to come to a consensus by shifting the terms of the subject. Seems like war is the only way forward.