Can Somebody Point Me To The Time This Country.....

[global1]

began it's slide from Democracy?

[calimary]

1. I'd say when trump started gaining a foothold in national politics.

Just a guess.

[msongs]

2. when dems and repubs gave w bush the patriot act and permission to go after sadaam nt

[intheflow]

57. 100% this!

The Patriot Act was the start for sure, and not incidentally, one of the reasons I supported Sanders in 2016. He didn’t vote for it and HRC did. (Don’t @ me, I still voted for her.)

[RockCreek]

3. When the Florida recount was halted in Dec 2000.

[SilverDawg]

59. And THAT led to

the appointments of Robert’s and Alito to the SCOTUS.

[RockRaven]

4. When LBJ knew Nixon was fucking around with Vietnam and called it treason,

and then didn't say or do anything and Nixon won (which he probably would have anyway even if LBJ had tried to do something).

[JBTaurus83]

5. I'd say it's been a difficult

Battle since the civil war with mixed results.

[Skittles]

6. when the Supreme Court literally chose the president

it's been downhill ever since

[Cosmocat]

8. Reagen

He normalized the absolute disdain for government and started flaking the blue collar worker from the democratic party.

[Skittles]

13. he made greed and ignorance fashionable

I thought he was disgusting and was appalled how many voters fell for his act.

[Wifes husband]

26. Absolutely

Regan was an asshole. Never thought I would see worse.

[unblock]

10. Maybe first point to the time we had an actual democracy?

We've claimed to have had a democracy since 1776, but at best it was a representative democracy where people get to choose leaders, but where the people don't truly wield the power.

Certainly it's not very reasonable to call it a democracy before slavery was abolished and women had the vote. Even then, democracy with unfair denial of rights and freedoms to blacks, among others, can't be a true democracy, so at best we're up to the 1960s.

After the voting age was lowered, at least we finally had voting for all adults citizens. But we still had and still have done very anti-democratic features in our government, from gerrymandering and other forms of voter suppression, the electoral college, money in politics (including from foreign source), etc.

Frankly, it's very, very difficult for we the people to get our way unless our way happens to align with the interests of the ruling class. So it was never much of a democracy, sorry to say.

But yeah, it wa certainly closer to a democracy than it is today, and about 200 years of progress began yo unravel with a few things:

Lee Atwater's partisan, personal, immoral dirty tricks and attacks
Newt Gingrich's hyper-partisanship
Ronald Reagan's glorification of greed, launching of massive concentration of wealth, and killing off the notion of civic duty
Rush Limbaugh and the Koch brothers' takeover of AM radio, launching the major right-wing propaganda machine that later added foxnews and others.
The very undemocratic stealing of the presidency in 2000
The opening of floodgates for money in politics.
And the steady corruption of institutions, notably the MSM normalizing hate, right-wing extremism, lies, etc.

Into this cesspool stepped Donnie. It misses the point to think he himself made anything worse. With such a massive right-win effort into dismantling whatever democracy we had, someone like Donnie being at the top was inevitable. That said, he had certainly furthered the corruption of our institutions and our government.

Not sure who said it, or if I have the quote quite right, but someone once said of America, democracy sounds like a great idea; perhaps we should try it sometime.

[Skittles]

14. the Electoral College

it had its purpose way back when but now it has given us two nitwit presidents in recent history

[Morbius]

15. The original purpose of the Electoral College

was to increase the power of slave states. Since slaves counted as 3/5 of a person for the purpose of a census, those states had increased voting power than they would in a popular election. They wouldn't have been able to get the Constitution out of the convention without it. From the beginning, it was a compromise of democracy.

I'd say things started to really go downhill with Reagan. Then they got worse with the GOP's contract on America in the 90's. Then the boldfaced stealing of a Presidential election in 2000, and here we are with the SCOTUS claiming the President is above the law.

[Skittles]

16. it should have been abolished LONG AGO

I absolutely detested Reagan - I was very young and it was the first time I realized how easily voters can be manipulated.

[usonian]

11. Try this. Lee Atwater's "Southern Strategy" for the GOP, when it embraced racism thoroughly.

To hoodwink working people into supporting the wealthy.

Like so.



This thread is attracting trolls. Must be the moonrise.
So I give them a graphic for educational purposes.


ETA. "Citizens United"

[ms liberty]

48. Atwater, not Atwood. Or, alternately just say evil personified.

[usonian]

55. Admit it. That was damn close

for so late at night.

[live love laugh]

12. The incessant harassment of Clinton while Tom Delay was handing out money in the aisles of Congress.

All leading up to the grand theft in 2000.

Prince was a prophet when he wrote “1999”.

Who knew?

[Irish_Dem]

18. Yes this was a very disgusting/dark time.

A president of the US and the First Lady stalked and harassed every day
by criminal politicians.

I remember it well, the damage done to the country was immeasurable.

[Irish_Dem]

17. Regan

Our country has been a downward trajectory since Reagan.

[OldBaldy1701E]

25. I'd really put it on the Counterculture revolution.

The establishment was willing to do whatever it took to silence those who were against the war and against our government for continuing to send people over there to die while they sat here at home and risked nothing. Considering that we are still not completely aware of what they did and tried to do to maintain their 'worldview' in the face of those who were tired of all the saber rattling and dick waving.

Too bad it didn't work out like we wanted it to. Our society decided that it preferred conformity and mindless service over making things better. That mindset has not changed in 58 years, from what I can see.

[Irish_Dem]

39. Yes but we prevailed and stopped the war.

And ushered in women and civil rights.

Reagan was the end of progress and a harbinger of things to come.
Things would get much much worse and here we are today.

[OldBaldy1701E]

40. I would be willing to debate that we 'stopped the war', but that is another discussion for another time.

We did do those other things, though. For all the good it did us, standing here now.

[Irish_Dem]

42. LBJ resigned, troops came home.

Boys stopped coming home in body bags.

Good enough for me to call it a win.

But yes all the progress we made completely wiped out.
And even worse, going back to the 19th century in terms of our rights.

[James48]

19. The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980.

At least I remember it well. I voted for John Anderson, the independent candidate that year. That was a time when anybody had an actual chance if being elected.

After that, both the Dems and the R’s vowed that they weren’t going to allow third parties to debate on the same stage with them.

[Buddyzbuddy]

20. When Nixon was forced to resign and a group

of Republicans made a plan to take control of the American Gov't by whatever means were necessary. The same group that got the Felon into the Whitehouse in 2016.

[modrepub]

21. Assassination of Lincoln

And Lincoln’s choice is of Andrew Johnson as Vice President for his second term.

Who knows if Lincoln would have completely removed the stain of America’s original sin of slavery. Johnson, a southerner, may have been a wise we choice to help heal the nation after the Civil War, but as President he basically fast tracked reunion and undermined the beginnings of Reconstruction. Women’s suffrage kind of fell out here as giving all men the right to vote was as big a step as politicians of that time were willing to make.

Grant tried to continue Reconstruction but was no Lincoln. After the disputed election of 1876, Reconstruction ended and Jim Crow was put in place. The Civil Rights act tried to finish what Reconstruction started but it seems we’ve been back sliding ever since.

[JT45242]

22. Begin is hard...because it was a roller coaster ride

Option 1...not treating the Confederate leaders as traitor and hanging or imprisoning all of them. The founding fathers knew if they lost that they would all hang as traitor. But somehow, the losers of the civil war faced no real consequences.

Option 2 the Hayes-tildon brokered election that put an end to reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow.we had black people elected and progress was possible until that election ended it all.

Option 3 the failure to punish the America first Nazi collaborators at the end of World war 2 because Truman forbid going after any of them because some of them were his friends. There was far more evidence against them than they had Ethel Rosenberg when they executed her. But none of them, including Mango Mussolini's father faced any consequences.

Option 4 no consequences of note for all the criming that Nixon etc did. Starting with paying the North Vietnamese to stay away from the peace talks. That gave us W, Haig, etc that were part of the next option...

Option 5 Reagan and no consequences for paying the Iranians to hold onto the hostages which got them elected. Then Billy Barr covering up all the other criming that admin did.

Option 6 meet Gingrich and the refusal to govern. They made the refusal to negotiate a feature and not a bug. Compromise is the essence of democracy...until it isn't.

Option 7...the rise of the tea party and full outward racism in response to 'that uppity black man )they would use the n word)'.

Option 8 the final nail in democracy coffin was the failure to hold Jan 6 insurrectionists accountable. Lay that firmly on McConnell politically and the last attorney general for slow walking the indictments.

Take your pick...I vacillate between not treating Confederate traitors as traitor and jailing or executing them and Truman's complete failure following WW2 and the elimination of that story from main stream history. We were taught America was united against fascism and evil, but if we were taught that there was evil within (ala VC Andrews) them more people would have taken the choice of America First for what it was ...a pledge to Nazi collaborators and ideology.

[Whiskeytide]

50. Good post. I might only add the 2000 election. That's when ...

… we learned the SCOTUS would not hesitate to put ideology above country.

[JT45242]

66. Yeah..good point also both 2000&2004 showed some votes count more

When they didn't count the boxes of predominantly black voters in Youngstown to steal a second election for shrub.

I still think the critical point was Truman tho.

[Kaleva]

23. January 14, 1784

[Cloudhopper]

24. I'd always thought it began with the Powell Memorandum of 1971

which led to the formation of organizations such as The Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council.

[samplegirl]

28. Bush Cheney most definately

The era of every Rightwing Wacko spreading as much hate as possible! The floodgates of hate opened and they no longer pretended to be compassionate conservatives.

[marble falls]

29. About once a decade since the founding. Sometimes minor and sometimes major.

[johnnyfins]

30. 11/22/1963

[rampartd]

37. bingo

[Blue Full Moon]

32. Nixon

[WhiskeyGrinder]

33. Since it was founded by white supremacy, for white supremacy. The contradiction has yet to be resolved.

[Solomon]

35. You win!

I always wondered while growing up what it was going to look like when the shit hit the fan. Well, we're seeing it now. Now that whites are becoming a minority, the pretense of democracy can't hold anymore. The supremacy system has to find another way to maintain power if it can't continue to out vote everybody else.

[JHB]

34. 1970s. That's when the foundations for what we have now were being laid.

I don't mean the raw material for it -- that's been around for ages -- but the actual institutional infrastructure: the founding of the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, ALEC, etc., the cultivation of evangelicals as political partners, the Powell Memo giving an outline of the long-term strategy, the research into what specific issues could be used to break up the Democrats' New Deal coalition (spoiler alert: guns and abortion), the beginnings of media catering to conservative/RW viewpoints (including "DEI hires" of conservatives for mainstream programs -- looking at you, George Will), increased support for RW "media criticism" outfits like Accuracy in Media to better propagate the idea of "liberal media bias, etc. etc. etc.

And lots of long-term money to support this overhaul of what was considered politically "normal."

[rampartd]

36. 22 november 1963 at about 12:15 pm cst.

[Martin Eden]

38. With a few exceptions, only white male property owners could vote

When the US Constitution was ratified in 1789.

Former slaves could vote after the Civil War, but that was severely curtailed after Reconstruction in the Jim Crow South. This lasted into the mid-1960's but some forms of voter suppression are resurgent now.

Women didn't get the right to vote until 1920.

[lark]

41. SCOTUS giving the country to Bush, an unconstitutional move.

Eveything has been downhill with them since then.

[OC375]

43. The 1970's

The beginning of “me” being the acceptable and desirable focus of improvement and priority was grabbed onto en mass societally. We only got worse from there and the social contract has been unraveling ever since. Me is the most powerful and addictive drug.

[Mysterian]

44. Mitch McConnell refusing to allow a vote on Obama's Supreme Court nominee

was a key milestone.

[BlueKota]

45. When the Republicans partnered with the televangelist conartists.

Together they perfected their brainwashing techniques, & gave bullies permission to be bullies. They also convinced people, who used to be at least borderline rational, to become cultists, basically programmed robots, blindly willing to do anything asked of them, by convincing them they were acting as soldiers of God, even in situations where their actions were in contradiction to what their particular religion is supposed to stand for.

That is why separation of church and state should even be championed by religious believers, instead of fought against in my opinion.

[Emile]

46. Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford's pardon.

[Xoan]

47. Reagan

[CanonRay]

49. Coverup of the Kennedy assassination

IMHO. The government flat out lied to us in the Warren report.

[IA8IT]

51. Citizens United was when democracy fell off the cliff. Need Liberty Wings ASAP

[sop]

52. I agree. Citizens United unleashed unlimited dark money spending, totally corrupting our democratic electoral process.

[Botany]

53. Multiple times in our history that the slide from democracy can be pointed to as examples.

But you can really go back to the founding of America by the use of racism, slavery, the genocide
of the Native Peoples from the North Pole down to the top of South America, and a really fucked up
Christianity that O.K.ed slavery, sexism, bigotry, and that God made America special.

[Prairie_Seagull]

54. When the very wealthy decided to

divide and conquer/manipulate.

[Rebl2]

56. I think

it started when Nixon was basically removed from office. I know he left on his own, but he had to basically be threatened with impeachment to get him to leave. I think many republicans were angry about it and how the media went after him. I think they must have said never again and I feel many republicans have become radicalized, you might say. When you have republicans who love Putin and other dictators and think we should have one too in the United States, I feel that radicalization. Just my opinion.

[Javaman]

58. Post wwii when the red scare began

And the right wing started their attempts at dismantling FDRs policies. But you can go further back to the businessman’s plot

[moondust]

60. Electoral college rigging

that should have ended at least when slavery was abolished since that was apparently the main reason for it in the first place. And much more rigging since then with crooked gerrymandering, election 2000 Florida recount/hanging chads/Brooks Brothers Riot/SCROTUS overreach, etc. And now more crooked gerrymandering in plain sight. One might argue that the U.S. has never been a real democracy ensuring "one person/one equal vote."

[Ping Tung]

61. "Americans dreaded democracy and contrived their constitution against it." Lord Acton

See Article II, Section 1, Clauses 2 and 3, of the constitution. About the establishment of the Electoral College

The constitution was ratified June 21, 1788,

[gulliver]

62. The idea there is a "slide from Democracy" is extremely questionable

It's like the old Zen story where the old person tells the monk something like, "I'm afraid to leave." And the monk says something like, "You never arrived."

[SocialDemocrat61]

63. December 12, 2000

[Shoobee]

64. Started following DU...

…a week, couple of weeks, maybe a month afterwards. Have lurked until this past year. This is my first posting.

[SocialDemocrat61]

65. Welcome!

[darkstar]

67. Early 80s: Reagan, televangelists, and RW radio

All coalesced around the same time. Way ahead of us libs on the power of media, including a telegenic President.