Mastodawn

The Varieties of Democracy project at GothenbergU confirms what many have been saying/thinking for years:

the US & Europe are heading towards autocracy (often arriving because voters have supported explicit autocratic leaders in elections).

The Q. is how does one defend democracy against this wave of (renewed) quasi-dictatorship?

One key answer is our political class(es) need to stop colluding with the Far Right & *actually* support democracy!

#democracy #politics
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2026/mar/17/trump-is-aiming-for-dictatorship-thats-the-verdict-of-the-worlds-most-credible-democracy-watchdog

‘Trump is aiming for dictatorship’. That’s the verdict of the world’s most credible democracy watchdog

Sweden’s V-Dem Institute warns that the US is no longer a liberal democracy. And autocracy is creeping across Europe too, says writer Martin Gelin

The Guardian

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Herefordrob Mar 17

@ChrisMayLA6 Echoes of the past can be heard in the problems of the present. The revolutionary notion of democracy was put on hiatus in 1787, and the coup of the oligarchs continues to this day. https://riverasun.com/oligarchy-as-american-as-poisoned-apple-pie
#WeThePeoples need to stop history repeating itself & learn from it. #Justice #universalequality #universaleducation #UnityInDiversity planetisation is the only future for these things. #patriarchalcapitalism has to end as part of that process.
A possible way forward, no professional politicians, a well trained, accountable, and properly staffed civil service. #Cosmolocalism through peoples assemblies, sortition. To my mind, that is #participativedemocracy
The representative democracy experiment needs to end.

Oligarchy: As American As Poisoned Apple Pie - Rivera Sun

by Rivera Sun The current struggle between democracy and oligarchy in the United States traces its roots back to the 1787 Philadelphia Convention where the wealthy elite pulled off a counter-revolutionary coup to stifle democracy. Oligarchs are as American as poisoned apple pie. Their wealth and power look mouth-wateringly good, but with every bite, democracy […]

Rivera Sun

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Simon Johnson Mar 17

@ChrisMayLA6 maybe proposing some measures to introduce democracy rather than this 5-yearly sham of a reverse beauty contest in which most voters only have the choice of the least worst and are then put back in their box, excluded from any meaningful discussion by a perfidious media that spouts only court gossip, a governing class that holds citizens in contempt and a political system that embodies privilege & corruption

Radical democratic reform inc citizens assemblies would be a start

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Emeritus Prof Christopher May Mar 17

@Simon318ppm

I don't disagree, but how one introduces such shifts is the issue; I worked in the early 1990s for Charter 88 agitating for constitutional change to reinforce democratic politics & it taught me how difficult that would be

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Pablo Martini (Geezer)Mar 17

@ChrisMayLA6

no money in anything other than those who bribe, donate, pay forward, bully, etc.

As the poor often called 'the many' ain't got what the politicians & "grifting snake oil liars" want! Free money look at Boris, bLIAR even down the chain a step or 2 Former MP Tom Watson he did very well as a failed deputy anything? etc.....etc....

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Reg Mar 17

@ChrisMayLA6

I'd prefer to think that the US in particular is heading towards the emergence of independence movements as individual States devolve from the Federal govt in response to the increasingly autocratic central rule imposed by virtue of too much power being concentrated in too few hands.