What is American Democracy ?

babyme

US is the important country famous for DEMOCRACY.
What is the democracy definition?
Election by electing your representative, the most popular wins.
But what is your population, that is the issue.
Redistricting was the item Obama and Holder (AG) working on last year on their term (Learned it from TRMS show on MSNBC).  
State government decides on how the district is defined.
Something called Gerrymandering is the term for that.  Drawing the line across the state to set up the district.  
In some cases, the line is drawn based on the voters in the district.
As democracy is defined as the Majority in the district wins.  Politicians could group all ONE party voters in one concentrated district so they could get ONE representative with 95 percent of the votes, and then spread out the other districts with a majority of their voters to gain that sear, just a majority, do not waste any votes.  
So you would see an area with lots of blacks in one district, then surround other blacks with MOSTLY white conservatives but just a small majority to make sure all the other districts maintaining that proportion.
So if some election based on the whole state, then population counts.  But based on the districts within the state, rural majority totaled for the state such as congressman will win.

That is why US legislative branch and executive branch could have a dead lock and nothing is happening.

Clinton lost the electoral college, but win by over 3 MM votes than Trump.

babyme

In the process of setting electoral districts, gerrymandering is a practice intended to establish a political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries. The resulting district is known as a gerrymander (/ˈdʒɛriˌmændər/, recently changed from the original /ˈɡɛriˌmændər/); however, that word can also refer to the process. The term gerrymandering has negative connotations. Two principal tactics are used in gerrymandering: "cracking" (i.e. diluting the voting power of the opposing party's supporters across many districts) and "packing" (concentrating the opposing party's voting power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts).[1]

In addition to its use achieving desired electoral results for a particular party, gerrymandering may be used to help or hinder a particular demographic, such as a political, ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, or class group, such as in U.S. federal voting district boundaries that produce a majority of constituents representative of African-American or other racial minorities, known as "majority-minority districts". Gerrymandering can also be used to protect incumbents.

dragondick

Putting it bluntly, American democracy is that:

1.  African-Americans want to be MORE equal no matter what.

2.  Politicians want to please this group to ensure that they get the majority of votes from this group.

End result is a serial rapist like Bill Clinton going to the White House, and a Junior Senator (Obama) who has limited knowledge of history got voted into the White House as well because of this skin colour.

pubes

Imagine a family that needs to make big decision that will affect them all.

Would you rather let the sensible and knowledgeable father make the decision based on his best judgement?

Or vote on it with everybody having equal say, including...
... the airheaded bimbo daughter,
... highschool dropout stoner son,
... distant cousin that lives with the family but doesn't really care about their best interests,
... senile grandfather who is losing his grip of reality,
... and the ultra conservative religious aunt who believes "GOD" literally created the world in 7 days and that homosexuals should be drowned?

Problem with democracy is that you are letting many stupid ignorant people who don't even know what is in their own best interests to have an equal say. Of course dictatorship is even worse, but that is a comparison between bad and worst, not between good and bad.

Maybe an AI government would be better, but then we risk getting Skynet.

pubes

dragondick 发表于 2017-11-11 16:49
Putting it bluntly, American democracy is that:

1.  African-Americans want to be MORE equal no matt ...

Biggest problem with democracy is the uneducated masses. And I don't mean just the rednecks who haven't gone to college. Even those who have tertiary education are mostly ignorant of history and the world outside the US.

And so the US goes around the world bombing people in the name of democracy. Much like how the Europeans brought ethnic genocide to the Native Americans in the name of religion.

Meanwhile you have dilapidated schools and crumbling infrastructure in America because all the money goes towards researching and producing more weapons that can kill more efficiently.

Did you know that the US spends more on their military than almost the rest of the world combined? Or that the budget for weapons research is hundreds to thousands (depending on accountant methods of measurement) times bigger than research in health and medicine? Yet right wing politicians in the US continue their fear mongering that the US is "falling behind" in the arms race.

More fun facts.

The most powerful air force in the world is USAF. No surprise there, but did you know the world's second most powerful air force is the USNAF? In other words the aviation arm of the US navy itself is bigger and better equipped than the air force of any other country in the world.

Did you know that even the US Marines' own air force ranks amongst the top 10 in the world? In other words, even the aviation arm of the amphibious attack arm of the US Navy is bigger than all except a few of the biggest nations' air forces?

Meanwhile you have university educated US citizens who don't even know where Canada is.