What are good examples of reinforcing democracy? What acts build belief? What examples strongly affirm?
It's so hard when a couple bricks taken away can crumble faith. Having a larger frame, where we don't catastrophize bad incidents, where we are resilient against bad examples & keep going, is a damnably hard ask.
Democracy is about putting process above outcomes. The whole idea is that people who don’t agree about what’s good and right should nonetheless be able to agree on the procedure by which collective decisions are made. Democracy is only as strong as the willingness of the body politic to put the process ahead of all their individual differences.
Reinforcing democracy thus requires that, after an election, everyone reaffirms their shared commitment to the process, reaffirms the legitimacy of that shared process, and affirms the legitimacy of those selected pursuant to that process.
As a foreigner from a flawed democracy, what I used to admire the most about Americans—more than free markets or free speech or anything else—is their commitment to process. It used to be that Americans would jump off a bridge if directed to do so pursuant to a proper process.
Good examples are the conduct of every Republican who lost a presidential election up until Trump: H.W. Bush, Dole, McCain, and Romney. (Possibly before that but I wasn’t alive then.) Nobody alleged cheating. Nobody impugned the rules. Nobody denied that their successor has the mandate—both legally and morally—to govern. And of course Trump is exactly the opposite of that. Not just because of the outright lying. But the whole chain of conduct from calling into question the reliability of the post office, criticizing the reliability of the voting methods, etc.
Every Democratic nominee who has ever lost a presidential election has followed the process. Hillary conceded the morning after e-day, after a late night count, saying "We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead" (turned out: not so much). Kerry conceded the morning after e-day (according to Bush's staff, the concession was "gracious"). Gore contested the results to the extent allowed by the law. Bush had the better argument, and prevailed in court, after which Gore "accepted the finality of the outcome". Dukakis conceded during election night.
Really, there's just not much partisan to say about this, other than that Trump, who happens to be a Republican, has the distinction of being the only President in the history of the United States not to honor the process.
If that’s the case, then it’s a problem with the moderation system. Different societies have different political cultures. The political culture in some societies is more democracy affirming than others. Large scale protests after elections, impugning election rules, etc., are common in Bangladesh (and across the third world). It’s one of the reasons my family left. Last time I left the country, I had to take an armed shuttle to the airport because of election related strikes. And in an article about “undermining democracy” it’s totally fair to point out parallels between where US democracy is headed and where other flawed democracies already are.
Please don't cross into this type of partisan and nationalistic flamebait. I realize you're representing a minority point of view on HN and we try to cut slack for those (from many different angles, not just one), but you've been crossing the line too much on, unfortunately, an increasingly regular basis. HN is better with you than without you, but we need you to fix this.
This was from a quick google search, there are probably more sources and more stories about the others you mentioned. There is no one candidate to blame here, most of them have some sort of story they concoct about why they lost and some conspiracy they attribute it to. The blame lies with anyone who is such a tribal political member (D or R) that they simply cannot accept anything non-nightmarish about the other side.
Gore filed lawsuits that ultimately proved ill-founded (contrary to Democratic orthodoxy, Bush really did have a solid argument). But filing lawsuits is the process. The gravest breach Trump committed was an attempt to have Congress throw out the results of the election and install him for a second term; that's an action with no possible procedural defense, unprecedented in the history of the republic.
Paying lip service to a failed process does not make the process more robust, it simply papers over the issues until it finally breaks, to worse outcomes and pain. There are enough elements that are questionable in the US election system that it is not unreasonable for people to be doubtful of it, esp. in the hyper-partisanship of today.
The solution is not to pretend to go back to an era of gentlemen's agreements, but rather harden the process so that nobody except the real cranks and lunatics could feasibly say anything. The problem is that too many people now are happy to write off entire swaths of the country as "loonies and cranks" because of their own hyper-partisanship.
> (Possibly before that but I wasn’t alive then.) Nobody alleged cheating.
There were definitely allegations of cheating when JFK won in 1960 over Nixon.
It happens with every close election. In effect, it's a nonpartisan issue.
The reason Bush, Dole, McCain, and Romney didn't complain is that they all lost by a significant margin. There was no basis for complaint.
In recent decades, Republicans have won most of the close elections. That's why Democrats have been the sore losers. Trump is the first Republican in recent times to lose a close election.
(Trump is unique in complaining about voter fraud even when he won in 2016, because he wanted people to believe that he got the popular vote too, not just the electoral college. Which shows, by the way, that the popular vote does matter. Trump also alleged that Obama wasn't a native born American, so he was trying to undermine elections that he wasn't even running in.)
My takeaway is that close elections inherently tend to undermine the legitimacy of democracy. And maybe they should, because it's pretty crazy to have huge differences in policy determined by very small margins.
Democracy is the will of the people, if the people decide that it's time for an upgrade, that itself is an example of democracy. Remember that in ancient Greece, the birthplace of the idea, they never held it as sacrosanct and frequently oscillated between different political systems, essentially A/B testing them for the needs of the time. Its just a system - we should prepared iterate on it
I don’t know what is meant by democracy here. I wish articles like this one would define what they are talking about. It’s definitely not “rule by the people” since if the people elect what is considered non democratic leaders or vote for non democratic policies, that is not considered democratic. While unelected judges, bureaucrats, and other agents of the state who enforce unpopular policies are considered democratic if those policies are so called democratic ones.
The traditional definition of democracy is “rule by the demos” in contradiction to “rule by a small group ” or “rule by one person. So by this definition, any policy which is not popular with the general public is undemocratic. But it’s clear that’s not the definition the writer of the article is using, and since his definition is unclear I don’t have a clear idea what would be democratic or undemocratic in his view.
21 comments
[ 9.2 ms ] story [ 126 ms ] threadIt's so hard when a couple bricks taken away can crumble faith. Having a larger frame, where we don't catastrophize bad incidents, where we are resilient against bad examples & keep going, is a damnably hard ask.
Reinforcing democracy thus requires that, after an election, everyone reaffirms their shared commitment to the process, reaffirms the legitimacy of that shared process, and affirms the legitimacy of those selected pursuant to that process.
As a foreigner from a flawed democracy, what I used to admire the most about Americans—more than free markets or free speech or anything else—is their commitment to process. It used to be that Americans would jump off a bridge if directed to do so pursuant to a proper process.
Good examples are the conduct of every Republican who lost a presidential election up until Trump: H.W. Bush, Dole, McCain, and Romney. (Possibly before that but I wasn’t alive then.) Nobody alleged cheating. Nobody impugned the rules. Nobody denied that their successor has the mandate—both legally and morally—to govern. And of course Trump is exactly the opposite of that. Not just because of the outright lying. But the whole chain of conduct from calling into question the reliability of the post office, criticizing the reliability of the voting methods, etc.
Really, there's just not much partisan to say about this, other than that Trump, who happens to be a Republican, has the distinction of being the only President in the history of the United States not to honor the process.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35843322
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35380580
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
This was from a quick google search, there are probably more sources and more stories about the others you mentioned. There is no one candidate to blame here, most of them have some sort of story they concoct about why they lost and some conspiracy they attribute it to. The blame lies with anyone who is such a tribal political member (D or R) that they simply cannot accept anything non-nightmarish about the other side.
Your position is ridiculous and morally inept.
Paying lip service to a failed process does not make the process more robust, it simply papers over the issues until it finally breaks, to worse outcomes and pain. There are enough elements that are questionable in the US election system that it is not unreasonable for people to be doubtful of it, esp. in the hyper-partisanship of today.
The solution is not to pretend to go back to an era of gentlemen's agreements, but rather harden the process so that nobody except the real cranks and lunatics could feasibly say anything. The problem is that too many people now are happy to write off entire swaths of the country as "loonies and cranks" because of their own hyper-partisanship.
There were definitely allegations of cheating when JFK won in 1960 over Nixon.
It happens with every close election. In effect, it's a nonpartisan issue.
The reason Bush, Dole, McCain, and Romney didn't complain is that they all lost by a significant margin. There was no basis for complaint.
In recent decades, Republicans have won most of the close elections. That's why Democrats have been the sore losers. Trump is the first Republican in recent times to lose a close election.
(Trump is unique in complaining about voter fraud even when he won in 2016, because he wanted people to believe that he got the popular vote too, not just the electoral college. Which shows, by the way, that the popular vote does matter. Trump also alleged that Obama wasn't a native born American, so he was trying to undermine elections that he wasn't even running in.)
My takeaway is that close elections inherently tend to undermine the legitimacy of democracy. And maybe they should, because it's pretty crazy to have huge differences in policy determined by very small margins.
https://osf.io/npa9x/
Edit: and here is a commentary piece on Nature from the lead author: https://socialsciences.nature.com/posts/why-voters-who-value...