Gradually_Adjusting

The norms you're citing are all perfectly correct - but no democracy can survive if these norms are able to protect literal traitors. The fact that a coup was attempted should have resulted in swift and frightfully intense penalties for all involved. Unhung traitors poison republics.

Be careful when you fight monsters. Biden was fucked either way if I'm being honest, I'd even bet a handful of cash that a prominent Dem, perhaps even Biden, gets merked within two years.

Do we think they really don't realize what they're admitting?

No, I think they talk like this in bad faith to establish worse norms around treating women well.

Anon has been reading The Pattern On The Stone

No you're right, it's an abusive relationship. It isn't much different from a good cop/bad cop dynamic. The ratcheting effect taken to its furthest extremity.

The specific policies were not the issue. The fact that he did not stop a violent insurrectionist from running for office is my grievance here. The metaphor being that an Oompa Loompa should not have gotten a golden ticket. Much less, one with syphilis and a malignant personality disorder.

You consider it even remotely appropriate to let an insurrectionist stand for election? A literal traitor to the republic? Allowing him on the ballot was, I think, a crucial failure of democratic norms. One of many.

Just as legality is not the same as morality, winning an election in a critically dysfunctional democracy is not a mandate to rule as a king.

They're beginning to learn, too late, that the only thing keeping democracy in America is its norms. Voters were offered an insane question that should never have been asked.

Long journey. Business or pleasure?

Yeah I know

Biden was like a bizarro Willy Wonka, fell on his face and then spent the whole tour boring and disappointing us for ages, somehow even the psychosis bug tunnel was boring. Then he gives the chocolate factory to an Oompa Loompa with syphilis.

Crazy hypothetical... Even a toilet?

Authoritarianism isn't an ideology per se, and often dictatorship isn't official. Even Stalin was the "general secretary" of his party. And yet, authoritarianism of every stripe demonstrates similar styles regardless of their political ideology. Smashing dissent, regressive economics and consolidated power, militarism, etc. These have never been solely the purview of avowed fascists. So no, for most of those that suffer under dictators, the ideology of those thugs rarely matter.

But make no mistake, a multi-party democracy with varied ideologies is not the opposite of authoritarianism. Factions can be just as much a poison pill, if the balance of powers are not subordinate to an informed electorate. The opposite of authoritarianism is anarchism.