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How would you make America a dictatorship?

Started by Razgovory, September 11, 2015, 05:43:21 PM

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Valmy

Well hell you sought fairer climes and we legalized gay marriage.
Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

Martinus

Quote from: garbon on September 12, 2015, 02:07:53 PM
No, I wouldn't. No telling what evils would come out of a dictatorship - however benevolent. Course, US would be going to hell in a hand basket if such a backwards move was made that I'd probably seek out fairer climes. :D

Really? I'd definitely support Lincoln over the Confederacy. Democracy is useless when it does not protect basic rights of all.

garbon

Quote from: Martinus on September 12, 2015, 02:09:40 PM
Quote from: garbon on September 12, 2015, 02:07:53 PM
No, I wouldn't. No telling what evils would come out of a dictatorship - however benevolent. Course, US would be going to hell in a hand basket if such a backwards move was made that I'd probably seek out fairer climes. :D

Really? I'd definitely support Lincoln over the Confederacy. Democracy is useless when it does not protect basic rights of all.

:hmm:
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

garbon

"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Valmy

Quote from: garbon on September 12, 2015, 02:10:32 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 12, 2015, 02:08:43 PM
Well hell you sought fairer climes and we legalized gay marriage.

:hmm:

Ok I may have got the order of events wrong there.
Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

Valmy

Quote from: Martinus on September 12, 2015, 02:09:40 PM
Really? I'd definitely support Lincoln over the Confederacy. Democracy is useless when it does not protect basic rights of all.

Lincoln wasn't elected?
Quote"This is a Russian warship. I propose you lay down arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed & unnecessary victims. Otherwise, you'll be bombed."

Zmiinyi defenders: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself."

mongers

#66
'Coincidentally I caught a few minute of 'Seven Days in May' on TCM earlier. Not sure it that scenario was a plausible route to a military coup then, or if it's even more unlikely now.
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again"

garbon

Quote from: Valmy on September 12, 2015, 02:13:36 PM
Quote from: garbon on September 12, 2015, 02:10:32 PM
Quote from: Valmy on September 12, 2015, 02:08:43 PM
Well hell you sought fairer climes and we legalized gay marriage.

:hmm:

Ok I may have got the order of events wrong there.

Nah same sex marriage occurred while I was here in England.  While I did reach fairer climes (London's weather much more temperate than NYC), wasn't in the vein I was suggesting as fleeing from oppression. Also US getting gay marriage was unrelated to my move and vice versa. :P
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Razgovory

Quote from: garbon on September 12, 2015, 02:07:53 PM
No, I wouldn't. No telling what evils would come out of a dictatorship - however benevolent. Course, US would be going to hell in a hand basket if such a backwards move was made that I'd probably seek out fairer climes. :D

Well, you are a good man then.
I've given it serious thought. I must scorn the ways of my family, and seek a Japanese woman to yield me my progeny. He shall live in the lands of the east, and be well tutored in his sacred trust to weave the best traditions of Japan and the Sacred South together, until such time as he (or, indeed his house, which will periodically require infusion of both Southern and Japanese bloodlines of note) can deliver to the South it's independence, either in this world or in space.  -Lettow April of 2011

Raz is right. -MadImmortalMan March of 2017

Eddie Teach

Quote from: garbon on September 12, 2015, 02:19:45 PM
Also US getting gay marriage was unrelated to my move and vice versa. :P

Don't sell yourself short. Obviously  the USSC was trying to get you back.  :P
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

crazy canuck

A dictatorship would not be feasible. Americans, perhaps more than anyone reject authoritarian rule.  It is at the core of their national belief system.


Tonitrus

Maybe...but I sometimes wonder if we could end up subjecting ourselves to a faux-democracy, Vladimir Putin style.

After all, we like to think that we're more enlightened and free of corruption in our government/political institutions when really, I think we're just either just smoother, or far more sophisticated about it.

Zanza

#72
An classical dictatorship by a single authoritarian leader seems unlikely, but even a mature democracy like the US might degenerate into something less liberal.

I could see a dystopian society where opinions of an apathic public are carefully managed by directed media and controlled by all-pervasive intelligence services and swayed towards the interests of the elites. Legal corruption in the form of "donations" at the highest levels of politics would run rampant and figureheads would stand for elections just to implement what their invisible benefactors want.

Armed hillbillies wouldn't figure in this scenario as they have virtually no influence anyway, no matter how many guns they have. If they ever start trouble, just brand them as terrorists or crazies and the public will not support them.

Tonitrus


Syt

Quote from: Zanza on September 13, 2015, 02:30:56 AM
An classical dictatorship by a single authoritarian leader seems unlikely, but even a mature democracy like the US might degenerate into something less liberal.

I could see a dystopian society where opinions of an apathic public are carefully managed by directed media and controlled by all-pervasive intelligence services and swayed towards the interests of the elites. Legal corruption in the form of "donations" at the highest levels of politics would run rampant and figureheads would stand for elections just to implement what their invisible benefactors want.

Armed hillbillies wouldn't figure in this scenario as they have virtually no influence anyway, no matter how many guns they have. If they ever start trouble, just brand them as terrorists or crazies and the public will not support them.

Isn't that already the case right now? :unsure: :tinfoil: :P
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
—Stephen Jay Gould

Proud owner of 42 Zoupa Points.