We are all Slave now.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Trump is simply too ridiculous to see as an existential threat to a system that's withstood two world wars, a civil war, and god knows how many crises.

I think you credit him with more power than he has.

The real threat to democracy are the forces turning us into a plutocracy. Trump's just a fool who stumbled onto the throne for a time. The people who actually have a serious plan, and unlike Trump have fuckloads of money, are the true dangers to democracy. And they're diverse, of varying views, and scattered throughout us. Zuckerberg fucking scares me. Trump does not.

One of my pet peeves lately is people talking about threats to democracy when they mean threats to the rule of law. And neither needs to be an existential threat to be taken seriously. For example, you worry a lot about the power of prosecutors, something that is not an existential threat and is not a threat to democracy but is an obvious problem from a rule-of-law perspective.

I don't think Trump is a huge threat to democracy. I do think he is a threat to the rule of law, but mores the problem is the Republican Party. The rule of law depends on compromise, and on participants agreeing to respect and abide by process when they are on the losing side. Conservatives don't want to do this.