this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
861 points (97.0% liked)

News

35774 readers
2623 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.


Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.


7. No duplicate posts.


If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.


All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] DieguiTux8623@feddit.it 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

This "reasoning" is quite similar to what patriarch Kirill of Moskov declared a year ago, with the difference that it referred to the depraved "West" (not US specifically). He was harshly criticized by western media and even ridiculed for being expression of a retrograde and superstitious approach to religion.

Ironically, now the most democratic country of the world, the homeland of freedom itself, is having its political (not even religious) leaders telling basically the same thing.

How quickly the tide turns.

[–] digehode@lemmy.world 19 points 2 years ago (3 children)
[–] HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

USA is also anything but "the homeland of freedom itself"

[–] ElderWendigo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

The phrase only implies that modern democracy grew in popularity as a system of government after its start in the United States, not that the U.S. is a perfect democracy. I took a closer look at the list of "most democratic" countries in the comment to which you're replying. Have you? It's kind of shocking how new most of those governments are.

[–] Syrc@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I’m always baffled by these charts. How is anything under North Korea? I seriously struggle to think of anything worse that isn’t a nationwide literal concentration camp.

[–] digehode@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

As long as there's a system, I think they're useful. You can argue they weight things incorrectly but it's useful to have some way to see how a country does against the same evaluation for rest of the world. I don't know if this is the best data, but I don't see anything that pops out as particularly odd.

At the bottom, it's not much between NK and the two below. But the two below are Myanmar and Afghanistan, which I don't think is too crazy.

[–] Syrc@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Oh that’s for sure, those charts are still useful, it’s very rare for them to be extremely inaccurate. I’m just in disbelief at most of them having something below NK since it’s basically a slave nation. Would like to see the exact criteria, but I didn’t find them.

[–] ElderWendigo@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The list is interesting to be sure, but as with most linear rankings of large datasets it leaves lots of room for debate. But I think that's the point. It's not meant to be used as a rhetorical sledgehammer to silence discussion the way you have used it here.

It's kind of shocking how many of them have an actual monarchy still, with real actual powers over the government despite claims that they are mostly symbolic. Top of the list, Norway, still has a King. New Zealand, still a colony with a King. Finland and Iceland actually have elected presidents. Sweden, curators of the democracy ranking list, still have a monarchy. Each monarch claims they are only symbolic, but if that's true and these countries are truly the more perfect democracies they claim to be, one has to wonder why the people have kept such oligarchs in a position of power over them. In some cases the power seems to have only passed from the monarch to the parliament out of custom, not actual legislation or constitution.

[–] HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Agreed, we need some more guillotine based fashion.

[–] digehode@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

I certainly never intended to silence discussion. I'd have said I was opening up the discussion, if anything, by poi ting out that there's some data available that suggests the USA is far from the most democratic nation. Which, as I read it, was a tongue in cheek statement in the comment I replied to.

But, now it is being discussed, I'm interested in the view that monarchy should have a paeticylarly large negative weight on the ranking. I'm not a royalist and think any monarchy with even a hint of power means less than absolute democracy. But I don't think many of the monarchies in those high ranking countries have as much of a negative impact as other factors that can reduce the input of a population to the democratic process. The big one for me would be how individual voting gets weighted.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 15 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I'm having difficulty with the bit where you call the USA the "homeland of freedom itself". I know Americans like to believe they live in the best country in the world but the evidence to the country is pretty substantial.

Personally I think that a free country probably doesn't have a police force that's killed more of its own citizens than a hostile nation state could ever hope to achieve.

[–] DieguiTux8623@feddit.it 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I was being sarcastic, and I had to edit that sentence multiple times before publishing to eliminate more polemic bits. I try to follow the etiquette but sometimes my bad temper emerges.

[–] HerbalGamer@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 years ago

quotation marks probably would help.

[–] givesomefucks@lemmy.world 12 points 2 years ago

now the most democratic country of the world, the homeland of freedom itself

Neither of those are even close to true...

Or ever have been

[–] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 years ago