USA, a Banana Republic
"The US is not a democracy, it's a republic," many Republican Party leaders have hissed in the past few weeks, pretending to give the public a lesson on semantics but really defending the fact that Donald J. Trump won the presidency with millions fewer votes than challenger Hillary Clinton in 2016 and preparing us for the very real possibility that he might do so again this year with Joe Biden. Well, now the line should be, "The US is not a republic, it's a banana republic."
In a banana republic, where you have a strongman leader who's actively undermining the practice of a represententative democracy (note: that's what pedants who want to hiss about "republic" should know a republic actually is), you'd hear the leader say something like this on election day:
“Frankly this is a fraud on our nation. [...] We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. [...] We want all voting to stop.”
Right. As soon as you see enough votes for yourself, you stop the process. That's how strongmen and dictators run sham democracies.
Even if we assume Trump- who routinely struggles with basic spelling, use of complete sentences, and sharing coherent thoughts more than about 8 words long- meant vote-counting instead of voting, it's stll monstrous. Vote counting is what happens after the votes are cast. Well over 100 million votes take time to count. Even when the counting is done by thousands of local jurisdictions there are still localities with 10,000s or 100,000s of votes to count. Not counting the votes is a usurpation of "Government of the people, by the people, and for the people."
In a banana republic, where you have a strongman leader who's actively undermining the practice of a represententative democracy (note: that's what pedants who want to hiss about "republic" should know a republic actually is), you'd hear the leader say something like this on election day:
“Frankly this is a fraud on our nation. [...] We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. [...] We want all voting to stop.”
Click to viewRight. As soon as you see enough votes for yourself, you stop the process. That's how strongmen and dictators run sham democracies.
Even if we assume Trump- who routinely struggles with basic spelling, use of complete sentences, and sharing coherent thoughts more than about 8 words long- meant vote-counting instead of voting, it's stll monstrous. Vote counting is what happens after the votes are cast. Well over 100 million votes take time to count. Even when the counting is done by thousands of local jurisdictions there are still localities with 10,000s or 100,000s of votes to count. Not counting the votes is a usurpation of "Government of the people, by the people, and for the people."