Comments by "peabase" (@peabase) on "Trump’s legacy: A lasting threat to US democracy? | To the Point" video.

@PhoenixtheII So you only recognize direct democracies as democracies. You're pretty much alone there.
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Some are getting killed in the process.
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@theuglykwan Not all presidents are alike. You're omitting the crucial fact that Europe's republics mostly have parliamentary systems rather than presidential ones -- or at best, semi-presidential ones. In a parliamentary republic, the president is mostly a figurehead, not unlike a constitutional monarch. The heads of government, the prime ministers, are always elected. The voters know the prime ministerial candidates beforehand, since they're the party leaders. Your comment could be misread that the newly-elected MPs have a pow-wow and willy-nilly pick a PM from their midst -- this is not how it works.
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@PhoenixtheII Sure, you've rejected our reality and substituted your very own. What made you jump to the conclusion that mine's a flawed democracy according to the Democracy Index? Thanks to my multiple nationalities, it's full democracy twice over.
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@PhoenixtheII OK, whatever, but to make it really interesting, you could take things further and invent your own language and converse in it with your make-believe friends.
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@theuglykwan Democracies aren't just about the codified system, but also about how they function in practice. I'm glad you used the UK as an example. True, Conservative MPs swapped Theresa May for Boris Johnson mid-term, but once nominated PM, Boris was quick to call a snap election to gain a proper mandate -- or as proper as mandates get with a FPtP electoral system in place. What are you trying to prove anyway, that a democracy can be perverted from the inside? No disagreement there. I can't think of a better example than Trump's post-election antics.
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@theuglykwan Your memory is selective, or you didn't understand the position Johnson found himself after taking the reins. Tory backbenchers were openly rebelling against the party leadership. Johnson expelled the rebels, effectively losing his majority in the process. He had no choice but to call a snap election, or his cabinet would've been brought down by a no-confidence vote. Like I wrote earlier, the functioning of a democracy is a product of theory and practice. If you solely want to focus on theory, I suggest you find yourself a Brit who's willing to defend all the idiosyncrasies of their parliamentary system.
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@theuglykwan It is relevant because politics is about reality. What is possible in in theory isn't possible in reality. If theory is all that counts to you, you should stay away from politics. Perhaps you should forget politics and focus on contract law instead?
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@theuglykwan Don't flatter yourself. And I'm not in the least embarrassed. I made a necessarily broad statement, lumping together a great many democracies, each with their own intricacies, while emphasizing well-established conventions. You're trying to fit a small pin in the small cracks in such a generalisation. We have an interesting term to describe you. Suffice it to say, it involves ants and copulation.
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