Re:US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days
by dragonwriter on Friday August 07, 2020 @09:40AM
(#24081653)
Dictatorships can be elective, so raising elections is irrelevant,and they can result from a legal delegation of arbitrary authority to the dictator (both election and legal delegation were absolutely the case for the Roman office of Dictator, which “dictatorship” is a generalization from.) If the President rules arbitrarily without meaningful constraint, despite being elected and despite that arbitrary power being explictly delegated in law, it is a dictatorship.
It's not, though, because the President is neither delegated general arbitrary power in law not ruling with it despite the law. While constraints on executive authority in the law have significantly broken down and one might argue that it is on the road to dictatorship, arbitrary executive action despite the law still faces meaningful checks at least by the courts. There has been significant defiance of court orders without meaningful consequence (e.g., with regard to family separation policy) but the areas where that has occurred are still limited and noticeable, however deeply problematic, exceptions.
Re:US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days
by Ygg2 on Friday August 07, 2020 @09:39AM
(#24081649)
Even de facto, US is an oligarchy not a dictatorship.
Re:US to ban transactions with ByteDance and WeChat in 45 days
by mullingitover on Friday August 07, 2020 @01:33PM
(#24084461)
“The United States is also a one-party state but, with typical American extravagance, they have two of them.”
-Julius Nyerere
It's not a "dictatorship", because Congress (elected every 2 years, approximately) sets the laws that the President acts under, and the President himself (so far!) is elected every 4 years.