Multiple failed, weak democracies that were subsequently replaced by dictatorships, several in France, would beg to differ.
It's a balance between centralization (stability) and decentralization (individualism).
Too much of either is corrosive.
All my friends in Classics, familiar with stories about how ancient coups worked, were terrified. You really think that if Pence had refused to certify the vote, and had instead "certified" some alternate set of electors, and Trump and all his faction had claimed uniform victory, that somehow the army & police and everyone else would have stood against it? At best we'd've had a civil war.
The best part of that January was that a coup and/or civil war did not happen. The US got on with business. It could have went bad, but it did not do so.
Strong disagree: a half-assed, incompetently executed, failed bank robbery is still classed as and prosecuted as "bank robbery", there is no separate legal category for "attempted bank robbery".
It's the same with a failed coup. "the coup failed pathetically" is categorically different from "a coup did not happen".
what??
>>It was literally a matter of Pence refusing to play along and the secret service refusing to put Trump on the Capitol
Things that never happened for 1000 Alex....
Even if Pence has "played along" the outcome would have been the same, this narrative that the US was on the "razor's edge of democratic collapse" is insanity.
>>with a much weaker president.
The current problem has come about because for the last several decades (almost 100 years), and with an accelerated pace we have consolidated more and more power into the federal government at large, and the office of president via the creation of a massive administrative "4th" branch of government that should be unconstitutional on its face.
The problem is not who or what office has the power. The problem is power itself...
The only rational way to curb the corrupting influence of power is to limit it, and distribute it as far and wide as possible
Any concentration of power is bad