US “democracy” not morally superior to Soviet and Chinese revolutionary dictatorship of the working classes

 Sam : “ It was during the Trump interregnum that I gained a fuller appreciation of the importance of the relative independence of the media and judicial system from the dictates of the political bloc in power, not to mention a more nuanced understanding of the role of the Democratic Party in our politics. Each in their own way were instrumental in bringing down Trump. In fact, it is fair to say in their absence Trump would be sending out his destructive, sometimes deadly, and daily missives from the White House and white nationalist, plutocratic authoritarianism or, maybe worse, would be riding roughshod over the "relative independence" of the institutions of our Republic as well as the rights and liberties of tens of millions.

It also caused me to reflect on my willingness to accept, even defend, their absence in the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries that went belly up 3 decades ago. In that era, I understood democracy in socialist society instrumentally, that is, subordinate to the "wisdom," decisions, and power requirements of the "Marxist Leninist vanguard party" and mistook, perhaps conveniently, the formal representations of democratic governance and rights as actual ones.

Life is complicated, isn't it.

CB : Although , this here faux republic put trumpy, (bush, reagan, MCConnell ) in in the first place. Getting them out , getting itself out the dangerous situation the “republic” had created for itself, is a relatively meager democratic achievement .

US republic is highly dysfunctional at this conjuncture . The Congress was not sufficiently independent of the Executive. The critically independent acting institutions were the federal Armed Forces ( standing bodies of armed personnel), Military, FBI and CIA (!) . The Generals saved us . Ironically, Those are the institutions that we have not wanted to be independent of . Kind of reminds of Soviet democracy .

The media was not emphatically anti -Trumpy . Fox News and that local news national right wing tv station were pro-Trumpy .

US history does not recommend its democracy to other countries . US and Canadian democracy genocidally usurped North America , prosecuted slavery and Jim Crow and Reaganism, usurped half of Mexico , didn’t let women vote for 140 years, and more. Slavery was not voted out ; it took Stalin-style violence to end it . The Union waged _democratic_ violence in the US Civil War

I don’t think we can criticize Soviet or Chinese democracy ; people in glass houses shouldn’t through stones .

Also, Russia had virtually no experience with democracy. The population was not competent to carry out US style voting .

In _The State and Revolution _ Lenin critiques democracy as still a state. And of course the true nature of the European system as an oligarchy of the elite minority bourgeoisie. The Manifesto speaks of the working class winning the battle of democracy. The question is did the CPSU have policies in the best interest of the working masses ? Not did they get voted in .