[fmnxl]

People portray everything in terms of the ideological war between "democracy" vs "authoritarianism", fitting everything into that narrative even when it doesn't make sense.

It's a nice, simple, easy way to understand what's happening around us, who's good and bad, yet deeply flawed.

[hayst4ck]

There is the theoretical understanding, and then there is how it meshes with reality.

The theoretical understanding is that we are in an ideological war. If you strip away all the nuance and ask for a high level understanding of what is happening right now, that is happening right now.

When meshed into reality it is a bit more complicated... neither side of our government is on the side of democracy. One is straight fascist, the other is in favor of a corporate state or oligarchy. Both party's power primarily comes from news media (oligarch owned) and from legalized bribery (the richest have the most power), so neither can challenge oligarchic power, because oligarchic power is where their power comes from. The fascist party is currently in the process of giving themselves power by replacing enforcement institutions with loyalists. Once all the people who enforce the law are loyalists, they can decide what the law is, and then it's no longer people with money who have all the power, but people the enforcers of "law" are loyal to.

Neither party can fight oligarchy because to fight oligarchy is to disempower themselves. Bernie and AOC might be the only exceptions.