OTTAWA (Reuters) - About two-thirds of Canadians surveyed this month said American democracy cannot survive another four years of Donald Trump in the White House, and about half said the United States is on the way to becoming an authoritarian state, a poll released on Monday said.

The November U.S. election is likely to pit President Joe Biden against Trump, who is the clear frontrunner to win the Republican nomination as voting in the presidential primary race kicks off in Iowa on Monday.

Sixty-four percent of respondents in the Angus Reid Institute poll of 1,510 Canadians said they agreed with the statement: “U.S. democracy cannot survive another four years of Donald Trump.” Twenty-eight percent disagreed.

The Jan. 6, 2021 attack on Capitol Hill by Trump supporters seeking to block certification of Biden’s 2020 election win shocked many Canadians, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau publicly blamed Trump for inciting the mob.

Trump has vowed if elected again to punish his political enemies, and he has drawn criticism for using increasingly authoritarian language.

Three times as many Canadians say a Biden victory would be better for Canada’s economy (53%) than a Trump win (18%), according to the poll which was seen exclusively by Reuters. The poll, taken between Jan. 9-11, had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points

  • Stamets@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Well, yeah. You’d have to be an absolute fucking idiot to say otherwise. The dude tried an insurrection. He routinely violated American democracy. It’s almost like if you elect a wanna be dictator he’s gonna, you know, become a dictator

    • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Dealing with Republicans is like talking to the dumb computer scientist in a Star Trek plot, “I know the last fifteen of these we tried betrayed us and killed millions, but we should totally give control of all our ships and weapons to my new AI program… Hm? Oh, yes, it is a new uniform, thank you for noticing. Yeah, my tailor said it matched the color of my blood.”

      • Stamets@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I always saw the Vulcans as Republicans, in all honesty.

        They are aggressively xenophobic and use ‘logic’ as an excuse to berate, bash, ignore, and forget anything that they don’t like. They claim to be bowing to ideals set by their predecessors but their predecessor would likely be rolling in their grave at what they’ve been doing. They don’t make any real advancement or go further, they’re happy to stay exactly where they’re at with the status quo. They abhor anything that’s different and see giving any sort of space to that difference as a gracious gift to be given and one that the different thing better be grateful for. They lord themselves high and mighty above everyone else but routinely miss the big picture and end up putting themselves into positions of failure due to it. They put far too much into what are mostly superstitious and religious beliefs and those beliefs often impact everyone. When they have a child with someone who isn’t part of their group, they try to raise the child in such a way that the child is permanently torn and confused. When teenagers are confused, frightened and upset instead of allowing them to embrace these feelings and figure out how to control them, they instead root out all compassion and hints of emotion to further what they think is the best.

        • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Ha, this created an unexpected mixture of emotions for me. I never would have thought of this because a lot of my favorite characters are Vulcan crew members who tell non-Vulcans to stop being so emotional and trying to blast their way out of problems or whatever, but yeah, come to think of it pretty much all of those characters had to fight against Vulcan society a ton, so you’ve kinda got a point…

          … Which is really annoying, because I’m in the middle of hate-watching Enterprise for the first time and I can’t stop seeing Archer as Rick Berman’s fantasy version of a George W Bush and the Vulcans as stand ins for Europeans and The Democratic party and anyone else who thought we couldn’t solve the problem of international terrorism by just " standing up to bad guys " (which back in our reality translated into conducting drone strikes on civilians and stuff)

          • Stamets@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Yeah… Enterprise is hard for me to watch because it often feels like Team America Space Police. Not as bad as fucking Stargate mind you. That shit is intolerable…

        • gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          It comes up a lot, off the top of my head I definitely remember episodes in lower decks and Discovery and the original series that dealt with this, but I honestly think I’m forgetting a few

    • saltesc@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Aw I dunno. It’s been a while since we’ve had a good ol’ fashioned US President assassination.

        • ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          While that is certainly true, in the short term he is impossible to replace as a demagogue. The people who rabidly follow him tend to do so at the absolute exclusion of everyone and everything else, even if it’s supposedly “their side” making the offering.

          For a couple examples, the RNC is suffering hard for cash because Trumpers are donating directly to him and skipping the RNC entirely, and look at how Nikki Haley lost to fucking “None of the candidates” in the Nevada primary. They literally came out to the primary to cast a “go fuck yourself Nikki” vote instead of just staying home because the orange chancre wasn’t on the primary ballot, lol.

          If the spraytan antichrist were to inexplicably lose his last horcrux tomorrow, he would indeed become an instant martyr – but with no one remaining able to take up that martyr’s cause. For Trumpers, it’s literally Trump or no one at all. His own kids have the charisma of blighted tomatoes, and no one in the GOP comes anywhere near understanding how to move his devotees.

          It MIGHT just give us enough of a space in the noise to try to return to the path of democracy. I don’t know. For myself, I just want him to keep eating as many more hamberders with extra large fries and a side of lard nightly for as long as he can lift those little hands up to that hamberder hole and push 'em in.

  • Funderpants @lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    Here are the detailed tables and as usual with this kind of question it’s Conservatives VS everybody else.

    https://angusreid.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/2024.01.12_StateofNations_tables.pdf

    The largest contingent of people who thinks Trump would be better votes Conservative Party of Canada, is a man, and has high school or less education.

    They also are unfortunately on a path towards putting Conservatives in government here in Canada.

    • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      They also are unfortunately on a path towards putting Conservatives in government here in Canada.

      Not quite. The conservatives aren’t enough to put the CPC in government. They need folks who’d otherwise vote for one of the other parties in order to win. So in a way, it’s some of the rest of us who would put the conservatives in office.

      • Kedly@lemm.ee
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        9 months ago

        I’m starting to see a lot of poor coworkers think PP would do a better job than Trudeau, and as usual dont realise they can vote NDP or Green if the Liberals are pissing them off…

        • Avid Amoeba@lemmy.ca
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          9 months ago

          I’m not surprised. It’s pretty standard to think cons would improve their lives when that can’t be further from the truth. It’s not like the libs are super labor friendly but at least they aren’t actively anti-labor, unlike the cons.

  • Yerbouti@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    Trump won the first time because people didnt wanted Cliton. Biden won because people didnt wanted Trump. If Trumpo wins this time, the democrat party will be at least partially responsible. Go home Joe, just leave if you love your country.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    The point trump has abundantly made is that he wishes to do away with democracy as we knew it.

    It’s not that it won’t survive some rambling and ineffectual idiot, it will be actively crushed by him and his supporters.

      • yggstyle@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Electoral College, gerrymandering, etc. The fact anyone thinks their vote matters is astonishing.

        • Dark Arc@social.packetloss.gg
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          9 months ago

          There are plenty of ways a vote matters even in those circumstances.

          EC and gerrymandering have no effect on governors or senators. Those are absurdly powerful positions.

          EC and gerrymandering also don’t affect local county and city offices which can play an outsized role in how your local government and community interact.

          • yggstyle@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            I’d strongly recommend you look into the damage both of those elements have caused to the democratic process. I fully expected that comment to not sit right with people… it needed to be said though. Nobody likes finding out how the sausage is made. We have the technology to have a popular vote directly drive elections… why doesn’t it? Simple: Control. We could, as a nation, cast 0 votes as a show of no confidence… and I promise you someone would still be elected. This is a broad topic. I wasn’t referring to local- which definitely have their own issues.

      • ganksy@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        About 40M A-oks. Only about 12% of Americans. Unfortunately, about half of the voting public. If your county has mandatory voting, thank your lucky stars.

        • GiddyGap@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          Unfortunately, Republicans will never support compulsory voting since they benefit from low voter turnout. A 90-95 percent turnout rate would be the end of the Republican Party.

  • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Wait I know I saw this article like two months ago. Is that what you Canadians have been up to the past 8 weeks? Just sitting there in a constant state of worry?

    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      Just sitting there in a constant state of worry?

      When the downstairs neighbors keep piling up more firewood, and won’t listen to cooler heads, worry is an appropriate response.

      • Routhinator@startrek.website
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        9 months ago

        Yep. Can confirm as well. And a weaker US democracy would create a power vaccuum in NATO that would very likely be exploited with the power dynamics in play on the global scale in recent years.

          • LunarVoyager@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Some part of me is afraid I’ll be one of “those people” they send their brownshirts after. Like I’m actually starting to fear what may come in a way that didn’t feel as real even just a few months ago.

    • Icalasari@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      Remember, one of our national past times is watching as everything around us collapses while we shake each other’s hands for at least not being AS bad as the states

  • NihilisticOptimist@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    I am not a fan of this idea, but Canada needs nukes ASAP. If Trump wins , we need a nuclear deterrent. I’m afraid we’ll suffer the same fate of Ukraine.

    I’d rather be wrong with nukes then right without them.

    • Desistance@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      That’s a bit overkill. America will plunge into a civil war long before Canada will need nukes. Many people won’t suffer more of Trump’s degeneration of the constitution.

    • Brosplosion@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      That’s a crazy slippery slope. US will never shit where it eats. Land war sucks and the US military is highly aware of this.

  • unreasonabro@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    It’s ok, the continent’s gonna split up the middle pretty soon from all the fracking, there ain’t gonna be a country there in the first place pretty soon.

  • rusticus@lemm.ee
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    9 months ago

    We took the same bullshit apologetic approach after the Civil War with “reconstruction” and look where we are now: rotten to the core with racists, sexists and xenophobes.

    • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      Damn you Andrew Johnson!

      For the most part, historians view Andrew Johnson as the worst possible person to have served as President at the end of the American Civil War. Because of his gross incompetence in federal office and his incredible miscalculation of the extent of public support for his policies, Johnson is judged as a great failure in making a satisfying and just peace. He is viewed to have been a rigid, dictatorial racist who was unable to compromise or to accept a political reality at odds with his own ideas. Instead of forging a compromise between Radical Republicans and moderates, his actions united the opposition against him. His bullheaded opposition to the Freedmen’s Bureau Bill, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, and the Fourteenth Amendment eliminated all hope of using presidential authority to effect further compromises favorable to his position. In the end, Johnson did more to extend the period of national strife than he did to heal the wounds of war.

      On top of my joy at another opportunity to mention what a shitbird Johnson was, a shittyness we are still feeling, IMO, the bolded bit sounds a lot like another President I can think of.