Democracy being slowly dismantled in America and the UK

Who's doing that?

1) Cincinnati Ohio. Shootout with FBI. Attempted to break into OH HQ with AR-15 and nail gun

2) Washington, DC earlier today. A man tried to slam his car through a barrier at the US Capitol, failed, the car caught fire, he fired his gun in the air; as police approached him, he shot himself in the head.

You're right. Trump allowed a lot of people to take notice of the deeply flawed nation that America is or more specifically the powers that be in America be it the church, the govt, the military are. No matter who the president is the flaws of America remain. The flaws took years to form as the nation evolved from a frontier state to civil war to a stable nation to a world power. At first the US had little to no interest in anything outside its borders. This changed in the 20th C and especially during and after WW2.

From 1945 to the early 1970s America was top dog and considered itself unbeaten. The reality was not what it considered itself as the Korean war, Cuban crisis and JFK assassination showed but the Vietnam war was the one thing that made America less hungry for militarism for a time. The US left Saigon in total defeat on every level. The commies of Vietnam now had the whole country and the vast majority of people in the US even a lot of the army either saw the war as aggression or a total futile waste of time. For 18 years no major American intervention in another country would occur. They had lost their stomach for war for a time! Even when the new regime in Iran took hostages, the US didn't do a thing!! They could easily have installed a secular military guy and have the Islamic Republic defeated in about 3-6 months without even firing an American shot (just pay some Iranian army guys enough to do it themselves!) but Vietnam echoed in their ear. Shah Khomeini was the Islamic Ho Chi Minh, the Revolutionary Guards the new Vietcong and they were just not going there! Still and all, they moan to this day about Iran's regime but didn't act when they actually could have changed it at the root.

America's aversion to militarism came to an end in 1991 when the first of many Middle East wars came about. Saddam had to be stopped and would be the cause of everything from then on. The anti-Iraq propaganda was effective and anyone from the 1990s to 2003 period would be conditioned to blame Saddam for everything bad going on! The US got Saddam out of Kuwait, then got Milosevic and his heavies out of Bosnia and then Kosovo. They temporarily got the Taliban out of Afghanistan's govt after 9/11 'justified' their war. They were on a roll apart from a disastrous intervention in Somalia. The image was that the US was the world's policeman, bring 'bad regimes' to justice and standing up for 'democracy'. The reality was it was empire building and democracy was never the issue so was not dismantled only now.

The Iraq war and all the lies about Saddam and 9/11, WMD and relations with Al Qaeda were used blatantly to justify a war even more ridiculous than Vietnam. This was the war on 'terror' and what you say above with the homeland security bills was more of it. It was making the US a more militaristic state and was indeed the closest to dictatorship America has had. Iraq turned into a total disaster but if it had not there were plans to invade Iran, North Korea, etc etc by the same Republican admin who condemned the next Democrat admin for involving itself in the Libyan war. By the time Trump came into power, America was right back at the start of the post-Vietnam era. Most Americans do not want these wars but the Republicans could not help trying for another war when they killed an Iranian general.

America may or may not have started out with noble ideals but like all empires (and that is what it is) has become drunk on its own power. European colonists justified their policies by saying they were educating so-called 'savages' or converting them to the Christian god. America says it does what it does for the Afghan, Iraqi, Iranian, Libyan, etc. people but are ok with what goes on in Israel/Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Eritrea. Trump may or may not be president again but with or without him I suspect another war will be fought sometime soon enough to 'save democracy' somewhere.

Democracy as you say is an ideal that may exist at the beginning of a nation and then becomes tarnished by corruption and greed. We see this in all nations. There also is not one nation on earth that does not claim to be anything other than a democracy. No one is calling themselves dictators even dictators. They all see themselves as leaders who are accountable to their people but more often than not do things against the interests of their people. I agree America once had the best system on earth and so too do/did the UK, Ireland and others but as you say it is vulnerable and a flawed individual in power can upset a lot of the tenets of democracy in whatever meaning the given country interprets.

So with regard to the thread title, I’d question has democracy ever truly existed in either country?

Both states have long since converted up their war crimes abroad, usually with the collusion of their so-called free press.

Both countries boast of their empirical conquests and have kids brainwashed in to believing their race wars were “good things”.

Add in the apartheid against minority groups in both states, Britain having an unelected head of state, and the undue influence the wealthy have in the US political political system, and it would be an odd democracy that anyone thinks exists in either dump.

Any update on this second dead Trump supporter, you guys were foaming at the mouth about two days?

Still dead.