Yes, but your Microsoft analogy is a bit dated. Not quite the monopoly it was, thankfully.

@David1955 That's the one hope, monopolies tend to implode on themselves.

I think you've got it backwards.

@rainmanjr I don't think so. White America will inevitably lose its grip on power in the near future, unless it resorts to a type of apartheid. Whites are superior, they believe, thus entitled to rule, regardless of whether or not their population bloc is numerically greatest and/or get the most votes. Therefore, democracy can be illegitimate, in their view, because white interests deserve to be served above all others, even if they ARE outvoted.
To justify this position, they claim the Bible, thus God, endorses it.
First comes the goal (white rule in perpetuity because whites are superior), then Christian teachings are shaped to justify that goal. Not that those teachings are themselves clear; the Bible is rife with contradictions, so that virtually any doctrine can be claimed to be "Christian."

Okay. I don't disagree with any of that so you win.

If you study American history you know there was a Civil War mid 19th Century. It was never settled. The Confederacy was a fascist element which still exists today. Still a civil war in the US.

It saddens me to say but I suspect you are correct.

@barjoe that's a different issue. Yes, America never expunged the Confederacy, leaving it as a 'noble' failed challenge to the union, peddled by southerners and Hollywood. The issue I referred to is the absurd legalities of the Presidency which Trump and co have exploited perfectly. The President can pardon anyone, even connected to him and his crimes? Absurd. The President can't be charged while in office? Can't be pursued months before elections, which you have every 2 freaking years. Crazy. Your President has powers beyond a King. Everything is 'convention' which of course means nothing to the criminal.

@David1955 Trump and Co is the Confederacy.

@barjoe oh come now. The rich fascist corporate wing of the Republican party behind the push to authoritarianize America is far wider than left over Confederacy types. Essentially they've decided that the Faux politics of your binary political party system has had its day and its time run things their way.

@David1955 If you study American history, Republicans were the progressive party up until the election of 1876. Democrats at the time were the party of the Confederacy. GOP Rutherford B Hayes literally stole the election from Democrat Samuel Tilden who agreed to sacrifice becoming president in order to end Reconstruction and allow the south to usher in Jim Crow laws. Southerners continued to vote Democrat for the next 90 years until Nixon's southern strategy which capitalized on LBJ's civil rights laws to get southern whites to vote Republican. That's been the case ever since and Trump took it to a new level of white supremacy in the guise of Christian Nationalism.

They all are. Figurehead and a drone on society.

@barjoe The crown contributes more money to the state than it receives in state grants, from which grants it has to pay the costs of running the great palaces, and of entertaining visiting heads of state, etc. The US presidents have all this paid for them, and do their best to avoid paying taxes. So who are the "leeches" or drones?

@Petter I'm sorry for your loss.

Maybe

His son William is now Prince of Wales. The family business. Much like the Corleone family in the Godfather.

@barjoe Just much more powerful than the Corleones.

@HippieChick58 Yet benignly so.

@HippieChick58, @barjoe William is also now Duke of Cornwall and leader of Scotland.

@Petter And head of the Church of England... From watching the Royal family over the years I wouldn't want to be in their church.

@HippieChick58 You aren't.

@Petter I attended an Episcopal church a couple of times, that is the American version of the CofE.

@HippieChick58 Only because Godfather was a work of fiction.