Just read it as ”we have the competence to make decisions with authority on this issue”, though we all wish it always meant ”we have authority to make competent decisions on this issue” xD
Yes, they would. However, if Taiwan wasn’t as important to the world because of their chips then the world would probably not care as much about what communist China wants to do to them.
Nor if you have a class of low paid (and before that unpaid) people who carried luggage for travelers. There was a lot of social change in the US after the 1960's, and travel only became democratized recently.
Presumably that's because most of the people flying in or out are traveling from/to other countries, and it makes no sense for them to own one set of luggage for India, and another for the rest of the planet, especially if the latter is compatible with the former anyway.
Democracy in the US has always been flawed. The situation has been steadily improving in some areas (voting rights) with set backs in other areas (gerrymandering, legalised bribery of politicians). There's a lot that needs to be done, but the US has always pointed in the direction of democracy.
At creation US leaders were selected from a subsection of the population in all land governed by the nation. With Puerto Rico, DC, etc that’s no longer the case making the US an empire not a republic.
Controlling who has the vote has long been an issue, but denying political power to a region is a different category of thing than denying it to poor people etc.
Maybe, but then the US is a weird kind of reverse-empire, because it's exactly the capital where people don't get to vote, at least for the senate. An empire is usually where only people from the core region have any representation (if anyone does, because I don't think empires need to be democratic at all).
