Like, I’m not saying a democracy can’t work, it obviously can and has for a good number of decades, but, like any other system of politics, it has a failure condition.

I would argue the problem is merely of the scale of crazies. Granted, a lot of the European democracies are doing a lot better than the US or UK, but at the same time, fundamentally, no system other than a dictatorship that actively acts against its own people can withstand a large enough population that vehemently decides to be evil. Israel’s parliamentary system is a pretty good example. On paper not a bad system, the problem is that so many of them are completely captured by the right and far right that even the leftmost parties are still pretty damn horrendous when it comes to the West Bank and Gaza.

I mean, that might be the ideal idea, but democracy has never done that historically. Its main benefit is that it averages out the opinions of the populace so extremist dictators can’t steer a state as fast as possible into collapse, which is not something you can do much about when so many people are so willing to vote for a demagogue or a populist without explicitly antidemocratic protections, like, say, a filibuster. Alcibiades, Caesar, Robespierre, Netanyahu, Trump, Modi, Farage, the list goes on.

It’s also worth emphasising the role of the far-right captured media headed by Murdoch and Russian disinformation attacks on democracies globally. Obviously, there is blame to be had with the people who choose to vote for these fuckers, but at the same time, it’s no coincidence that the right is winning across many Western democracies simultaneously with AfD, Reform, the GOP, etc. in recent years making significant gains.

democracy only goes so far when there’s a significant section of the population that are psychotic.