A recent Slate editorial (liberal bias) offered the following summation of the US "state-of-the-union":
A pendulum is swinging from illiberal democracy to undemocratic
liberalism, then back. And its swings are getting wider and wider.
There is little space for anyone to mislabel the "illiberal democracy" tendencies of today's angry/ordinary people. God knows we have seen enough Trump Talks to clarify all possible misunderstandings. However, "undemocratic liberalism" is a far more complex label. The "undemocratic" sounds more sinister, and certainly might prove to be so, but at this fork in the road, I choose "undemocratic liberalism" which seems bettter labeled "faux democracy".
Yes, we all get that there is an "establishment" and reallize how "they" are sustained by PAC's and Oligarchs. We realize that a concentration of power is achieved by diverting key government choices away from the ballot box in favor of private and institutional control. And yes, we recognize that a periodic "hollow election charade" runs some existential risk that the good of the few might prevail over the good of the many......but
these are difficult times. The poorly educated "illiberal right", having been negligently under compensated, have now self-actualized in a "facebook frenzy". You talk about "existential risk"; does anyone think that Newt Gingrich and the Kock Brothers would be able to contain a runaway train named "The Primitive Emotion Express"?
In this always near viral information era, at least until the education decline is halted and the functional intelligence gradient is no longer skewed toward "primitive emotion"; it seems wise that the patterns of democracy cultivated in past times be entrusted to the "hopefully elevated consciences" of the few unnamed elites. A Faux Democracy is better than no civilization at all.