Except part of the point of a democratic society is to leave the hard decisions of state to a small group of people who are ideally best equipped to handle it. The intent is precisely for the public at large to NOT have to assess every minute, gory detail, as then they would have no time left to contribute to the society.

Now, that model also relies on the ability to trust that those chosen to make the hard decisions are doing so competently and in the best interests of the society at large. It also bakes in the assumption that everyone will have to make compromises.

In the immortal words of Calvin and Hobbes "A good compromise leaves everyone mad".

> Except part of the point of a democratic society is to leave the hard decisions of state to a small group of people who are ideally best equipped to handle it.

No, that's the point of representative government (which can be part of democratic society -- hence, representative democracy -- but is not essential to it.)

The point of democratic society is that society -- and government in particular -- should be responsive to the will of the people. One of the things the people frequently want, however, is not to spend all of their time dealing with issues of governance, so they often choose representative democracy as a mechanism for achieving that goal.

>> Except part of the point of a democratic society is to leave the hard decisions of state to a small group of people who are ideally best equipped to handle it.

In a representative democracy like America yes, (a democratic republic actually) yet a pure democracy seeks majority compromise.

True. I was using democratic as shorthand for democratic republic, but that does lose a bit of clarity.

Representative democracy is not worthwhile for its own sake, it is something that is earned. The basic idea of democracy has no room for an intermediate "council of elders".

Nothing is worthwhile for its own sake, but empirically speaking representative democratic societies have been the most successful in recent history, which makes it a reasonable default. What would you argue is better and more importantly, what evidence do you have that it would be more effective?

>Except part of the point of a democratic society is to leave the hard decisions of state to a small group of people who are ideally best equipped to handle it.

Actually that's not "part of the point" at all. The point of a democratic society is to elect representatives to act on the majority's will, not to take "decisions on your behalf" and not because they are "ideally best equipped to handle it".

I think you greatly overestimate the state's interest in hiding the violence they perpetrate, and underestimate how little people care about their country using violence, at least in this country and many eastern ones.

In revolutionary France, as part of the purge of the old monarchy and replacement with a republic, there was a need for a more efficient way of killing people. See, the people wanted to kill all the old royals, but the old method was hanging, drawing and quartering, which besides being labor-intensive and incredibly painful, often used a stand-in in place of a rich nobleman. They wanted something more humane, more egalitarian, and of course, more efficient, since they had a lot of people to kill. The guillotine was introduced, and from Wikipedia:

"Its operation became a popular entertainment that attracted great crowds of spectators. Vendors sold programs listing the names of those scheduled to die. Many people came day after day and vied for the best locations from which to observe the proceedings; knitting women (tricoteuses) formed a cadre of hardcore regulars, inciting the crowd. Parents often brought their children. By the end of the Terror, the crowds had thinned drastically. Repetition had staled even this most grisly of entertainments, and audiences grew bored."

During both the Russian and Chinese revolutions, death tolls of those executed as traitors or proponents of the old empire were published widely by the state. After World War II, traitors were again executed in great numbers, and even during the war a "blocking detachment" might stay behind the lines to execute any deserters.

America has also had public execution pretty much since day one. Hanging was our preferred method before the electric chair, and then lethal injection. We make sure that both the families of the victims can witness these deaths, as well as other witnesses, and they're widely covered in the news media. We are still the only Western nation left that practices capital punishment, mainly because people here love it so much that they can't seem to pass a law banning it or follow the UN resolutions that ban it.

Now, there's plenty of abuse doled out by oppressive regimes against their people. But this abuse is still not necessarily propagandized or even hidden. A state may use secrecy and intimidation to continue their abuse, but propaganda is used more often to bolster some case the state is trying to make. Anyway, in modern times it's far more common for corporations to use propaganda to defend themselves from democracy than for the state to use it against its people.

>America has also had public execution pretty much since day one. Hanging was our preferred method before the electric chair, and then lethal injection. We make sure that both the families of the victims can witness these deaths, as well as other witnesses, and they're widely covered in the news media. We are still the only Western nation left that practices capital punishment, mainly because people here love it so much that they can't seem to pass a law banning it or follow the UN resolutions that ban it.

Let's make this abundantly clear: the United States of America categorically does not execute criminals because "people here love it so much." Nothing about that idea is even slightly correct. Capital punishment is not used at all in several of the states, and in the ones where it's a valid sentence (or on the federal level,) your likelihood of ever actually being executed is excessively low. Since 1950, the Federal government executed 26 people. The entire country executed 35 people over the whole of 2014. Those 35 were in just five states. What a truly bloodthirsty culture.

As for executions being "public," there haven't been any of those since 1936. There is certainly room to argue that subsequent events stretched the definition of the word "private," but the day has long since passed where you could just show up at the town square on the scheduled day in your commemorative "I <3 watching people die" hoodie and watch the Man give someone the needle. The reason witnesses are present to view modern "private" executions is because having the government kill convicted criminals where nobody is allowed to see it happen is an absolutely terrible idea that defies common sense. Like, duh.

If Americans love watching their public executions so much, why do they never get around to actually doing it, and why aren't citizens allowed to just show up and take pictures?