You seem to have an assumption that there's only one side who employs totalitarian tactics and not both of them?

The premise of this ship analogy seems to be that most people are too idiotic to make large-scale decisions and that the people who agree with OP should be in charge of everything.

Ah, I can see it. I feel like it's more a criticism specifically of US civics (a direct shot at the supreme court for example) and US anti-intellectualism (some of the passengers believe the boat isn't sinking at all), but pulling back from that context and I see how it could be seen as apologia for various forms of nonrepresentative government.

Right. A operating a ship is a terrible analogy to operating a society because it's primarily a technical operation that requires leadership to make split second decisions that everyone follows. Obviously, a Supreme Court is worse than useless in such a context.