One thing I forgot to add is some concrete examples of the “defenders of democracy.” John Brennan, former CIA director who authorized and ordered CIA torture program, the assassination of American citizens, who said the CIA was above the law, and who spied on Congress to facilitate coverups - went on record on an NPR interview saying that they had to do whatever it took to get rid of Trump, and was lauded as a resistance hero. It makes me very uneasy to be on the same side as John Brennan. Similarly, a US general proudly announced on television that he lied to Trump about American troop presence so that they could maintain troops in the country in question. The American government is riddled with such people very clearly undermining democratic institutions, but they are ignored and lauded as heroes for opposing the enemy du jour.

> You can't expect the entire population to be well informed about all issues, our current system offloads the requirement for everyone to be knowledgeable about everything, which I would say is that gap.

Sure, this is a fundamental problem with the increasingly complex nature of modern society. But it’s also why, no matter who you vote for as an American, you get basically the same foreign policy, whether you elect Bush or Obama. Foreign policy is really not so much decided by the President, though he gets some influence, but by tens of thousands of State Department experts and to some extent the DoD and security establishment. Americans don’t get a say in whether it’s a good idea to meddle in the internal politics of every country on Earth, or whether the particular position taken in some country benefits them or not, they simply have to accept the expert view, even when it blows up in their faces and harms millions of people and leads to 9/11s or helps the arming of ISIS. There is no easy solution to this problem of expert interests gradually diverging from average American interests.

Another example might be marijuana legalization. A large supermajority of Americans support medical marijuana but it remains federally illegal. This is an area where the “expert” political class does not really care so much and does not widely support it, so nothing happens. When there is political class consensus, forms don’t even matter - legislated law is set aside in favor of executive orders, if necessary to move as quickly as possible - and if the next President tries to rescind such an executive order, he will not be allowed.

But you can’t simultaneously make the argument that “democracy is good” and “actually, we need rule by experts.” You’ve gone from saying Trump was bad because he ignored democracy to making an argument yourself about where democracy fails.