The US is rated as an "flawed democracy" and not a "full democracy" for the last decade by the Economist Intelligence Unit (an offshoot of the Magazine that published this article).

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2024/03/21/why-amer...

That would be my guess as to both why Trump got elected and why voting isn't very popular.

>That would be my guess as to both why Trump got elected and why voting isn't very popular.

A turnout of 63.5% isn't popular? Even compared to past elections it's the second highest turnout in the past 3 decades. The highest was in 2020.

First past the post systems generally have lower turnout than proportional systems. Even record turnout for the US isn't very high in international terms.

And if that record turnout is to support and/or oppose a candidate that seeks to burn the whole system down and gets votes due to the system not reflecting voters priorities for a while then it further supports my theory.

> record turnout for the US isn't very high in international terms

Who are you comparing it to? The U.S. is middle of the pack in the OECD [1].

The highest-turnout countries are Equitorial Guinea, Rwanda and Turkmenistan [2]. None are democracies.

[1] https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/reg_glance-2009-35-e...

[2] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/voter-tur...

Switzerland has usually a less than 50% turnout, for a comparison - and still gets brownie points for democracy. Yes, I'm sad myself, but I'll still take it over any other systems.

What conditioning? I've always heard it described as the "least bad" form of government. It definitely beats having a communist dictatorship though.

"Vox Populi, Vox Dei": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox_Populi%2C_Vox_Dei

While I personally think of democracy as "the worst except for everything else we've tried", there's plenty who speak as if it's tautologically the best.

In the historical context I would see "Vox Populi, Vox Dei" as intentionally juxtaposed against the "Divine Right of Kings" (the leading political philosophy in Europe for the last few thousand years).

I think there is a TON of interesting discussion to be had on the best ways to _implement_ democracy, but locating the source of political power directly in the people who are governed seems like a pretty solid idea to me... I have not been able to come up with anything better.

The problem with giving people choices is that sometimes they make the wrong choice.

Indeed. Democracy is "least bad" because it at least allows people to choose, but don't be surprised if they make the wrong choice. Evidently one problem outweighs the other, and for advocates for democracy it's that the latter issue is outweighed (the former is that the people have no choice, this is people making the wrong choice). If men were angels, a nominally totalitarian government could be absolutely ideal.

> The masses just want food and security.

sure, but half of the country believes that's achieved with some measures and the other half believe those measures are the cause of the problems. A dictatorship doesn't change that, you'll only have half of the country incapable of voting for a change.

>We've been conditioned

That's a very interesting phrase to use here.

Either you live in a very different bubble, or you are building a strawman to demolish.

I never even heard anybody claiming that democracy is perfect form of government. People in democratic countries usually accept that democracy is messy.

The real killer app of democracy is the ability to change leaders without death or bloodshed. Of course it results in fewer big projects being built (though the US was very good in building things like Apollo or the Interstate System, once - it is mostly environmental regulations that get in the way now, and not pure democracy).

But the stereotypical danger of autocracy is that its big projects will be a useless money sink (like this [0]), or even destructive.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrality_Monument