All systems can be bent, broken, or subverted. Still, we need to make systems which do the best within the bounds of reality.

As a lifelong independent, I can tell you that this sort of thinking is incredibly prevalent and also incredibly wrong. Even a casual look at recent history proves this. How do you define "democracy"? Most of us define it as "the will of the people". Just recently, however, when "the will of the people" has not been the will of the ruling class, the "will of the people" has been decried as dangerous populism (nothing new but something that has re-emerged recently in the so-called Western World). It is our "institutions" they argue, that are actually democracy, and not the will of the foolish people who are ignorant and easily swayed.

>All systems can be bent, broken, or subverted.

Very true, and the history of our nation is proof of that, from the founding right up to the present day.

>Still, we need to make systems which do the best within the bounds of reality.

It would be nice, but that is a long way from how things are, or have ever been (so far).

I think it's a misreading to say the government should do whatever the whim of the most vocal, gerrymandered jurisdictions are. Instead, it is a supposed to be a republic with educated, ethical professionals doing the lawmaking within a very rigid structure designed to limit power severely in order to protect individual liberty.

For me, the amount of outright lying, propaganda, blatant corruption, and voter abuse makes a claim like "democracy is the will of the most people who agree" seem misguided at best (and maybe actively deceitful).

Re reading your comment, the straw man about "democracy is actually the institutions" makes me think I may have fallen for a troll so I'm just going to stop here.

You haven't, so be assured.

>I think it's a misreading to say the government should do whatever the whim of the most vocal, gerrymandered jurisdictions are.

It shouldn't, and I didn't argue that. My argument is that the people in charge have completely disregarded the will of the people en mass for a long time, and that the people are so outraged and desperate that at this point they are willing to vote for anyone who will upend the elite consensus that refuses to change.

>Instead, it is a supposed to be a republic with educated, ethical professionals doing the lawmaking within a very rigid structure designed to limit power severely in order to protect individual liberty.

How is that working out for us? Snowden's revelations were in 2013. An infinite number of blatantly illegal and unconstitutional programs actively being carried out by various government agencies. Who was held to account? Nobody. What was changed? Nothing. Who was in power? The supposedly "good" team that respects democracy. Go watch the conformation hearing of Tulsi Gabbard from this year. Watch Democratic Senator after Democratic Senator denounce Snowden as a traitor and repeatedly demand that she denounce him as well, as a litmus test for whether or not she could be confirmed as DNI (this is not a comment on Gabbard one way or another). My original comment disputed the contention that one party was for democracy and the other party was against it. Go watch that video and tell me that the Democrats support liberty, freedom, democracy and a transparent government. I don't support either of the parties, and this is one of the many reasons why.

Most other western democracies are a lot closer to a perfect world, it seems.

Or UK where you can get locked up for blasphemy[3] or where they lock up ~30 people a day for saying offensive things online because of their Online Safety Act?[4]

Or perhaps Romania where an election that didn't turn out the way the EU elites wanted is overturned based on nebulous (and later proven false) accusation that the election was somehow influenced by a TikTok campaign by the Russians that later turned out to have been funded by a Romanian opposition party.[5]

I could go on and on, but unfortunately most other western democracies are just as flawed, if not worse. Hopefully we can all strive for a better future and flush the authoritarians, from all the parties.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bMzFDpfDwc

[2] https://www.euronews.com/2023/10/19/mass-arrests-following-p...

[3] https://news.sky.com/story/man-convicted-after-burning-koran...

[4] https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/police-make-30-arr...

[5] https://www.politico.eu/article/investigation-ties-romanian-...

But is there any reason to believe that judged were pressured/compelled by political powers to make these decisions? Apart from, of course, the law created by these politicians, which is how the system is intended to work.

No, but I have every reason to believe that the judges who made these decisions were people selected by political powers so that they would make them.

>Apart from, of course, the law created by these politicians, which is how the system is intended to work.

But the system isn't working for the people, it is horribly broken. The people running the system are mostly corrupt and/or incompetent, which is why so many voters from a wide variety of countries, and across the political spectrum, are willing to vote for anyone (even people who are clearly less than ideal) that shits all over the system and promises to smash it. Because the system is currently working exactly how it's intended to work, most people hate it and nobody feels like they can do anything about it.