In fairness, many people have been working hard for decades to turn as many people into illiterate dumb fucks as possible. We didn't get here accidentally.
They eventually (more or less) gave up, finding all their efforts at comfortable explanations unsupportable. Nope, it’s just luck, momentum, and the difficult of intentionally directing large chaotic systems keeping things tolerably sane. It’s, in fact, very scary and it’s astounding it works at all.
It no longer does. Social media was the tipping point.
Religion wasn't enough to break democracy, newspapers weren't enough, radio wasn't enough, TV was almost enough... but now, with social media as the proverbial last straw, the bug is fully exploited, completely unfixable, and likely fatal.
The medium is the message, and I think the “message” of the global Web + social media + (now) generative AI may not include liberal democracy.
IMO Trump has exposed fatal flaw in democracy that everyone kinda knew about but nobody wanted to admit because it's never been exploited in a well-established, highly-functioning, independent democracy before - turns out, majority of voters are dumb fucks. Once you accept this as truth, lots of pieces fall into place.
Assuming that most people DO support Trump and his politics, in a democratic system the judges have no basis to be the adults in the room and actually tell voters what they're allowed to do and what they aren't.