Academic Agent: There is No Meaningful Difference Between the Two Parties

"Today, democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least." — Robert Byrne

Beyond the problem of voters, there is also a problem of voting. Nevermind the fact that if it made any difference they would make it illegal, and the fact that those who count matters more than those who vote. Hence you see democrats in the US not even caring about what voting base think, they can simply count dead people. And even if it was a fair and free election, you still can only vote for people that are the other cheek of the same asshole. Two wings of the same bird. And the political class despises the working class. So they cater to big business, big pharma, etc. The doner class. Let’s face it, the system is rigged to the specification of its design.

“People use democracy as a free-floating abstraction disconnected from reality. Democracy in and of itself is not necessarily good. Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action.” ― Terry Goodkind, Naked Empire

‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”

― Robert A. Heinlein

“If you want to keep people happy, just keep the food and entertainment rolling.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

But with BLM and gay politicization of entertainment and with inflation and sanctions they are killing of both entertainment and food supply, leaving only pitchforks and torches for people to express their genuine grievances.

“Sometimes it seems that everybody in the world is in favor of democracy, just as long as it gives them the result they want.”― Jack Lessenberry

......................

Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives.

IDEALLY, this includes equal (and more or less direct) participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law. It can also encompass social, economic and cultural conditions that enable the free and equal practice of political self-determination.

Criticism of democracy: Economists since Milton Friedman have strongly criticized the efficiency of democracy. They base this on their premise of the irrational voter. Their argument is that voters are highly uninformed about many political issues, especially relating to economics, and have a strong bias about the few issues on which they are fairly knowledgeable.

“Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.” ― Aristotle

“The aspirations of democracy are based on the notion of an informed citizenry, capable of making wise decisions. The choices we are asked to make become increasingly complex. They require the longer-term thinking and greater tolerance for ambiguity that science fosters. The new economy is predicated on a continuous pipeline of scientific and technological innovation. It can not exist without workers and consumers who are mathematically and scientifically literate. ” ― Ann Druyan

Because men are in a group,
and therefore weakened,
receptive, and in a state of
psychological regression, they
pretend all the more to be
"strong individuals." The mass
man is clearly sub-human, but
pretends to be superhuman. He
is more suggestible, but insists
he is more forceful; he is more
unstable, but thinks he is firm
in his convictions ...
Democracy is based on the
concept that man is rational and
capable of seeing clearly what
is in his own interest, but the
study of public opinion suggests
this is a highly doubtful proposition.

JACQUES ELLUL, Propaganda

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse ( willingness to give money, or money given to poor people by rich people) from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been about 300 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.” ― Alexander Fraser Tytler

Indeed. Fair point.

“Widespread intellectual and moral docility may be convenient for leaders in the short term, but it is suicidal for nations in the long term.” ― Carl Sagan, Billions & Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium

“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” ― Isaac Asimov

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." ― Winston Churchill (British Orator, Author and Prime Minister during World War II. 1874-1965)

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.... A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” ― Thomas Jefferson

“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.” ― Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th President of the United States of America, from 1901 to 1909

"Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve." ― Edward Albee

If you want to understand democracy, spend less time in the library with Plato, and more time in the buses with people. ― Simeon Strunsky

"Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve." - George Bernard Shaw, Irish dramatist & socialist (1856 - 1950)

"You have to remember one thing about the will of the people: it wasn't that long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena.” ― Jon Stewart

"Popularity should be no scale for the election of politicians. If it would depend on popularity, Donald Duck and The Muppets would take seats in senate." ― Orson Welles

"Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame." ― Laurence J. Peter (1919 - 1988), US educator & writer

“What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?

There are some nations in Europe whose inhabitants think of themselves in a sense as colonists, indifferent to the fate of the place they live in. The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved. They are so divorced from their own interests that even when their own security and that of their children is finally compromised, they do not seek to avert the danger themselves but cross their arms and wait for the nation as a whole to come to their aid. Yet as utterly as they sacrifice their own free will, they are no fonder of obedience than anyone else. They submit, it is true, to the whims of a clerk, but no sooner is force removed than they are glad to defy the law as a defeated enemy. Thus one finds them ever wavering between servitude and license.

When a nation has reached this point, it must either change its laws and mores or perish, for the well of public virtue has run dry: in such a place one no longer finds citizens but only subjects.”

― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, printed at New York, 1838