“The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage and whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy—then go back to the office and sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece.” - Hunter S. Thompson
There’s no need to any anything else.
But I want to add that since 2000, we have had the GOP controlling local and national politics as a ruling minority. The GOP has mastered leveraging inherent power in rural states (thus having a constant advantage in the US Senate), packing the Federal courts when they have control of the US Senate, leveraging the Electoral College so that it has won the presidency twice while losing the popular vote, and using gerrymandering and voter suppression to create advantages at both the US House and state levels. We don’t dare call any of this cheating, mind you.
So if I wanted to pollute Thompson’s perfect sentence with one of my own, I would add that the second problem with any democracy is that it’s deceptively fragile. The ruling party can completely ruin it if the opposition party doesn’t notice, doesn’t care, or assumes they can fix what is broken if and when they return to power. This is particularly the case if the ruling party has no moral compass, no shame, and even accepts foreign assistance to stay in power.
That’s a threshold for a failed state. No form of government is self-correcting. Every form of government needs strenuous maintenance and reform, or it will eventually collapse. Things fall apart.
And I will also add, given recent events -
We should not be upset at Justice Ginsburg for refusing to retire in 2010. She worked tirelessly, days and nights, doing a fine job of being an impartial judge committed to the ideal of the Fourteenth Amendment. If the future of our republic really did hinge on her staying alive, then this republic was already doomed. I think it is. Since 2000 it has been absolute hell.