Democracy isn’t when appointed officials always side with other appointed officials.
They interpret the law. And when existing law has bad policy outcomes people get made that 9 unelected lawyers in robes aren’t legislating for us. When the out comes are good people don’t hear about them or forget them.
Maybe that massive standing army isn’t a good thing to have. A lot of the original criticisms match our current army pretty well.
There’s a catch 22 here. Symbols get adopted by groups who recontextualize them. Then people only view them in the context of those groups. Effectively ceding symbols to them.
If you don’t think there’s trump stans out there who believe trump will do just that you need to touch grass.
What is the lie there? That they actually picking a candidate who they want to make the country worse? The blunt truth is that to them the policies you don’t like are good ones.
Insisting otherwise simply fuels polarization which furthers radicalization.