Democracy isn’t just bad, it’s impossible
Some are quick to point out that if society were spiritually, racially, ethically (etc.) homogeneous then democracy would work. While homogeneity is essential for a functioning society, it is not good enough to overcome the fault in democracy.
When I say democracy is impossible, I mean that democratic organizations inevetably become oligarchical. Power is always trying to centralize itself.
You don't have to look towards Mussolini for this critique of democracy either, in fact, the best critics of democracy come straight from the mouths of 20th century progressives.
“Representative government, either in what is ordinarily called polities, or in industry, cannot be worked successfully, no matter what the basis of election, unless there is an independent, expert organization for making the unseen facts intelligible to those who have to make the decisions." - Walter Lippmann
What Lippmann understood was that most people are not capable of making their own choices. I didn't learn this from Lippmann, or Mussolini. I learned this fact because I interact with the general public.
Let me tell you a story. When I briefly attended college, I got to know the soft ball team pretty well. A lot of the girls on the team were pretty much uninteresting, however two of them caught my attention. They were as much alike as they were different.
The first girl, let's call her Emily, was dumber than a box of rocks. She lived in a state of eternal bliss that I almost envied.
You could tell she had never given any thought about damn-near anything, especially higher things. You could speak to Emily and begin to suspect you were talking to a caricature, a platonic-form of empty-headedness. She was like an abstract ideal of what it means to be stupid. But, Emily was raised in a pretty religious household. I never bothered to ask what denomination and it doesn't matter. For as dumb as Emily was, she had a meta-rational system hardwired into her since birth. In this way, Emily can be dumber than a box of rocks, and still be successful. She could do this because she was reliant upon a tried and true method of pattern-recognition, utilized by every person that came before her. In other words, even though Emily couldn't think, she could let her ancestors think for her. Emily is saved. She'll probably make a great mother someday.
The other girl, who we will call, Cheyenne was also dumber than a box of rocks. Cheyenne, however, did not grow up in a religious household, and to no ones surprise, had a poor relationship with her parents. Possibly for good reason. Either way, Cheyenne did not get the meta-rational system ingrained in her. She missed that update. She was just as stupid as Emily, but she could not offload thinking to her ancestors. This had dire consequences for Cheyenne. She was 19, dating a 47 year old man. This man had a daughter from a previous marriage, she was 15 I think. 47 year old man's daughter smoked lots of cigs.
Cheyenne and her 47 year old boyfriend decided to buy a trailer, and turn it into a tattoo parlor/art shop/vape store. She's also fat and disgusting and ugly. In conclusion, Cheyenne has never once made even one good decision. If at the end of your life you get to see a big sheet of all of the decisions you made while you were alive, Cheyenne's sheet would be red X's all the way down. It is an act of mercy to take away this person's rights.
Democracy is impossible not because homogeneity is impossible, but because most people are incapable of making their own choices. In the age of secularization, wherein religion and mythology previously acted as guides, as ways of navigating the world, technocratic and oligarchical structures emerge as a historical necessity. But they are in unable to provide the kind of guidance that religious rationality does.
Bureaucracy today is a poor substitute for mythology.
The greatest example of the necessary emergence of bureaucracy is the rise of managerialism during the New Deal.
Every progressive understood the need for institutions to manipulate public opinion. An expert class to manage society with cold, calculating scientific precision was born.
Manipulation of public opinion by an elite few is unavoidable.
This is not a bug, but a function of democratic governance
A democracy cannot last long before decision making is eventually centralized.
I totally agree but it feels like these criticisms of democracy are usually lumping the early ethnically homogenous constitutional republicanism in with multicultural "representative democracies." The Founding Fathers understood the dangers of democracy, as well as the tendency of republics to degenerate into oligarchy. This is why they limited suffrage and created a system of checks and balances: a system that worked beautifully for a long while, with a record number of peaceful transitions of power. Just because a system designed in 1788 has become outdated by 2024 doesn't mean the republican project needs to be abandoned. It's quite lazy and uninimaginative to put our hopes in something vulgar like fascism rather than creating an updated constitutional system. The arbitrary and fanatical nature of fascism led to its self destruction almost immediately. The American state has lasted for centuries and continues to project power across the world amidst a paralyzing institutional crisis.