In my book it is the duty of a democratic state to keep its population educated to make educated decisions. If you look at countries with more direct democracy like Switzerland not all the decisions are perfect, but they are by no means worse than if you had replaced the public vote with politicians that are heavily lobbied by corporate interest and have a time horizon that ends at their next election.
In fact you will find that in many cases the population will even vote for unpopular measures if they are discussed and understood well ahead of the decision.
But in the end that requires a decent education of the masses, a well functioning and uncaptured media landscape and a certain amount of democratic practise, all of which are missing in big parts of the US.
Democracy is something everybody actively needs to work on, otherwise it withers. If you want to have a nice village it works best if everybody perceives themselves as an agent of creating a nice village. If you want a shit village, you best give everybody the impression it is somebody elses task.
In fact you will find that in many cases the population will even vote for unpopular measures if they are discussed and understood well ahead of the decision.
But in the end that requires a decent education of the masses, a well functioning and uncaptured media landscape and a certain amount of democratic practise, all of which are missing in big parts of the US.
Democracy is something everybody actively needs to work on, otherwise it withers. If you want to have a nice village it works best if everybody perceives themselves as an agent of creating a nice village. If you want a shit village, you best give everybody the impression it is somebody elses task.