> That's a false dichotomy. In a western democracy, do you vote for the things you believe in, or do you vote for one of the few representatives that pretends t

> That's a false dichotomy. In a western democracy, do you vote for the things you believe in, or do you vote for one of the few representatives that pretends to approximate your beliefs closely? No it's not, actually. Democracy devolves power to individual citizens in ways that allow them to impact decisions about collective action. In western democracies, citizens have many ways of impacting collective action, which include speaking out and rallying others to their cause. It is common in places like Russia and China for citizens to be jailed or killed for speaking out about government policy. Therefore, those countries are undemocratic not just in how they approach voting, but about the civil rights they recognize and protect ... or trample. > Is that true? What if the people likes authoritarians? What if it doesn't care about scandals? What if it democratically decides it doesn't want "free and fair elections" anymore? If the majority wants "the wrong things", the outcome will be poor. Democracy is not the distinguishing factor, it's not inherently good or bad, functional or dysfunctional. Given that authoritarian figures control the media, information and feedback loops that are available to citizens in their countries, how would you even know what "the people" like? You can't know; you can only speculate. Authoritarian states systematically falsify voting results and other expressions of popular will. They obliterate the feedback loops because they are afraid of what people would say. That's one crucial property of an authoritarian state. To put it bluntly, you have no idea of knowing what people want under authoritarianism, and that should trouble you. > The proceedings may be illegitimate, but there's no doubt in my mind that the Russians would have elected Putin over Navalny again. Of course there is an opposition in Russia, but it's not a majority and in any event Navalny isn't all that popular. You have no way of testing this hypothesis. It's an opinion without evidence or the possibility of evidence, and I will treat it as such. You should ask yourself why Putin is so afraid of running that experiment himself.