Basically corporations idealize dictatorships as the best form of government. All variables are removed leaving complete predictability and minimal risk (written in response to initial analysis following the conclusion of the non-violent democratic revolution in Georgia, that it would negatively effect investment there whereas the previous rigged election would have been better for attracting investors to the country) 

Elections are the parts of democracy people get to see and convince them they have a say in their governance. How those choices are selected to be put before them are determined by non-democratic means by economic interests. Which choices are given as well as how many inevitably frames their outcomes. Those who can influence these without having their hands being seen directly control governments. Leaders are reduced to personalities who can best push an agenda, and those personalities know they will only get to act the part, unless they dare to believe they got there on their own merits alone. The more willing they are to follow "advice", the more inevitable their rise to power becomes. 

Learning from the history of the Soviet Union- if you call yourself a democracy and go to the trouble of having elections, people might one day actually expect them to be fair, or giving the party in power at least a snowball's chance in hell at losing. 

Democracies are now structured in ways that the number of bodies (people) a group has is far less significant than the amount of dollars (money) a group has. Minority rule of the most advantaged is now considered normal. The idea that a government would actually have its priorities first and foremost concentrated on the bulk of its populations, usually less affluent, is now considered "populist", extreme, and often dangerous to the current accepted way of business as usual in who governments ought to respond to, or consider whose interests first. 

All the things you think are impossible, healing the rift between Christianity and Islam, or even between Judaism and Islam, making China or Russia a real democracy, you need to focus on what makes these things seem impossible, who or how many different groups would oppose such reconciliations or integrations into wider, more expansive and less divided new common communities, and new stronger more diverse common cultures which would emerge from (the) growing partnerships. Once you can identify who would work against such aims, you see it isn't impossible at all, just against a lot of powerful groups in the presents' interests. The only problem is that divided present has few futures which connect back to it, or seen from the present, little hope of surviving long in such a divided house, which will inevitably either unite, or collapse on everyone. 

The more power a single person has, the more likely it is to be used indiscriminately and without need for justification or explanation. Rule by committee or consensus may seem unwieldy but it makes abuse of power less likely. Full power sharing is democracy, but depending on the model, makes abuses inevitable when one person ever is in a position of being able to influence every other branch, directly or indirectly. All structures to prevent this from happening are falling like dominoes. 

Those who are not willing to risk everything to work towards democracy or to keep it from being eroded or stolen do not deserve it. No matter how rich or poor their country is, no matter how free or controlled their media is, choice if any cannot last long without that, or has already been lost. 

When any organism gets too big it subdivides. When any group, political, religious, governmental, gets too powerful and near universal, factions within it develop. The opposite of that happening is greater control, less freedom, and dictatorship. The more it happens and the greater the factionalization, the more control people have over their own lives and destinies. Democracy (supposedly decentralized control in the extreme, far from present reality) means having everyone's voices being heard and counting EQUALLY. By this measure, every day and every way we are moving away from that. Yet new ways must emerge to keep plurality of opinions alive or what is left of freewill is lost. 

Freedom is a dream and the right to dream what you wish. Democracy without strict spending limits on advertising and equal treatment in all media is a sick joke. 

Of all nations, Russia and China have the greatest potentials for advancing freedom (and democracy). For obvious reasons, discount China. Only people who know they are not free can best know what freedom should mean. Those who believe they are the most free are the easiest to enslave for they can be taken further and longer trustingly down the darkest paths. 

Real freedom for the West, real democracy for Russia, and religious tolerance and renaissance in China, and universal literacy with free e-books or free libraries easily accessible for all in every country. A modest start. 

Mantra of governments including so-called democracies, of the 21st century: If people can't see it or read about it, it isn't there. The Control-The-Information Age. The only crime (governments can be guilty of) is when their strings are showing. 

Event A - a sizable majority of people, including most poor, want something to be the policy of the government against the interests of a smaller minority, including wealthy elites. Event B, it actually becomes policy. How thick is the wall, how much of an obstacle is the government itself in separating events A and B, even in so-called democracies that supposedly represent their (all of their) peoples' interests? In a real democracy, there would be no wall between A and B, and helping A on to becoming B would be the job of the government, not in helping trying to prevent it. In the U.S., that wall is like Fort Knox. It teaches other governments to build better walls between A and B. There ought to be a new name for token or sham democracies. Olihypo-ocracies, with puppet parliaments. One elected representative to another, "Who's your sponsor?" (Democracies which respond to the will of most people, which actually function as democracies, are called "populist" governments (India), and that is very bad, shame, shame, overthrow, overthrow. We don't want that idea to spread and give anyone else's overwhelmingly poor majorities the idea they might be able to influence their governments to think of them first, or even think of them at all, if they all worked together. Welcome, take a good look at the new model, the all new anti-democratic version of "democracy". Its shiny! Its plush! All your neighbors will envy you!) 

That societies want to have some smart and others not smart, docile, and politically dumb as a stump, is not new. Its just always a balance between admitting it openly as an objective, accepting it quietly as a necessity, or hypocritically aiming to make all more active and aware of their rights yet working against it as well because doing so means they would wake up and demand a system which takes into account their needs more than the system which fostered them and kept them stupid. All change, even making people literate and democratic participants in ruling themselves, will cost someone or all who were rich before in that society to have to pay more as a result. That what is left of democracies promotes this change, except in regions where it is politically advantageous to their pocketbooks, is getting downright laughable. They keep up the rhetoric of democratic change, but it is only a tool of setting up systems where the will of the public is largely irrelevant to the economic interests of themselves, which is why they are "helped" in the first place. The problem is governments in the West do not wish to admit to themselves they have become all but irrelevant to these forces as well, and are well paid not to in case they ever have any doubts about it. (And are well controlled now.) Those not bought off or not skilled in doublethink denial, they eventually resign once they know it is all bullshit, and there is nothing they can do about it. 

The term "democracy" has become so twisted to meaning the opposite of its definition to some by the rhetoric, I have already seen hints that some think West Europe ought to be "democratized" overlooking the fact that their governments, as well as any others and better than most, already represent the wills of their people. Democracy as an agenda is being promoted as when "we" like who is in charge, not necessarily when their people do, which is why dictators are often supported and widely popular Presidents almost openly are attempted to be deposed with our blessings, as with Venezuela. I have no problem with stronger nations imposing their wills upon weaker ones so much as the sickening of my stomach to hear it is being done for their own good and not ours, and in the name of "democracy". The hypocrisy has poisoned any semblance of truth or meaning. 

The turning point in history came when the West was willing to get into bed with a horrible dictatorship in China for profit-based motives without requiring political changes and, for many reasons, some good, some bad, turned our backs on Russia when it attempted to become a legitimate democracy. We have proved time and time again our businesses prefer economic dictatorships, where economic policies cannot be changed regardless of the will of its people. Only this it seems is considered a stable investment region and democratic debates about its economic policies or direction for the future, are considered bad. Democratic change is a secondary goal to profit, when it is even attempted rather than suppressed, all the while saying how much we want them to have it. Politicians have no consciences. Money is their first and only true love.

Suicidal in a free speech sort of way - if enough people pretend they have free speech and say what they really think without fear, someday some WILL gain it, though many will have to risk everything. The West gave up free speech when they proved they were not willing to risk shit to keep it, and now are more watched than Malaysia with their governments studying North Korea for good ideas. Maybe not Europe yet, but sure as hell, the United States. People know better than to criticize the government now. It is no longer a safe course of action. People wonder why the current Chinese young won't risk their lives for democracy, with the US having sold ludicrous attack helicopters with machine guns to the Beijing police departments, they know no one of consequence would care. Convergence in governments has occurred, and the more ruthless models won as always. Almost always anyway. 

To imagine freedoms and know of them beyond what your government allows or wants you to think about is to begin seeing a wider view, not of the world how it is but how you might think it could be or should be. Once upon a time, some governments understood this as good. That was before they wanted to preserve the present at all cost because in deprivation, there is more power. But the desire grows within those who can see or know those more honest worlds of more intellectual freedoms, and it cannot be destroyed by any government no matter how totalitarian it becomes in trying to control what people think about freedom or define freedom to mean by controlling society and the media, even if it imagines itself to still be a democracy. That makes the dictatorship stronger, the hypocrisy, but true freedom cannot be forgotten once tasted, and the heart and soul remember even after the mind has been cleansed of it. If any people were ever willing to accept their governments definition of freedom, the Soviet Union would never have collapsed, feudalism would not have collapsed, slavery and serfdom would never have been abolished, and democracies would never have arisen, even if they have since abandoned the principle that the people count more than the economic interests, and decry "populism". 

The world may never become a democracy and would prefer never to think it would never wish to be one. Some countries are able to get all the resources from anywhere they wish without having to take care of or listen to the people of that region and make them equal citizens in the decision making process or treat them as they would their own. Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? Exploitation is not a side effect, it is the defining model of how people relate to each other, and have institutionalized it. I know of many better societal models and higher levels of democracy. The people though will always have the lowest level of participation they are willing to accept and have the greatest level of control and manipulation as those in power think they can get away with. 

The center of trust, whether in yourself or in others, that you know what is right for them better than they do, when those times and on those issues, they do not match. That is difference between despots and those who truly believe in democracy and freewill beyond their own lies and minds. 

The "frontrunner" and presumptive nominee of both parties in the US is determined long before the primaries by the major corporations. With both choices in an election determined and hand-picked by the corporate interests, people are right to wonder where they come in other than to rubber-stamp one body with interchangeable faces capable of talking out of either side of its mouth as long as it eats the same thing with it, money, and serves the same master, money.

The stronger you are, the more power you have, the greater the desire to rule, the need to rule. I know that insatiable feeling too well. There is another to balance that, the desire to impart that power to others, to make them stronger, eventually your equals, to give them more control. People always do the former while promising to do the latter, one day. The problem I have now is with the lies. Electronic voting, sham democracies, rigged elections, electoral systems where the public's will is manipulated by powerful groups so easily and often it is meaningless. They have no power, and are losing any real hope of ever gaining any power over their governments as well. Those who should guard against this, those who are supposed to have stopped it from deteriorating this much, have all been corrupted or blackmailed, either way, side-lined. Those who talk of giving power to the people, democracy, are making sure the blueprints ensure they will never have any power to challenge them or their heirs. That is what power is all about, keeping it and never sharing it, but making everyone think they still have it or never will lose it. Yet those who lose it, allow everyone to be beaten down never assuming it will be them and their children, are only getting what they deserve for being weak and stupid. It is not like they were not told or did not see it coming. (I saw a quote to the effect, completely unchallenged, that a committee in a country determined that voting over the internet was as safe and tamper proof as voting in voting stations. Maybe if you live in Florida. The reality is there has probably never been a generation in history more willing to sell their children and all other generations into virtual slavery having absolutely NO political rights via any means of controlling their own governments so they, the leadership, can make a quick buck off of selling them out in the present, all while promoting "democracy" and thinking they will be remembered as heroes of it. Self-delusion is after all a small price to pay for getting rich at the expense of others freedom whom you will never meet.) 

People are given choices in an election that are as opposed to each other as the most powerful in the country wish those choices to be. Never an election about which type of system, fundamental changes, or increased fairness. Usually politicians offered as "choices" are the same model car, only you get to pick the color. 

The EU has neither the institutions nor the rallying cause for its existence to capture the imagination and allegiance of even its own citizens. In its present form as a European Union of democracies, it has become as insignificant beyond a wealthy trade block as (politically speaking) the African countries are merely to the future, the aboriginals of the world to be exploited and wiped out at will. As a global player, the EU has vanished from significance in its present form because it has shown it has no future and very little past. Without a firmer sense of identity and purpose, all the dreams it had to influence humanity and the future have died, and its ideals it sought to enshrine also face now an uncertain and precarious future divided. 

When no one is allowed by law or public pressure, to argue the other side of ANY (particular) issue, it (that particular issue) gets progressively more and more extreme in position constantly unchallenged, and debate becomes more and more unthinkable until everyone is simply told what to believe by the most extremist people possible.

Democratizing societies is often an excuse to divide them. Once different groups are made to give preferences to each other, make rules which benefit one subsection of that society at the expense of another or all others, it becomes easy to pick that group of society to give support to and buy influence with. Even if not giving money directly to the parties, rich outside countries can easily identify who belongs to which group when deciding who to do business with and thereby legally make them wealthy in the process, and businessmen within the country begin to take the hint as to which parties or ideologies are the most profitable, and will make them the most powerful because of outside countries preferring to deal with those. 

This is what politics has devolved into for the poor and politically unpowerful (most). One group you will screw you the worst but they stand with God, are only doing so because God tells them to, and only they can confront evil in the world, and you must give them more money as God does not deserve to be skimped on. Yet you have a choice, the Apologists who are kept around to keep the right wingers under control by having a way to take them out of power if they choose to ignore their money masters. The Apologists will do nothing to improve your standing if you are poor or less well off than most, still will lessen your benefits, dismantle the "safety net", but are nicer about it because they will make your life harder more slowly and will empathize with your increasing pain and suffering, but ask you to realize for them to get into power, they have to be willing to screw you for the benefit of getting any corporate money to obtain power in the first place, but will try to screw you over in a nicer way than the harsher group would. That is about all the choices any in any country will soon ever see when they obtain event that amount of choice.