democracy *is* real and good, it just never meant what rulers said it meant. In practice all it means is that rulers have to restrict themselves to things they can successfully lie about. This really is a gigantic improvement over truly arbitrary rule, as it effectively prevents all sorts of flagrant horrific abuses that have been common historically.

What we're seeing now is the rulers realizing that the new information velocity means their room for maneuver is about to shrink by another order of magnitude at least. Exactly what will come of this remains to be seen. If things go well it'll be rangevoting.org :)