Democracy is a nice concept. You elect the people you trust to govern with integrity and fairness. And for a while after WWII it seemed like a reasonable form of government. No more supreme rulers, dictators, kings, overlords or demagogues.
What happened?
I guess somehow a way was found to take back the power they once had, dilute the original concept and corrupt the system, while trying to maintain an illusion of freedom of choice.
Those who controls the narrative manipulate the masses.
When Gutenberg invented the printing press, one of the first publications printed was the bible in the common language. That started the Reformation and a great era of enlightenment. However, the way I see it, the words of the "prophets" got drowned out by other voices and things went downhill from there.
With the invention of the Internet we thought for a while that people could have an independent voice. However "fact-checkers" are now doing their damnest to squelch dissident voices and disconnect those who disagree with the official narrative. Or everything gets buried by information overload.
As far as I can tell, at least in several European countries, there seem to be a great discrepancy between the will of the people and the plan of the politicians. Everyone I talk to, from any strata of society, seems to be in direct opposition to the way Europe is heading.
Apparently it's not just in Europe, I just read that according to an AP-NORC poll, "Eighty-five percent of U.S. adults say the country is on the wrong track..."
Democracy has been hollowed out. Un-elected technocrats are running the show from their places of power, and it seems to me that even when some of the members of the various political parties are not in agreement with what is happening, there is nothing they can do to stem the tide.
2Pet.2:19 says, "While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption..."
There is a big geo-political game being played out right now. I would hate to live under an authoritarian Chinese or Russian system, but at the same time I cannot turn a blind eye to the misdeeds being perpetrated by the West in the name of democracy in order to hold on to their empire.
The world is simply broken... men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil (John 3:19). Or to paraphrase a line from Solzhenitsyn, "the choice between good and evil resides in each individual human heart."
So what are we to do? Well, like the early church under Roman persecution, we just have to keep on loving and doing good and shine forth with the Lord's Love wherever we go.
I got to think of a song that a fellow missionary in India wrote, "It doesn't matter!" ... it goes something like this,
