I think that equating democracy with competitive elections is the issue. I think democracy is something on a different level. Similar to the relationship between science and technology. Democracy is to science as elections are to technology. Elections try to implement democracy, as technology tries to implement science. In both cases, different things can be tried to implement the principles involved. In democracy, I think the main principle is that the people are ruling themselves. I don’t know whether freedom and liberty are involved too, but may be. Is there a standard philosophical definition of democracy?
"Most observers agree that the election of the non-politician Donald Trump in the United States was largely a result of that growing public sentiment."
Citation? Who is (or counts as) "most observers"? If this cannot be supported, you might want to consider rewording to something like "it is reasonable to conclude that..."
Point taken. I have changed the beginning of that sentence to... "It is my assertion that..." I suspect most readers will agree, but it isn't fair to assert this is true of "most observers" without evidence.
In the last paragraph, “sets” should be “set”.
I think that equating democracy with competitive elections is the issue. I think democracy is something on a different level. Similar to the relationship between science and technology. Democracy is to science as elections are to technology. Elections try to implement democracy, as technology tries to implement science. In both cases, different things can be tried to implement the principles involved. In democracy, I think the main principle is that the people are ruling themselves. I don’t know whether freedom and liberty are involved too, but may be. Is there a standard philosophical definition of democracy?
"Most observers agree that the election of the non-politician Donald Trump in the United States was largely a result of that growing public sentiment."
Citation? Who is (or counts as) "most observers"? If this cannot be supported, you might want to consider rewording to something like "it is reasonable to conclude that..."
Point taken. I have changed the beginning of that sentence to... "It is my assertion that..." I suspect most readers will agree, but it isn't fair to assert this is true of "most observers" without evidence.
Thank you, Terry.