Democracy is a poor form of government, but there is something much worse

Yes, democracy is a poor form of government, but there is something much worse.

‘Winston Churchill, Nov. 11, 1947   "Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’

Yes, the media and money make it hard for voices to be heard and it distorts the rule by people instead of the government.  Yes, it takes forever to deal with problems through legislation and the ballot box. Yes, there is corruption and power given to powers who suppress others. The only thing worse is a dictatorship or an autocracy that does not permit an opposition media, keeping voters in the dark and suppressing free and fair elections, and keeping them unable to rally opposition or appeal to an independent body for help. The law in a dictatorship is not the standard to arbitrate injustice. The law becomes the tool to keep a dictator in place and it is manipulated,  interpreted, and applied to keep a dear leader in power.   It is nearly impossible to challenge corruption, so corruption exists and grows. So long as we have vigorous free media, we know who the scum bags are and corruption can be revealed. You do not have to be a card-carrying party member either. What we have is a distortion of our form of democracy...a country so big, mass media is necessary, but it is expensive, allowing the well-funded to get their messages across more effectively than others. Gerrymandering by both parties control who their candidates are in primaries and they are often the most extreme partisans, leaving a sense for independents that the only choice left is between two evils. When this country was founded, there were no political parties and there is no reference to them in the Constitution. To restore a more vigorous and fair democracy that reflects the will of the people, the voting rights legislation now in Congress is the most important piece of legislation on the table now. It affects whether we have a functioning democracy in the future. However, it will take the overturn of the filibuster, carve-outs if not comprehensive, to get passed, and that is difficult because it is so abstract and theoretical, it is not on the public's priority list who is more concerned about the price at the pump and in the grocery store. Unless these reforms are passed, I fear that public disgust and impatience with the government will make a dictatorship more attractive. The leap then will be from the frying pan into the fire because dictatorships are even a worse kind of governance, permitting corruption to go unchallenged and the rule of whoever has the power to give no chance for the voice of the people to be heard.