Look… we have enough democracy. Just accept it.

Granted, it’s hard to imagine having less democracy. After all, we only get to vote for one person to represent all our interests at the highest levels of government once every four years or so. We don’t even get to vote on specific issues most of the time. We just get one vote on who will go to the capital city and try to represent thousands of us, and just hope that they will choose what we would choose more often than not.

And of course, we all know that once they get there, they will start living a fancy life, with limousines and parties and people with a lot of money spending it to get their attention. And those people will be right there all the time, with lots of great things to offer to make the politicians feel grateful, whereas we the people won’t get a say in the matter for another four years or so.

What chances does one say every four years or so have against money and status and fancy life right now? They’re only human.

So it’s hard to imagine how we could have less democracy and still think we live in a democracy. Elections every six years? Just getting to vote for King, and that’s it? Would it really make that big a difference?

Still, that’s more than enough democracy for the likes of us, right? We should be glad that the people in power give us any democracy at all, and let us feel all powerful and special because every once in a while, we each get to have a tiny say in which ones of them will be officially in charge.

After all, they don’t have to let us play at all, right? With all their power, they could run things without us. But they have decided we will be easier to manage and control if we are given the absolute minimum amount of the illusion of control over our destinies, and so they have graciously allowed us the rare and unheard of privilege of participating in the most minimal way possible in our own governance as infrequently as they can get away with.

We should just be happy we get anything at all, and not complain or cause trouble.

And after all, it’s only been a century or two since they gave us this tiny, precious gift of voting. We can’t be tired of it yet, and we certainly can’t start thinking that we want more democracy than that. They gave us the least they could give us hundreds of years ago, and already we want more? How ungrateful!

And sure, the system they set up for themselves just a few centuries ago was based on a time when the fastest way for information to get from place to place was by horse and buggy, and so the best you could hope for was to get people to come into town once in a while and pick some guy to make the long journey to the capital city and make all our choices for us.

And obviously, we could do a lot better now. Well, we’ve been able to do better since the invention of the telegraph, really, but especially now, with cell phones and the Internet and the automobile, it seems pretty silly to send some local person who nobody really likes anyhow all the way to the middle of the country to make a bunch of votes on things we the people could decide ourselves with nothing more complicated than a phone call, or getting money out of an ATM.

I mean, in a world where you can buy a car over the Internet, how hard would it be to let us vote that way?

But still, we should be glad we get asked what we think (well, not what we think, but who we think might think the same thing, now and then) at all. With all the money and power concentrated at the top these days, they could take what little democracy they have allowed us back at any time.

We shouldn’t be talking or even thinking about asking for some more democracy. We should just thank the people in power very kindly for letting us pretend to be involved, clutch our precious tiny occasional ineffectual vote to our chests firmly and reverently, and quietly go back to our orderly and obedient lives.

After all, what more could be possibly want?