who thinks democracy works these days

We elect people with almost universally no skill at all to make informed decisions involving many 100's of billions of our dollars.
Many are lawyers( i.e. parasites , only feed on those actually producing something of value and stealthily increasing their power day by day ) who know how to kiss butt , do deals , sell themselves dry for their 'Oscars'( elected ), lie and cheat like there is no tomorrow.
Just ugly actors in a bad movie basically .
It's all reduced to the 'spin'.

Of course there are some genuine ones, Xenophon , for e.g.