Democracy

I saw a wonderful post "A Wake for Democracy" on Booman. It started this meditation

How can we toast something that has never existed?How can we mourn something that is still not yet?
Democracy is an ideal. When it was first created in Athens some 2500 plus years ago it meant rule by the "demos" which meant the many poor, not simply the people. The demos were those who had to work for a living, who didn't live off of an aristocratic title to land or unearned wealth and income. Compared to the U.S. Athens was miniscule; there was a sense that friendship was important, that an individual citizen might know all other individual citizens or at least their families or clans. For us today, the idea of harmony would be a good sense of "philia" or friendship. Harmony is the acceptance that other individual's experience of America are as genuine as our own. In the most stark terms, owning slaves and being owned as a slave are both quintessential American experience. One is not true and the other false; one is not the real America and the other not. Both are real and both are at the core of a harmonius understanding of America.
What would a democracy in 21sty century America look like? The Athenian democracy selected legislators by lottery from among the different clans. While I think this is the most democratic way to elect people, it may not be practical for us. By themselves, voting, having elected representatives and majority rule do not constitute democracy. With our political process bought and paid for elected representatives don't represent us they represent those who bought them. Our Bill of Rights exist in order to meliorate the tyranny of majority rule. The fanatic right wing wants to tyrannize the rest of us through majority rule. This is not democracy; it is tyranny.
What, then, could our democracy look like?
Educated citizens who can reason.
Public education with a purpose to create citizens, not a work force of consumers.
Harmony; the acceptance as equally genuine the multiplicity of experiences of America.
The rule of law; even our current President who thinks he is an emperor is not above the law.
Natural equality; none of us are equal in terms of physical or mental abilities, inherited or earned wealth or the lack of it, etc. There are zillions of ways that were are not equal through accident or intent. Natural equality means that all those particularities that make us different are completely meaningless when it comes to making decisions about criteria for judging and acting. When it comes to making decisions about the direction of the country, we are all equal.
Freedom from tyranny, whether of one person or the majority. This is the greatest area of threat from the right wing in America which now controls all three branches of our government. They want the tyranny of the majority and the constitutional mechanism to oppose that tyranny (the Supreme Court) has been highjacked.
Will we be a democracy? Will we have something to toast? There will need to be a serious turning around for that to happen. So do we mourn what never was and leave it at that? Or do we steel ourselves for the turning?