We don't know the How, but we can agree on the When - when it will be too late.

Oh, I know the answer to this one: when citizens pass a referendum that their state should merely uphold existing immigration law, but a judge simply overturns it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_California_Proposition_18...

The reasoning is laughably motivated: state funding to illegal immigrants is okay, but withdrawing that funding is a "scheme to regulate immigration", which states are forbidden from doing (even when, or especially when, that "regulation" is in line with federal law).

The reasoning gets reversed when applied to the federal government, whose failures to control the border, or mass acts of immigration amnesty, are never legally challenged. And reversed again when that amnesty is taken away by the same kind of executive order that granted it in the first place - amnesty can be granted on a mass basis, but withdrawing it, according to a judge, can only be done through "individualized, case-by-case review": https://www.newsweek.com/appeals-court-denies-trump-request-...

So when they say "our democracy", I have no idea what they're talking about, except I guess getting their preferred policy outcomes regardless of the means, with or against citizens votes & wishes.

Let's see - 2020 when all the west governments infringed upon fundamental rights? Or even before - when populist became a dirty word and the concept of populism was presented as antidemocratic. Or even before that - when technocrats and bureaucrats decided they know better and if there is mismatch between the will of the plebs and the technocrats - the will of the plebs must be subverted. So if I have to guess - probably after the fall of the Berlin wall - when the only threat keeping the elites in check dissolved. Or when international treaties and institutions were able to override national laws.

When the next pandemic hits, for people who don't remember the last one.

I don't think the meaning that you give to that word is the same as the one used in the rest of the world. Democracy is about elections (presidents, referendums, whatever), where every citizen is able to participate and vote freely. And in that, US may well is (and has been for quite some time) functionally an oligarchy.

That a legally elected government then oppress part of the population, put weird laws or sink the economy is within the rules of the game. Citizens are responsible for what they choose, at least if they all can choose for it freely.

But if whole sections of the population can't freely participate, or can be punished somewhat if doing so, then you didn't had a democracy to start with, even if the government was a symbol of peace and prosperity.

The founders probably assumed people would elect ethical people so no ethics are in our system. Even businesses have rules about conflict of interest, hiring relatives, etc, but our government, nothing.

Without that it’s been failing and perhaps those ethics should rest on a popular vote and not representatives so it doesn’t get ruined, but then mob rule could always ruin it, which is why we have a republic that is slow to change with all these checks and balances but no ethics.