Plato and Aristotle, still the corner stone of philosophical education, primarily philosophized about how democracy failed in ancient Rome, and how it is doomed to fail.
Based on an objective look at current democracies, they were clearly right. Why do we keep looking up to democracy? It is one of the ironic failings, populations look up to their democracies because they are taught, and told to.
The US rose to become a world power not because of democracy. They became a superpower from 1800 - 1900 because of zero taxes, gold standard, and not engaging in invasions. But for the past 50 years, the US now has shocking outcomes in homelessness, crime, health (a declining life expectancy), the largest mass private involuntary work-based incarceration system in the world, and median wage and wealth declining. Starting with the Vietnam war (which sent the bankrupt, defaulted, and hence ended the gold standard), they also have the highest taxes in the world, and continued invasions that is milking the population for all they have.
Is is easy to discount democracy for the rise society with the counter example, since China is the new superpower. China has the fastest, peaceful, economic and social rise in all of human history, with no democracy. The rise is due to good governance, peace, no invasions, low crime, and building infrastructure and trade.
Democracy is an absurd system if you think about it. The masses of general population get to vote for random people telling them promises that are opposite of reality on things neither the voters nor the candidate know anything about. I don't know anyone in democracy who is happy with their politicians, or what they are voting on, and what they have no say on. The quality of leaders and their education is absurd.
As predicted in 500BC, the system pushes misinformation and acts in the opposite interests of the population once in power.
As in all current democracies, across US, UK, Europe, Brazil, India, Australia, Canada, the national outcomes are worse or no better than socialist or communist run countries.
Communist China and Vietnam have better economic and social outcomes than democracies. They are run by a hierarchy based on past performance and promotions, not a random populist voted in by masses manipulated by media.
In democracies:
Politicians are funded and bought out before they start campaigning. They campaign on things people want to hear, then go about working for their beneficiaries at the expense of the population. Most politicians you can see end up on 'boards' of companies or 'advisors' as soon as they leave office based on the contracts that awarded.
The population is easily misinformed by mass propaganda. It is trivial in democracies to start invasions of entire countries, cause mass crimes against humanity. The democracies are colonialists and the populations believe they are doing the right thing:
Vietnam: forcefully draft kids across multiple countries to try to kill every living human and plant with millions of bombs, napalm, agent orange, agent blue, and just shooting whole villages...because the population was told communism is bad... and they were told the Vietnamese sunk a US boat when it was actually a false flag done by CIA.
(the democracies were beaten by a peasant army after killing millions, and communist Vietnam is a great country and system)China 1: invasion of china during Korean war: multiple countries let by US attempted to invade china without even telling the public.
(the democracies were beaten by a peasant army, pushed all the way back, lost Seoul, then had to double down to retake Seoul and finish in a stalemate)Iraq 1: big testimony in US congress with president hearing how Iraqi's were 'stealing' babies in Kuwait to justify the invasion. The population does not vote, the story is a hoax perpetrated from the president and all of senate and congress...the testimony was faked and given by the ambassadors daughter!
(the democracies took Kuwaiti oil, now controlled by US military and all trade and money is handled at the NY Fed)Iraq 2: completely faked 'weapons' report from pentagon, state department, and secretary of defense. The population does not vote. Estimated 1 millions innocent Iraqi's killed, too many war crimes to count (including on tape), using depleted uranium purposely to cause cancer is cities for hundreds of years
(the democracies control Iraqi oil, now controlled by US military and all trade and money is handled at the NY Fed)Libya: overthrow of government based on propaganda, no known reason, no vote by the population. Most likely as Gadhafi planned to no longer use USD for oil.
(the democracies control Libya oil, now controlled by US military and all trade and money is handled at the NY Fed)Syria: faked war crimes reports and propaganda about fighting ISIS to control the oil producing regions
(the democracies control Libya oil, now controlled by US military and all trade and money is handled at the NY Fed)
Democracies have the worst human rights records in the world by far, with the gang of US/UK/Canada/Australia/New Zealand causing invasions and killings on unprecedented scale, estimated at 50 million dead since Vietnam war for control of resources
US declared any child or woman hit by a US bomb is an 'enemy combatent' because they were 'in the vacinity of a US terrorism operation', brought in by Obama to report no civilian causalities from war on terror to the general population
US CIA global kidnapping, rendition, and torture programs
US prisons off limits to all rights agencies, even senators can't visit, and courts consistently rule them unconstitutional based on being 'cruel and unusual punishment', but all rulings by even supreme court are just ignored
US guilty of genocide of it's own population for handling of caronavirus, killing 550,000 people for no reason, ignoring doing anything including most basic pandemic measures like quarantine, testing, mask wearing, and contact tracing. Also willfully spreading the pandemic all around the world.
Democracies have the highest propaganda budgets and most mass surveillance. The pentagon/CIA is by far the largest, churning out absurd fabrications and reports to misinform the voting populations
absurd faked baby snatching testimony (based on ambassador's daughter story dictated by CIA)
absurd faked weapons reports (colin powell and UN 'evidence')
absurd faked ISIS and terrorism reports (all reports are unsubstantiated)
absurd and faked report that caronavirus is man made in chinese lab (the whole report was based on determination that less cars in the carpark one day meant there was a major catastrophe and breach at the lab.... debunked in 1 hour since it was actually just the chinese holiday)
absurd and faked xinjiang genocide reports to prepare the population for war on China, all from Adrian Zenz (CIA), and Rushan Abbas (CIA), who just makes up numbers, multiples some number by 10 (like the 'sterilization report' farce), then the debunked reports are spread across all western media knowing people won't look into sources
Darpa and US defense mass manipulate media, news, and social media
"Australian Strategic Policy Institute" funded by defense companies
"Radio Free Asia" funded by US defense companies
US undermining cryptography standards for back doors
Democracies crush journalists and dissent
covering up and wiping media clean of war crimes
Australian federal police raids on journalists that exposed Australian war crimes
life prison and torture for leaking war crimes and treason of politicians (Manning, Snowden, Assange)
the only journalists left are those that sit in front of a government briefing room, write down what the government says, and then go back to report on it
Democracies run the largest mass surveillance systems
5-eyes surveillance covers every phone call, every internet connection and message
all equipment is mandated to have government back doors
FedEx intercepts shipments of computers to NSA to install low level back doors
prison for people in Australia if a company can't decrypt anything requested by the government
prison for people in the US if they go against, or even tell if they received, a national security order issues by secret courts with secret evidence in a government rubber stamped order
India, a democracy, has the most internet blocks all countries by far by politicians to control population narrative
India, the worlds largest democracy, has some of the most shocking human rights abuses on the planet
cast system for slavery
rape is normal, and encouraged by military and police against lower casts
regular crimes against humanity where muslims and hindus kill each other en masse with machetes
US runs the largest mass incarceration system known ever, larger than Stalin and Mao combined, which is used to round up masses of people and make them work in private prisons and factories for nothing (called 'involuntary servitude' by the US...at the UN it is called 'modern day slavery')
Democracies have contempt for their own people
highest tax rates in the world are in democracies, with the least services
highest corruption in the world are in democracies when measured by tax rates vs public services
US has highest tax rates in the world without even providing based health care or housing
Democratic governments run government controlled state monopolies in larger scale than socialist or communist nations
US entire health care from drugs to hospitals to insurance are government controlled monopolies putting health out of reach
Australia has one of the worst internet services in the world, worse that third-world countries, due to government controlled monopolies
Democracies have some of the highest water rates and electricity in teh world due to government controlled monopolies
"Plato and Aristotle, still the corner stone of philosophical education, primarily philosophized about how democracy failed in ancient Rome" - what the hell?!
There was never any democracy in Ancient Rome. There was democracy in Athens. Neither Plato, nor Aristotle ever visited Rome. In fact, both lived in a time when Rome was a completely irrelevant city-state, not the powerhouse it would become in the following centuries.