In high school, we studied a book called "The Irony of Democracy" (ours).

It explained in depth an via both history, demographics and statistics how (this is the irony:) That the system favors elites to populate government ranks--while they mostly buy into values and institutions of it all being by and for the people.

That buy-in has sometimes ebbed, and has now almost completely evaporated, at least among the GOP and the monster who holds it captive.