The definition of "democracy" is not subject to your broad, sweeping, unfalsifiable judgments about human nature and other peoples' apparent ignorance. (Presumably the author and reader are excluded from this, through some luck?)
Who'd be more qualified to assess what impacts voters than politicians, who have proven knowledge and ability to influence such? And they spend billions of dollars on media that amounts to 1 of 3 derivatives:
- "You're great. I'm great. We're great together. Now watch some emotionally exploitative happy music while watching emotionally exploitative happy imagery. Vote for me!"
- "You don't like bad people. I don't like bad people. My opponent is a bad person. Now watch some emotionally exploitative scary/dystopic music while watching emotionally exploitative angering/scaring imagery. Vote for me!"
- And a mixture of the two where you segue from the bad to to the good with mixed emotional exploitation alongside. "Hope and Change" and "Make American Great Again" are clear examples of this one.
Little to nowhere in the picture do appeals to logic, rational, education, or information come into the picture. It's just emotional manipulation and tribalism. And it works phenomenally well. Beyond this I'd also appeal to your own experience. Take any topic you're an expert on. Now go into any venue where "the masses" are discussing it, or the media. Cringe at the site of all of it, and now imagine the media and masses (including yourself/myself) are any better on the topics you are not an expert on.
"Democratic People's Republic of Korea" (that's North not South) comes to mind — even less genuine than clicking "I have read and agreed to the terms and conditions" on the average pre-GDPR EULA, but nevertheless perfectly illustrates the vagueness of the word.
My own personal bugbear is when people say they want to "democratise" nouns and verbs, e.g. "democratise maths" or "democratise running" (both real examples) and yet there is no idea at all what that might mean. Votes? And if so, who and how and when?
Dictionaries are there to report actual usage not dictate how it should be. I still get to say it's being used as a way to unreasonably paint positive associations on unrelated topics in the same way that the word "right" means both "correct" and also a specific political team. Yes I know this isn't new, Latin for left is "sinister" etc., but I like clarity and dislike the entire pattern this represents, even if it is hard to get away from — both with positive and negative examples — in natural language.
That said:
Democratise running.
Running.
Even with that definition, nope.
(But what it does do is serve as a further example of why the word has such broad usage as to be almost meaningless).
I think you are reading far more into this than there actually is.
This is not a new meaning and is one that I learned a long time ago, have seen widely used for decades and has an even longer history.
The word is far from precise, but it is also far from meaningless. I understand exactly what is meant by "democratize running" (though I don't think running is a good example of something that needs democratization since there aren't systematic barriers to popular adotion.)
