I’m not skeptical per se. I’ve just been propagandized so fucking much—I grew up watching those propagandocumentaries on the National Geographic Channel about the DPRK, etc., fr that was what I watched instead of cartoons lol.
Pretend I’m a lib who you’re trying to convince, or something. In addition to calming this feeling in my gut like something isn’t making sense, I want to be able to make this argument, myself.
Even from a liberal perspective the US barely qualifies as a democracy, the electoral college basically means only about a quarter of the population gets a real say in who the head of state is, the senate is undemocratically structured and the judiciary is blatantly partisan.
Socialist government have expressly socialist constitution, same as the US as an expressly bourgeoise liberal one, democracies can be founded a core set of principals and limit democratic participation around them.