No, democracy is not identical with the subordination of the minority to the majority. Democracy is a state which recognizes the subordination of the minority to the majority, i.e., an organization for the systematic use of force by one class against another, by one section of the population against another.

We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i.e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against people in general. We do not expect the advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed. In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, therefore, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination.

This might get at your question somewhat but I'd strongly suggest reading the whole of State and Revolution if you haven't already.

Essentially, liberal democracy is a sham because of capitalism. Even if there's some aspects of a democracy like elections or a parliament the capitalist class still rules and democracy will be subordinated or ignored if the capitalists deem it necessary. Marxists recognize that democracy is an important tool in teaching the proletariat how to govern itself and that capitalism must be overthrown therefore it is an important stage of historical development. As communists we also recognize that the democratic state must one day wither away and therefore democracy will wither away. In that way we are not mere democrats with some idealistic belief in majoritarian rule or the perfect democracy or whatever the way liberals are. If democracy becomes impractical or unnecessary in the pursuit of communism than it can be done away with.

In particular, it seems like sometimes the argument being made is "democracy is good and worthwhile, but Western countries aren't really democratic", and other times the argument is "actually democracy is an illusion and not worth aspiring to in the first place".

The first is pretty much it. The second is not something I have ever heard in abstract (only, perhaps, that specific "pro-democracy" movements do not have a liberatory foundation). The main problem is that Democracy means different things to different people. In practice, it is pretty much a meaningless term unless it is carefully defined in context.

To the Bourgeoisie, democracy means the freedom to enter markets. To the Liberal, democracy means a subset of society (citizens without a criminal record, for instance) get to vote for representatives, and a greater or lesser degree of civil liberties exist to engage in electioneering. To the US Founders, democracy was a framework for landowners and speculators to organize society without organizing the state around a bloodline. To the Marxist, democracy only exists to the extent that workers are able to decide how society is organized - what work shall be done, who is going to do it, how is it going to be done, to what degree, for what reasons, etc. Democracy itself literally translates as "rule of the people." The means by which the people rule (which of the "four boxes," for instance) is not included in the definition. The statement "Political power grows from the barrel of a gun," will make a Liberal's stomach churn, but it is not a fundamentally anti-democratic principle. The question is, who's holding those guns? Who are they being pointed at?

In the United States, we conflate electoralism with democracy. We're "democratic" because we have elections. The fact that we have two parties to choose from makes us more "democratic" than countries with a single party political system (ignoring the fact that Congressional approval routinely sits between 10-20%, while many one-party systems enjoy much higher public approval). The fact that we are a largely technocratic society where any decisions not being made by the administration are being made through bureaucracy or in the board rooms of private firms, rather than by the public, is irrelevant.

I suspect you already read Lenin's Bourgeois and Proletarian Democracy, but give it another look. I'm not familiar with any Marxist source that would claim that democracy is an illusion and isn't worth aspiring to in the first place; instead, at least from a Leninist perspective, bourgeois democracy does not function to give anyone but the bourgeoisie political power and proletarian democracy does give proletarians political power. The only situation in which democracy as a whole would be rejected under a Marxist program is when false consciousness is too powerful to overcome, so all the political power is concentrated into the cadre as opposed to trusting the backwards masses with it. Historically, this is not where you wanna be, so it should only ever be a short term measure.

I literally just finished reading the chapter of State and Revolution where Lenin covers Engels opinion on the state and mentions democracy negatively. So I feel like it's safe to call myself an expert.

Lol, so Lenin says "Democracy is a state recognizing the sub-ordination of the minority to the majority, i.e., an organisation for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one part of the population against the other."

He further says that goal is to destroy the state and that violence and basically create a world of socialism/communism in which the need for force will vanish as we grow accustomed to a social existence without force and subjugation.

That's the end of chapter 4 btw.

whoa whoa whoa the first link is Mencius Moldbug?!?

you are right that liberal democracy is a sham but that guy is a complete reactionary and his arguments aren't based in class and material analysis.

Syria (maybe?), Russia (maybe?), and Iran (maybe?)

We might critically support these states as anti-imperialist forces, but that does not mean that we support the way they govern their own people and the class they represent. At best they would be just as democratic as the western "democracies", a bourgeois democracy where the capitalists have the freedom to pursue the maximization of profits with as little resistance possible while using the state forces against the oppressed proletariat.

True 100% democracy can't exist while classes also exist. Until they fade away into history the best implementation of democracy will be the dictatorship of the proletariat, a democracy by the working class for the working class. Capitalists have no place in it, unless they willfully sacrifice their privileges and join the working class without plotting to subvert this new reality. That's what made the Soviet Union a democracy, everyone would participate through their unions and have equal rights to be elected to them and upwards. A former capitalist's opinion on their factory being taken away on the other hand, would be instantly discarded.