Democracy shifts power from those with guns to those with newspapers. Power is a force, an amorphous fluid that flows the way wind flows between spaces of higher and lower pressure. Democracy itself does not stop this, and democracy on it's own cannot save us. If we want the people to weild the power in a society, we need more than democracy. We need a civic culture of eternal vigilance. Unfortunately those with newspapers have gone to great lengths to demoralize us against this virtue, with much success.

In truth, the masses always have outsized power. All power structures exist to manage us due to this fact. Those that have power don't have any without control over us. So their goal is always to convince us that this is not true. 

 Democracy is a series of achilles heels