The demagogues are the ones who win popularity contests in a democracy.  Those who perpetuate fear are the ones who flourish.  They make fear the cornerstone of their campaign.  Any fear, small, large, or manufactured, are all emphasized and glorified.  The pursuit of any monster is a good campaign promise.  The monsters they identify are endless.  It’s happened through history up to today, and it will continue into the future.

An honest politician is passed over for a crooked one.  An honest politician won’t be elected—with the extremely rare exception.  The demagogues will endlessly attack the honest politician.  They’re an easy target and will be brought down.  Democracy is a contest about who is the best demagogue.  It’s certainly not about who’s best to lead.  The demagogue will sick the mob on the honest politician.

The skillful demagogue will aim to substitute a fear for a worse fear.  It’s always one after another.  This will keep the mob continually alarmed.  The fear can be: pandemic, war, groups, categories of people, global warming, and so forth.  It never ends.  Each fear is replaced by a new and seemingly worse fear.  One you should be more scared of.  Then, the object is to get the mob behind the new fear.

Old fears become engulfed by the new fear.  The old fear may be mentioned from time to time, but it remains an afterthought.  The object is to keep you in a state of panic.  Even if the quasi-foe is on the other side of the world, the object remains the same.  The quasi-foe is blamed for every manner of things.  He obviously isn’t the culprit.  Anything to keep the masses panicking.  However ridiculous, it will be repeated until it’s replaced by other nonsense.

Democracy gives us people who are the best at being the worst.  There’s almost no chance of someone claiming to protect private property gets elected.  You can forget about it.  Don’t put your hope in democracy.  It’s not a good form of government, it never has been.  Rarely in human history has it even been thought about as a good form of government.  We want competition in the production of goods, not in the production of bads.

Reference

H.L. Mencken; Notes on Democracy