To summarize a bit. 1) democracy is prepolitical, an ethos, an essential underpinning of human interaction for anything that will become anything like a decent society. that ethos can be gained and lost, it *should* be always and everywhere but descriptively is not. but it is also not so fragile merely losing an election to a tyrant undoes it. and whenever it is lost, in formal institutions, more broadly as an ethos, i say it is always our work to recover and reinstate it. 20/