The five myths that cripple American democracy

Modern demagogues do not operate by inventing complete fantasies: They operate by weaponising core, evident truths. Their most potent narratives begin with real wounds — neglect, inequality, corruption, contempt, cultural anxiety — and then twist those wounds into myths that serve only to concentrate power and disable collective action. These myths are seductive precisely because they feel familiar, timely, and even self-evident. They speak to the lived experience of a public that is ignored, is overburdened, is misrepresented, and is denounced by some as a collection of “deplorables.” But the purpose of these myths is and has never been to diagnose. It is and has always been to divert, deflect, distract, and ultimately to deflate and disarm.

One of the most enduring of these myths is that of "The Silent Majority." It begins with an easily demonstrable fact: Most people are unheard. They work long hours and toil heads down, but lack political access and see little evidence that anyone in public office takes their needs seriously. Yet instead of empowering this majority, the myth turns their dispossession into a flattering identity. They are told they are the country’s moral core, the salt of the earth, the true but muted center of national life. The result is a sort of immobilisation: The majority remains “silent” because the myth tells them their silence is their core virtue, the secret to their strength: They don’t complain; they just work hard and do their best. Demagogues then step forward to speak on their behalf, converting public frustration into private authority while the actual silence of the public persists, deepened, encouraged, and normalised. A democracy that requires engagement — real participation, real voice — finds itself ruled instead by cynical, self-serving, manipulative ventriloquists.

Closely tied to this is the myth of "The Swamp," a narrative that thrives on another real perception: The political class is indeed self-serving, insulated, and often captured by organised interests, big and small. But instead of channeling this anger toward structural reform — transparency, accountability, participatory governance, campaign finance overhaul — “the swamp” is rendered as a vague, malevolent fog. And because it is vague, it can be blamed for everything. And because it is everywhere, it can be used to justify nearly anything. Leaders who pledge to “drain” it gain license to purge institutions, weaken oversight, cut the very programs that benefit victims of this swamp, and replace civil servants with ideological loyalists focused on championing the interests not of the working class but those of the powerful, tiny slice of the population. In the name of fighting corruption, new forms of corruption bloom unchecked. The myth hollows out the very institutions democracy requires to constrain power.

The myth of "The Elites" performs a similar inversion. Again, it begins with a true insight: The concentration of wealth and influence in the hands of a small, unaccountable minority does distort public life. But demagogues do not direct anger toward these actual centers of power. Instead, they redefine “elite” to mean whoever is convenient for their agendas: journalists, teachers, researchers, librarians, scientists — ordinary professionals who possess neither great wealth nor structural authority. Meanwhile, those who genuinely dominate politics, the billionaire donors, the monopolistic corporations, the financial architects of inequality, are quietly excused (and in fact, protected). Public outrage is rerouted away from the actual holders of power and toward symbolic enemies who pose no threat. In this way, inequality deepens while the public believes it is fighting it.

Another myth, that of "The Real American," taps into the deep human need for belonging. People want to feel rooted, recognised, part of a story larger than themselves. But in the hands of a demagogue, belonging becomes a lethal weapon. The phrase draws an invisible but unmistakable line and rests on a dangerous illusion: Some people count more than others. Some are more “authentic,” more deserving, more loyal. The effect is to divide the public into mutually suspicious factions, to turn citizenship itself into a hierarchy. Policy becomes a tool not of broad representation but of punishing the “unreal”: the immigrants (legal or not, recent or not), dissenters, minorities, the urban, the different. A democracy that depends on a shared public identity fractures into warring tribes, each convinced it alone embodies the nation’s soul.

Finally, there is the myth of "The Taxpayer," perhaps the most quietly destructive of them all. It begins with an unassailable fact: Citizens fund the state and deserve responsible stewardship. But once moralised, “the taxpayer” becomes a righteous identity that excludes far more than it includes. Those who need public support — families without means, workers between jobs, the disabled, the elderly, the hungry children — are recast as burdens. Budget debates turn into morality plays. Public goods such as schools, transit, health care, and infrastructure are starved in the name of protecting “taxpayers,” who ironically lose the very services their taxes were meant to secure. Meanwhile, the true abusers of the tax system — corporations exploiting loopholes, the wealthy sheltering billions, the one trillion dollar military budget — are conveniently left out of the bounds of what is legitimate debate. The myth weaponises fiscal anxiety to erode the public sphere itself.

Taken together, these five myths form a closed circuit of democratic paralysis. Each contains a grain of truth, hence their surface-level appeal, but each truth is redirected away from collective empowerment and toward narrative manipulation. The unheard majority is praised and lauded and symbolically elevated, but it is never empowered. Real corruption is denounced but never reformed. Concentrated wealth is acknowledged but never confronted. Cultural belonging is affirmed, but only in ways that divide us, not celebrate what unites us. Fiscal responsibility is defended but only by dismantling the very infrastructure that sustains democratic life.

In a functional democracy, grievances are catalysts for action. In a demagogic system, they are raw materials for narrative bloating. These myths, all of them seductive, familiar, endlessly repeatable, comforting in their surface resonance, transform real suffering into political theater. They hollow out the democratic imagination, leaving citizens with the bitter sense that something is wrong but without offering a clear sense of how to fix it. The task for anyone seeking democratic renewal is not merely to refute these myths, but to expose the hollow machinery behind them and, more crucially, patiently work to replace them with mechanisms of real participation, real voice, and real power. Without that, the myths will endure and calcify, and the public will remain, as intended, silent and powerless.