(In reply to a codex of countenances comment: "Should we give up on democratic ideals just because there is corruption?" Mostly putting here for my own purposes later, however any criticisms invited)
Democratic ideals are the corruption.
Democracy is inherently antithetical to minority rights, much less individual rights or any rights at all. There are manifold logical and moral contradictions bound up in the concept of democracy that we absolutely and rightly reject in any other part of our lives. The moral sine qua non for group action is consensus. What democracy really is: the optimization of the negation of consensus. Democracy is the idea that we vote to decide what everyone has for dinner, and everyone has to eat it and pay. More famously: is it's we vote to decide who is for dinner, who shall pay the burden for others, who shall work for others, who shall obey the edicts of others. There's nothing that democracy does that should ever even be done. It's a tool with one use, subjugate the weak. Occasionally it's involved in switching around the weak and the strong, but the subjugation of the weak is always its function.
Democracy doesn't happen to sometimes get corrupted. Democracy is the corruption.
You may argue: Well sometimes people have to be forced to obey. I disagree, I think people need sometimes forced to stop forcing people to do things, and disobedience isn't in that category.
But even if you think sometimes one human is morally obligated to use force to make another human obey them, democracy is still the worst solution. Because democracy involves everyone in the corruption. Democracy pits everyone against everyone competing to fuck the other guy and try to organize the system so the other guy pays and not you. You really have little choice. It's fuck them or they fuck you. And you never know who they are. They vote for Trump who half America thinks is satan or Clinton who half America thinks is satan. This isn't just an evil system that corrupts everyone who participates, after all you were willing to force your opinion on people, it's also a stupid ass system.
A fundamental moral and logical truth is you may delegate no right that you do not have. Democracy, amongst all it's evils, also breaks this. It breaks moral agency. Gods break moral agency. In all other areas if you give someone orders to do something the person giving the order is as responsible for the consequences. But in religions, god said it, so whatever happens, no one is responsible. Cuz God. There is no moral agency. Without moral agency, there can be no morality. When 'government', which is just a bunch of douchebags, does something, who is responsible? No one. That's a god. If you accept that it can break moral agency, that's your God.
It is exactly the thing, as an atheist, I oppose: the breaking of moral agency. Democracy is a religion. It breaks moral agency, and people believe in it without understanding what it really is. The difference is other religions can do good. Christianity, and even Islam, have helped develop enlightened thought. More importantly most religions at least have defined laws of right and wrong. Democracy admits to no morality beyond the many ordering the few. Democracy only develops dog eat dog, vote to fuck the other guy or he will vote to fuck you. Democracy promotes our beast nature, and if I were Christian, I would say it is the Beast.