David,

I can only take exception to one thing you've posted. That being that this country was NEVER designed as a democracy. It was designed and founded as democratic republic.

I'll quote wiki;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy
In contemporary usage, the term democracy refers to a government chosen by the people, whether it is direct or representative.[67] The term republic has many different meanings, but today often refers to a representative democracy with an elected head of state, such as a president, serving for a limited term, in contrast to states with a hereditary monarch as a head of state, even if these states also are representative democracies with an elected or appointed head of government such as a prime minister.[68]
The Founding Fathers of the United States rarely praised and often criticized democracy, which in their time tended to specifically mean direct democracy, often without the protection of a Constitution enshrining basic rights; James Madison argued, especially in The Federalist No. 10, that what distinguished a democracy from a republic was that the former became weaker as it got larger and suffered more violently from the effects of faction, whereas a republic could get stronger as it got larger and combats faction by its very structure.
What was critical to American values, John Adams insisted,[69] was that the government be "bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend." As Benjamin Franklin was exiting after writing the U.S. constitution, a woman asked him "Well, Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarchy?". He replied "A republic—if you can keep it."[70]
(emphasis added by me)

It would appear that we are in the process of losing our grip if we haven't already lost it.