In the USA (and most places, honestly) all your options are lobbied by rich, there is no alternative in your great democracy. It’s rich people that hate gays, women, immigrants and workers or rich people that hate workers. I wouldn’t call that democracy, personally. And I also don’t think that those people lobbied by the rich, people that couldn’t give less of a crap about us, should be the ones in charge of protecting us. There are more people in the world than monsters, there is more love in the world than hate. Humanity loves the earth and everyone on it, we have the power to create a society based on love and respect we have for eachother. A better world is possible, don’t let these inhumane beings let you believe otherwise.
As you said, you could call my definiton of democracy a paradox, that is a valid argument. But I’d like to say that’s slightly more democratic than having rich people run around and do whatever they want with the fruits of OUR labour, destroying the planet for fun and the endless accumulation of fake tokens to the point where a human can not even comprehend that big of a number, and then blaming US for the state the planet is in.
Society has existed before the state and will exist after the state.