Comment by joe_mamba

This is unnecessarily confrontational. The real point here is that there better functioning democracies than the US. They have faults, but Scandinavia and much of northern Europe (partially excluding the UK) much better approximates what you call a fairytale than a US perspective might allow you to believe. Trust in and satisfaction with government institutions in Scandinavia and Finland are much, much higher than in the US, and it's largely justified by their competence and delivery of public goods.