"Representative democracy is like riding on a bus. Most of the people are asleep or sedated and the clever people think they're driving just fine. Every now and then the bus hits a rough patch (the clever people are not so clever, and they don't really care about the sleepy people). Only problem is the sleepy people will wake up if the road gets too rough, and they can overwhelm the clever people and steer the bus off a cliff because they're half asleep and they don't know what they're doing."