The healthy ones were... I imagine.
You sound as if you are not a fan of Winston Churchill's. That's okay. But it's difficult to establish 'truth' in such pithy statements. I just admire his ability to convert the description of many situations into a few pithy words. To me, that's a huge talent that I envy. It's a personal thing.
I would have admired him greatly, had he made a career of writing and painting. It's only his politics i deprecate.
That's could be a realistic feet-on-the-ground assessment of the situation.
Or it could be a facile aphorism. I can do a Churchillian summary - but I prefer Wilde. (It's a class thing, or an inside/outsider thing. Or just sympathies.)
Do you realise that I could use the same arguments to say that your 'education', 'information', and 'efficiency' could all be dismissed
I realize that could be said, but I don't agree that it would be accurate. On consideration, I conclude that "egocentricity" means self-interest. In that case, yes, it's true that we vote for what's good for us. But a high standard of education and information across the board would automatically make all voters aware of how their individual self-interests form a social contract, and how they as individuals, classes and ideologies can co-operate to defend their interests from exploitation and oppression. Efficacy would render that informed self-interest overt, rather than latent. It is precisely the cumulative self-interest of voters that drives any functioning democracy inevitably toward socialism. That is why elites are constantly forced to nobble, undermine, corrupt and derail democratic process.
But I won't dismiss your original points because I think they have validity in spite of your own subsequent points of argument that could dismiss each of them as idealistic waffle in the real world of democratic politics.
Good, because in the real world "democracy" is just such a syrupy ideal.