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> If we cannot trust the judgement of the common folk, why have a democracy at all?

I'm afraid that people are looking around, asking themselves that same question, and concluding that democracy has failed.

The problem is that democracy depends on an educated populace and there have been active efforts to dumb people down so that they can be more easily lied to and manipulated. The American people, on average, have the math skills of a 6th grader and their reading skills are worse (https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/02/us-literacy-rate/). They lack the critical thinking skills to compete with sophisticated disinformation campaigns. The solution requires education, training, and time. Until the population catches up, we're going to continue to see some very bad choices made by voters while scammers and charlatans will continue to be very successful.

I don't blame people for losing some faith in the American people, but I hope we don't lose faith in democracy because clawing it back after we've given up what few freedoms we still have will not be easy. As long as we have democracy we can still make things better.