[api]

"People who believe in the government are dangerous idiots."

That might be true, but that's still my point-- it is to some extent democratic. If more people were genuinely and strongly opposed to torture, we'd be getting somewhere prosecuting it. I'd say a majority are weakly opposed and a minority are strongly opposed. If a majority or super-majority were strongly opposed something would be happening.

(Being weakly opposed is basically meaningless.)

In some ways all societies are democracies. A totalitarian society is where the majority either supports the totalitarian regime or at least doesn't dislike it enough to invest the energy and risk required to rebel against it. There's a minimum threshold of support that any regime must have in order to maintain control. At the very least you must have sufficient support among a society's wealthy and powerful (money), those who wield weapons (military and police), and those who control key infrastructure (operations). If those sectors of support fail, kings get deposed.