Through the good advertising it's now usually understood as 'we vote => we are in control => values', except democracy is clearly has nothing with social and humanitarian values.
Democracy is a system where political disagreements are resolved through a set of agreed-upon rules (AKA "rule of law") instead of violence. The alternative to Democracy is mass murder. There is still plenty of violence in a Democracy -- witness the prison system in the USA, but it isn't neighbors just casually murdering each other (as also happened in the USA in an organized way in the Jim Crow era). Interesting to note -- both counter-examples were / are founded on denying parties participation in the democratic process...
The Rwandan and Bosnian civil wars are both examples of "tyranny of the masses" where there's no mechanism for resolving disputes between groups, besides killing your neighbor.
Democracy is just a tyranny of the masses.
Through the good advertising it's now usually understood as 'we vote => we are in control => values', except democracy is clearly has nothing with social and humanitarian values.