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I think you’re correct that the claims of “temporary measures” was why people didn’t rebel. It’s how most tyrannies begin. No dictator has ever marched to the steps of his Capitol claiming that he’s going to permanently end all civil rights and liberties, it’s always claimed as a temporary measure needed to meet some crisis and of course everyone should go along until the danger is passed. Humans are simply not built for recognizing that first step as the danger it is. I think most of it goes back to our beginning as humans in tribes. A claim of lions in the bushes turns off the rational brain and moves humans back to Stone Age tribes where the strong guy will save us if we do exactly what they say.
It’s one reason I am democracy skeptical. Most humans are better off being a follower and not suited at all to lead or build or invent. We are 90% peasants and a couple of inventors and thinkers and leaders. Why keep asking people to participate if they cannot understand the simple stuff?
I'm sure the remnants of the Ancien Régime were asking themselves the same question all those years in Austria.
To give you a less quippy answer, I think the most persuasive argument for me is a moral one. People should have a say and a stake in how their lives are run. I'm not confident enough to claim it's a universal, but I think it's not a controversial claim to say the majority of humanity has an instinctual desire to be the masters of their own destiny, whatever compromises they have to make of their autonomy in the current socio-political-economic structure of the world. I mean, freedom is arguably the single most popular ideological concept there's ever been, with all but the most extreme authoritarians and totalitarians at least attempting to appeal to it. I think it's fundamentally a right you deserve, to at least have the modicum of political power your suffrage gives you in modern liberal democracies. I'd prefer much more devolved and local systems, though.
But for those who don't share my moral principles, how about avoiding violent, anti-elite revolutions? Do you really want to go back to killing hundreds of thousands of peasants because it's important to keep a rich, powerful guys club exclusive? Not to mention that, poor short-term electoral incentives to policy aside, democratic regimes tend to have much better long term capacity to self-correct. Whereas if dear leader decides to wage a hopeless, 13-year-long failing war to retain a pointless colonial empire, there's no formal, reliable mechanism to force a change of leadership or even policy. Have you always approved of your mayor, your governor, your president? Have you ever wanted somebody else in charge? And if the answer is yes, are you prepared to plan and execute a revolution or coup of your own, or to participate in or support one?
If not, I would suggest you are either one of the peasants, or you do, in fact, actually like the idea of democracy.
I mean I’d buy it if there were widespread interest in the kind of politics that ordinary people could understand and affect them much more than the federal government issues that people spend time arguing about. Nobody cares about the school board meetings, zoning committees, local or state government. They argue about stuff that they have no control over, and they never bother to do anything to actually understand the situation.
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