It is often said the truth lies in jest. Today, in our ever so blasé and nuanced age, the truth seems more often to rest in self-satire. Exhibit A: the political importunings and musing of the actor Mark Ruffalo, which are a perfect demonstration of the ways in which progressives delude themselves about the meaning of democracy.

In the wake of President Joe Biden’s abandoning his reelection bid—owing, quite obviously, to the pressure exerted by his fellow Democrats—Breitbart’s David Ng collected the reactions of a number of Hollywood celebrities, including Ruffalo’s July 21, 2024 tweet:

Okay everybody, now we have our marching orders and time to hit the trail running. No to Trump/Vance. No to the right-wing Christian religious takeover of our nation. Nothing wrong with Christianity; just shouldn’t be running a nation birthed from freedom of religion.

#StopProject2025 #womensreproductivefreedom #VoteBlue

Setting aside his historical ignorance and condescending religious bigotry, let us focus on Ruffalo’s failure to grasp elementary civics; and what it teaches us about the left’s notions about “democracy.”

If anyone thought the self-professed defenders of “Our Democracy™” actually cared about democracy in our constitutional republic, this tweet should disabuse him of the thought. Ruffalo and his likeminded friends have their “marching orders.” From whom? The Democratic political establishment that forced out the incumbent president and the winner of the 2024 Democrat primary, Joe Biden, and undemocratically decided to replace her with Vice President Kamala Harris.

You might remember that in 2020 then-Senator Harris fared rather poorly in her failed bid to garner sufficient Democratic primary votes to win that presidential nomination. Apparently, among Democrats, there are easier ways to capture the nomination than wasting time and money earning your fellow party loyalists’ primary votes.

And guess what? Democratic voters do not care their primary process has been rigged for the third time in three presidential cycles. The Democratic establishment shunted Senator Bernie Sanders aside in 2016 and again in 2020; and, having succeeded in doing so with no repercussions, they have now done the same to President Biden in 2024. What price will they pay from the Democratic Party faithful?

Nothing. Party members have been given their “marching orders.”

Rank and file Democrats will justify their Pavlovian, lemming-like performance as being for the “greater good” of our democracy (translation: “their party). For the ever virtue-signaling Democrats such as Ruffalo, it’s cool to destroy democracy to save it. The real surprise is that progressives haven’t put that on a lawn sign yet.

After all, isn’t that the reason Democrats haven’t been held accountable for the Russiagate lie that was devised to rig the 2016 presidential election and, later, to subvert the administration of a duly elected president? No Democrat been held accountable for engaging in similar disinformation to interfere with the 2020 presidential election by dissembling that Hunter Biden’s laptop bore all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation—not a single security clearance has been canceled. One can’t help but surmise that all those who engage in these deceits and attacks upon honesty and democracy are deemed justified by Democrats because serving their interests is the equivalent, in their minds, of “saving democracy.”

Any American versed in civics can only pity Ruffalo for erroneously concluding he or any sovereign American citizen takes their marching orders from politicians. By constitutional design, politicians are supposed to take their marching orders from the sovereign citizenry. This is true whether it is expressed by the voters in a general election or through a party primary, assuming one is announced and held. Since, in 2024, the Democrats did announce and hold a primary and a candidate garnered enough votes to earn its nomination—for a while, anyway, until Joe’s policies and polling tanked—it is curious that the party claims to defend democracy while proceeding with this undemocratic selection process.

Consequently, in a distinct and instructive case of irony, the party that the left decries as fascist, the GOP, has its grassroots working to make their party establishment and, ultimately, the federal government more responsive to the people. This is reason for the intraparty success of the MAGA movement and Donald Trump. The Democratic Party establishment, in contrast, has consistently dictated primary outcomes to their party’s loyalists. One can only conclude that this is for the purpose of centralizing ever more power in the federal government, which will in turn dictate marching orders to every American in much the same way the Democratic Party has become accustomed to do with its voters.

Yet, as Ruffalo’s tweet evinces, the progressive base hungers not only to govern others, but to be governed. Hence, in Ruffalo’s tweet one won’t find any seeds of rebellion but only relief: Someone else has taken a decision out of his hands. He is grateful for it and ready to do their bidding. The progressive ideology that spurs such a reaction constitutes the rejection of America’s revolutionary experiment in self-government. If unrebutted, it will spread, creating more slavish followers like Ruffalo. Inevitably that kind of thinking will result in the federal Leviathan dictating more marching orders and outcomes in a repressive, authoritarian system that only leftist fanatics will consider a “democracy.”