The phrase “shocking findings” is hugely overused in the media, which is strange because it’s so clumsy. The word endings nearly rhyme, but not quite, and there’s something infantile about the word “finding” for something you’ve found. Is your lunch your eatings? Did you do any pooings this morning? Always go for a weeing before leaving the house – or building.

Most “shocking findings” don’t turn out to be that shocking. The phrase gets deployed to dupe you into reading on and then it’s just some study that’s come out with something predictably depressing. Not this time. Last week, there were some genuinely shocking findings. I’d go so far as simply to call them shockings. Never mind that they were found – that’s not their key characteristic at all. They’re shockings, infuriatings and frankly frightenings.

They were in a poll that forms part of a Channel 4 report called Gen Z: Trends, Truth and Trust. It must have been an act of colossal corporate self-loathing to commission that, because one of the things it’s bound to say is that gen Z, which is 13- to 27-year-olds, watches less TV than any bunch of youngsters since before the late queen’s coronation first got everyone into it. That’s bad news for all television broadcasters but it threatens to condemn a youth-skewed one such as Channel 4 to the fate of a youth-skewed retailer of tartan shopping trolleys.

But the horrifyings weren’t about viewing habits: they were about politics. The polling company Craft said that 52% of gen Z-ers think “the UK would be a better place if a strong leader was in charge who does not have to bother with parliament or elections”. I know what you’re thinking: it should be “if a strong leader were in charge”. And also: yes, that is more than half of them basically saying “screw democracy, it doesn’t work”. Another worrying: a third of them think the army should be in charge.

I was properly shocked. I thought the intellectual argument in favour of democracy had been won. The majority of the global population doesn’t live in functioning democracies, but most regimes at least claim to be a bit democratic. Until last week, I found that contemptibly hypocritical: now I think it’s heartwarming. Those lying dictators are still, like I was, taking it as a given that everyone thinks democracy is the fairest system of government. You can withhold people’s right to self-determination, but you can’t persuade them not to want it. If it’s not a democracy, it’s at least got to pretend it is.

Not for much longer, it seems. The coming generation can’t see the point of all those time-wasting elections and parliaments. They want neither the reality nor the pretence of being involved. In a sense, they’ve brilliantly proved their own argument against democracy. If they are so wrongheaded, maybe it is better not to consult them? In a way they’re making a very clever satirical point, except they’re obviously fucking morons.

Having said that, it’s clear what they’re getting at. A brilliant, dedicated and compassionate person with absolute power, making sensible decisions in the long-term national interest – not being troubled by the grubbiness of political rivalry, the wilful misinterpretation of their beneficent policy by those who wish to grab power for themselves – would be a wonderful thing. Its only downside is that it’s impossible to achieve. No dictator or monarch in history has ever stuck to that approach for more than a week and most of them never tried it.

But I can understand why the chaos and disappointment of contemporary politics might make a naive person yearn for a clear-eyed nutter knocking people’s heads together. Just last week, Rachel Reeves, supposedly part of a grownup, responsible and progressive government, backed a third runway for Heathrow airport in the name of economic growth. That’s the number one priority now and the government wants everyone to know it. I’m not against economic growth but it’s definitely not the most important issue. Averting climate catastrophe should take precedence. I mean, shouldn’t it? Or is that just woke? I thought LA had basically burned down. Is this really the time for us to make a massive airport massiver?

Am I missing something? Is this not the overt prioritising of a government’s short-term political survival over the biggest crisis humanity is facing? With any broader perspective at all, opening a new runway at Heathrow is stupid. And I think our current government are, in political terms, the good guys. Yet here they are doing wrong because of the exigencies of staying in power under the current democratic system. The working of democracy and the electoral cycle routinely condemn us to this kind of poor decision. In many ways, it is pretty repellent.

Nevertheless, the problems with dictatorship are far more savage. Why do 52% of young people not realise that? Screw falling literacy rates, this is the most horrendous betrayal our education system has ever perpetrated. What happened? Did nobody tell them about Stalin? Have they not heard about Kim Jong-un?

Or perhaps it’s the opposite! Is this where fatuous positivity has got us? Has someone tried to feed young people the bullshit that democracy isn’t flawed, and they’ve noticed that it is, and think that means it’s failed? Politics in a free country is dirty, complicated, and often driven by fear, vanity and corruption. Democracy is, as Winston Churchill said, the worst system except for all the other ones. Did no one explain that to them? Or are their phone-addled attention spans so short that they couldn’t stay focused for the second half of the phrase?

Let’s make it shorter for them: nobody’s perfect. Which means: we don’t give anyone total power. Everyone makes mistakes, takes cowardly self-serving decisions now and again, worries about some people more than others. Democracy or not, that’s true of all governments. The advantage that democracy gives us, and it is sumptuous compensation for the problems it causes, is the power to sack them.