How do current dictatorships in Western democracies operate?

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance and a high degree of individual responsibility! This is a clarion call to rediscover classical liberalism!

"Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction.
It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.
Those who have known freedom, and then lost it, have never known it again."
Ronald Reagan 1/5/1967

How do current dictatorships in Western democracies operate?

Summary: Mostly very smoothly! Emphasize emotions over mind and common sense!

Its citizens are constantly indoctrinated and polarized with propaganda and demagoguery e.g. Global Warming Hoax and Climate Change Religion, gender identity, or skin color! That is called divide et impera (divide and rule, a principle known to humans since antiquity, but perfected under Western democracies)! Making it extraordinary difficult for citizens to learn or know what is relevant and what to to believe.

Daily public lip service is paid by our elected representatives and others to individual liberty and free markets while Big Government grows in leaps and bounds.

Centralism dominates. As much power as possible is aggrandized and concentrated with the national government! Federalism or devolution of power is ignored and reduced!

Repeatedly, busybody elected lifelong career politicians are willing executors! The more laws, the better!

Deeply entrenched bureaucracies are complicit and promoters withstanding any political election cycles! The more regulations, the better! None other than Anthony Fauci is probably the most recent paramount  example and personification!

Most of the elites and intellectuals are actually agitators favoring dictatorship. They are  slaves of their narrow mind and go along to enforce and perpetuate the dictatorship! Simply, they don't trust the plebeians (the common citizen)! Or why are there so few prominent intellectuals promoting and explaining classical liberalism? Many of them long dead and often forgotten!

There are also strong tendencies to extend this dictatorship across Western countries. The European Union and the Brexit are supreme examples. Or take the recent attempts to impose an OECD global minimum corporate tax rate or by the latest G7 Summit to create a so called Climate Club etc.

Very likely external enemies of Western democracies are behind some of it! However, our elected representatives and elites care little to find out, because it may expose their own dealings!