The quickest way to autocracy is pretending there's no difference between it and democracy.
This is civics 101: There is no "one ruler". There are parliaments, with multiple, opposing fractions. Then, there are administrations (te "executive branch"), which are separate. Then, also separate: the judiciary.
Of course you already knew that, yet you chose to double down on OP's cynical take declaring democracy dead and asking people to stop trying to save and/or improve it. Why vote, if law has no power? And, for the odd politician that happens not to be corrupt: why bother, when your constituents are just going to spit and yell conspiracy theories in your face, with absolutely no attention being paid to your actual work?
That may have been true in the past, now it’s one more fiction. The real three powers are: the rich (which decide laws in the background), the politicians (gov+parliments that use the existing institutions to push laws decided by the rich) and the media (that create and drive public opinion and chose the politicians). The first two classes are not truly separated anymore, and one may pass from to another (best example is being France’s president Macron).
There's more nuance to this. Take the UK, for example (if only because it's what I'm familiar with). The government, in recent times, attempted to create new laws and got shot down. New laws denied. It may be the case that government makes laws, but (in many places) they still need permission to do so.
Laws also survive governments; subsequent governments have at times tried to remove existing laws, and been shot down in the attempt. While there's a clear link twixt government and law, they're not (in many places) the same thing; they are separate.
I used "government" as meaning all branches of government as a whole. I don't disregard the advantages of dividing power between executive, legislative and judicial branches. That dilution of centralized power is important.
But at the end of the day, when the branches has come to agreement, it's still a sovereign entity that does whatever it wants.
In reality, government makes the laws. They're an expression and codification of the ruler's will.