Yakomaru is definitely a sneaky and untrustworthy fellow. He's machiavellian to be sure.
But perhaps he really does hold to democratic ideals. I mean, I don't see any particular pragmatic benefit to him laying that out the way he did in the most recent episode. If nothing else, it
could come across as him thumbing his nose at the humans of SSY since they obviously don't live by anything close to the ideals that Yakomaru was espousing. So since I see no real pragmatic benefit to Yakomaru laying out the democratic ideals that supposedly guide his people, it's at least possible that he really does believe them. In which case, he ironically has the most agreeable philosophy of any major character in this show, imo.
You know, it occurs to me that the humans of SSY really are like gods, to a degree. I mean, cantus empowers some of them in ways reminiscent of the Greek and Roman gods of mythology. And as Tomiko shows, even immortality is possible for some of them.
So imagine a narrative about these gloriously beautiful gods that cull their own young to try to perpetuate their safety and status for hundreds upon hundreds of years. They reap the fruits of human labor, with those humans looking like brute beasts in comparison to the beautiful gods.
But one day a George Washington or a Benjamin Franklin appears, and says to his fellow humans that these gods are not deserving of our respect. These gods look down upon us, even as their societies are crueler and less enlightened than our own! So then that leader organizes humans around democratic ideals, first spreading it across the whole of humanity through defeating tribes of different ideals. Then, with humanity united under democratic ideals, this leader plots a way to escape the yoke of the rulership of these false gods. Suppose this leader triumphs in his quest.
Is this leader not a hero to his people? His methods were often crude, but his results ring true and accomplished a political ideal. And as duplicitous as he was to the gods, he was sincere in the democratic ideals that he espoused.
Imagine you had a story like that, told from the perspective of the leader of this human rebellion against the Greek gods. We'd probably think of him as a hero, wouldn't we?
Just something to think about.