In Power Or In Office?

In a free society, one that is autonomous and self-regulates, governments are 'in office'. Sad to say, in a modern democracy, governments are 'in power'.
Why is that? Why is democracy just a facade for dictatorship?
Fifty years ago we were a free country, more or less. The press was unregulated, you could speak freely, and it was assumed that you were a responsible adult, once you were over the age of eighteen or twenty one. Our freedom was often attributed to the democratic political process, but in fact this was wrong. In England, freedom came with a representative Parliament and a limited government. The totalitarian concept of democracy came more from Europe and America. English liberties were more of a throwback to the Middle Ages, a holdout against the centralizing tendencies of the European despots.
But now, with liberty all but dead, the democratic state sees fit to adjust your behaviour, to monitor your actions, to limit your faith, to define your very concept of what it means to be human. Children are forced to swallow ideologies of self-loathing and degradation in what passes for education, primed for a hopeless future of debt servitude and sterility. The government is not limited, it is in power. Nothing is beyond its remit - sport and culture as well as education and health.
You can vote all you want to - you will always get the boss.