This is based on a comparison I first thought up about 4 years ago and briefly posted about on Wikipedia (in the Village Pump for proposals, to be specific). *cringes internally with embarrassment thinking about all the shitty ideas I proposed back in 2014 on Wikipedia that were overwhelmingly shot down*
...anyway, as I was saying, here's the analogy. Kind of like Mad Libs or a choose-your-own-adventure story, you have two options for each choice (each of which is in parentheses). The first option applies to Wikipedia and the second applies to the United States.
Once upon a time, a small, brave group of Americans (Jimmy Wales & Larry Sanger/the Founding Fathers) were tired of living under the tyranny of British rule (Encyclopedia Britannica/King George III), and so decided to create their own (encyclopedia/country): one that would be defined by freedom from an oppressive bureaucracy that exerted total control over what people could (read in encyclopedias/do or say). So this group of brave freedom-fighters (all of whom happened to be white men, not that that has anything to do with anything) founded their (encyclopedia/country), dubbing it (Wikipedia/the United States of America).
As implied in the fact that this (encyclopedia/country) was founded in response to a desire for freedom from the total control of an oppressive oligarchy, its main founding principle was that of liberty. Specifically, the (encyclopedia/country) was dedicated to the ability of anyone to (edit/pursue happiness in) it as much as they wanted, and to do so without the oppressive interference of a handful of (Encyclopedia Britannica expert editors/British leaders), who had unfairly denied them a voice in their own (encyclopedia/government).
Of course, this ideal of complete freedom wouldn't last long, despite its noble intentions. So while the (encyclopedia/country) initially had very little in the way of an organized (bureaucracy/government), such a system later needed to be created. Elements of the organized (bureaucracy/government) that controlled basic features of the (website/country) included the (Arbitration Committee/Supreme Court), which consists of (thirteen/nine) judicial decision-makers who get to issue binding decisions affecting all the (editors/citizens) of the (website/country). The (Arbitration Committee/Supreme Court) mainly aims to interpret established (Wikipedia policy/legal precedent) in the context of a specific case appealed to it. O
Other key components of the structure of (Wikipedia/the United States) include (Jimbo/the President), a figurehead who mainly acts to represent the entity rather than actually make key decisions about how it should be run, and (Admins/Congress), a group of officials elected by the (editors/citizens) of the (website/country) at large to do the "dirty work" of running the whole thing.
There are also other bureaucratic elements to (Wikipedia/the United States), including the punishment for breaking (policy/the law), which is (being blocked/imprisonment)--potentially indefinitely, if what you did was bad enough.
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