The only democratic thing about our system is that every adult citizen is allowed to vote President, two Senators and a Representative (plus, of course, state and local offices). However, that is universal suffrage, which, Lincoln to the contrary, is very different from "government of the people, by the people and for the people."

Once elected, our so called "representatives" do pretty much as they fucking please because the "two"-party system insulates them, as do a variety of other factors, like ballot access, the cost of campaigns, etc.

If we were a democracy, each of us would have the opportunity to vote on every issue, like whether we go to war, whether there will be a tax cut, etc. That is what democracy means, With the internet, real democracy is more possible than it has ever been in a country this size.

For some reason, my pointing out the difference between a democracy and a republic seems to infuriate some DUers.

Sorry, I don't think it is to the advantage of the 99% to go along with the deliberate blurring over time of the very significant difference between those two forms of government. We are a republic. If you don't like it, change it. Don't just change the definition of "democracy."

And, when you get right down to it, a plutocracy is the bottom line of what we are. (No pun intended.) In fact, we are such a plutocracy that we may as well be called simply a "plutonomy" because, as Citicorp observed, there is so little difference between our form of economy and our form of government.

Kleptocracy, alternatively cleptocracy or kleptarchy, (from Greek: ??έ???? - kleptēs, "thief"[1] and ??ά??? - kratos, "power, rule",[2] hence "rule by thieves&quot is a term applied to a government seen as having a particularly severe and systemic problem with officials or a ruling class (collectively, kleptocrats) taking advantage of corruption to extend the personal wealth and political power. Typically this system involves the embezzlement of state funds at the expense of the wider population, sometimes without even the pretense of honest service.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleptocracy

The inverse of The Golden Rule (Those that have the gold make the rules) is that those who make the rules tend to end up with the gold.