What is Democracy?

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Somebody recently began a thread to ask what Communism is. The Cold War was a struggle between Communism and Democracy. So what is Democracy?

Freedom to elect our own leaders. Some consider it as Mob Rule as a way of saying a Republic is better.

As I understand it, it has to do with governing with the consent of the governed, although I don't offhand recall who first used that expression. Where that gets bothersome is when you figure out how to obtain that consent. Elections are just one approach and have their own issues.

First off: "democracy" and "communism" are peaches to pears.

Democracy is a political system, and Communism is both a political system and an economic system.

The cold war was between dictatorships in the name of communism on one hand....and democracy combined with capitalism...on the other hand. Or it was supposed to be. Often it was really between capitalism combined with local dictatorships, on one hand...and local Communist insurgents on the other.

I guess if you ask a communist or socialist they'll claim it's Imperialism or something.

You can break words down to figure out what they mean. "Demos" means "the people". "Cracy" means 'rule'. So in a democracy "the people rule". As opposed to monarchy, or aristocracy, and my favorite: "kleptocracy".

Shoplifters are often diagnosed with "kleptomania" so you can guess that a "kleptocracy" would be "rule by thieves", or "governance by thievery" (like rule by Latin American juntas, or by Donald Trump).

Some of my favorite "cracies"

Plutocracy - Being ruled by the ultra wealthy (one of my favorite Roman Gods and planets, 'Pluto', was actually the ruler of both the Underworld AND the wealth that came from beneath the earth)

Kakistocracy - Basically a government ruled by some of the most incompetent and corrupt leaders imaginable (I get the feeling that Ammmuurrica could have been described as this during the Trump years)

In its extremely pure form everybody votes on every issue. In large countries, where democracy exists it's usually (and perhaps always) indirect and diluted to a greater or lesser extent. Apparently the USA is becoming less democratic:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrati ... ted_States

The democratic backsliding is thought to be largely confined to states under Republican control, while those under Democratic control are forward-sliding.
Or so they say. I don't know how well they measure these things.

I personally think that the US is and always has been an oligarchy. A country ruled by a select few individuals (used to be only wealthy old white men but now we have a few wealthy old white women and wealthy old black men thrown into this small group).

The average Americans are under the illusion that their votes give them freedom but they really don't and never have. The only true "freedom" our government permits us (for now) is the right to complain about everything. We are a sham "Democratic Republic" the way Russia today is a Democracy in name only or the way China keeps insisting it's a Communist country despite their Authoritarian Capitalism.

https://act.represent.us/sign/usa-oliga ... -explained

You may be right. Personally I don't think I'll ever be content with less that a vote on every issue that affects me, and a population small enough to make my vote count, though I don't know any way of getting there, short of removing most of the world's population. Still, I've not had a bad life so far, so I probably shouldn't grumble.

Our Democracy is guaranteed by the first two amendments of the Constitution. The First guarantees the right to say whatever you damn well want and the second to educate anyone who objects to how you choose to exercise your rights as stipulated by the First.

Blah blah blah, we're still a country ruled by a privileged few. So that makes us a f*****g oligarchy.

but a working majority have been systematically dumbed down to the point where either they don't care, or they actually thing they have a real say in things when demonstrably that say has been categorically stripped away bit by bit over the decades.