Is The United States A Democracy, Or A Republic? Is a Republic A Democracy?
Sharing a less-contrived labeling of the United States Government.
One of the many problems we have yet to really address with the advent of modern internet is the rapid spread of misinformation that is consistently taking place on that internet. To elaborate, I will say that I don’t think we should regulate the internet beyond how it is regulated now (and likely a little less,) but the internet does present a challenge for our society in this regard — having a large amount of blatant misinformation online is a serious problem. This is true for our personal lives, where a saucy rumor could damage one’s reputation or getting a bad pizza recipe could ruin our dinner, and it is also true for politics. Many modern political events would have never taken place or would have been severely altered if it weren’t for the direct lines of communication and socialization that come from the internet. For better or worse, the internet, politics, and the wrong answer are permanently intertwined.
The spread of misinformation, to me, is a concerning education problem. Throughout my life I have migrated through a lot of interests, and I have used the internet to access the majority of that information. As a child, I certainly came across misinformation and sometimes got things wrong as a result — having to rewrite information in my mind due to reading the wrong website. The problem is that if the majority of the internet is becoming misinformation, then all paths may eventually lead to the same place. Everyone searching for the most basic of answers will instead recieve swaths of contrived misinformation on any topic, and this is further exemplified by the advent of generative A.I..
If I am being honest, I am a hater; I hate misinformation. I think it is slimy to deceive people who are simply trying to learn. Misinformation, above everything else, has the ability to bring down our lives — our countries, our families, our Earth — so it isn’t something that I think should be taken lightly.
One common talking point you might have encountered in the wild is the
“ We are not a Democracy, we are a Republic”
talking point. To me, this is amongst the most frustrating and misinformed talking points that exist. Part of the reason for this is that I love history and government, and to me this shows a lack of understanding of both. Today I would like to firmly disprove this talking point in the hopes that maybe one day — by some stretch, someone who desperately needed information will get a 6th-grade education in Social Studies.
What is a Democracy?
“ We are not a Democracy, we are a Republic”
To understand why this is not true, we of course need to understand the main terms at play — the Democracy and the Republic. So, what exactly is a democracy? Here’s what various sources from the internet will tell you a Democracy is:
“ a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.” — Oxford
Democracy (from Ancient Greek: δημοκρατία, romanized: dēmokratía, dēmos ‘people’ and kratos ‘rule’)[1] is a system of government in which state power is vested in the people or the general population of a state. — Wikipedia
Democracy is a system of government in which laws, policies, leadership, and major undertakings of a state or other polity are directly or indirectly decided by the “people,” a group historically constituted by only a minority of the population (e.g., all free adult males in ancient Athens or all sufficiently propertied adult males in 19th-century Britain) but generally understood since the mid-20th century to include all (or nearly all) adult citizens. — Britannica
All of these definitions have one thing in common; a Democracy is a government in which “ the people,” decide the undertakings of the state. In other words, if you have a system where the people are involved in the government — at all, not through any particular means so long as “ power” (laws, policies, leadership, and major undertakings of a state) is vested in “ the people.” The first definition from Oxford even provides a specific intentional outline for elected representatives, as this is likely the case for the majority of countries that are democracies today.
What is a Republic?
While the egg might have already cracked for most of you, it is worth reviewing a bit more to really drive the point home. Here are a various definitions of the word Republic I grabbed from the internet:
a state in which supreme power is held by the people and their elected representatives, and which has an elected or nominated president rather than a monarch.
archaic
a group with a certain equality between its members."the community of scholars and the republic of learning"
— Oxford
A republic, based on the Latin phrase res publica (‘public affair’), is a state in which political power rests with the public through their representatives — in contrast to a monarchy.[1][2] — Wikipedia
‘ Republic’ is a bit of a tricky term, as like many other terms in the English language it has multiple meanings — and the definition one is using is meant to be derived from the context the word is used in. This is a really common problem I see when people misunderstand things like this; there are two definitions to the same word and this provides some level of obfuscation and self-interpretation to the English language.
In the first definition, the one that corresponds to the context of a government type — rather than a free state — we see that “ power is held by the people.” A Republic is a system in which power is held by the people by voting for representatives.
Finishing the argument
A Republic is a type of Democracy, the United States is a Democracy, and the United States is a Republic. Any country that has citizens vote is a democracy. The one thing that determines whether or not you are a democracy is whether or not regular citizens are involved with the government… And we are. Without Democracy, there is no rule of law — the only legislation that happens comes from one person or a group of people. There is a categorical, taxonomic hierarchy of government types which get more specific as they go down. For example, an Autocracy is a system where power comes from one central force. A Monarchy is a type of autocracy because it is a system where the power comes from one central force, the ruler. Saying “ We are not a Democracy, we are a Republic” is the equivalent of saying “ We are a Monarchy, not an Autocracy,” or “ We are humans, we are not mammals,” “ pumpernickel is pumpernickel, not bread.” The assertion is ridiculous. The two are not mutually exclusive. It is called a hierarchy; you can be two things at once, I don’t know where people ever thought these rules generated from.
You might, by this point, have picked up on my cynicism. Having to make this argument is absurd; it is truly revealing as to how bad it has gotten. How does a misunderstanding of basic social studies this deplorable quickly become a widely held belief?
If Donald Trump wins in November, he will abolish the department of education. If people are accepting this nonsense uncritically, imagine what else they might accept uncritically. I mean, they already believe the border is just a river that Mexicans swim across all day. Right wing lunatics go down to the border to manufacture a story and then get caught by the border patrol — exactly how you would expect the U.S. border to operate is exactly how it operates in his “ documentary” and the story is….? Still people are dumping over the border? If you want to stop illegal immigration, the border is one of the last places to focus on. Why? Because a huge border in the middle of an open desert with a 10-foot high fence and cameras in every conceivable direction is easy to guard. Border crossings, as they happen in the movies, are an extremely rare event that are usually only happening in the most extreme of cases. You people watch too much Breaking Bad — you think Albuquerque has 20-person gun fights in the middle of downtown on a weekly basis, or is only the U.S. side of things dramatized in entertainment? The vast majority of illegal entries are overstayed visas, or better-yet — done through legal ports of entry. A fence isn’t stopping the cartels, who have planes and boats. They infiltrate all up and down the Pacific coast. The way to stop them is to cut off their money source, destroy their black market — not become a locked down country we can’t even get out of because the walls are so high. We don’t need a DMZ with Mexico.
I really do love this video, by the way — it really goes to demonstrate just how ridiculous it was to ever believe these talking points in the first place. Like …? What did you think was going to happen?? He is all surprised to learn that migrants are in fact detained in cold stainless steel rooms for hours rather than being rolled out a red carpet. While I don’t love supporting its creator by sharing his nonsense, I think this video in particular deserves all the platforming it could possibly get.
Despite the MAGA misinformation that we are “ stopping drilling,” oil-drilling is going at record rates… Which is asinine. What are they talking about? “ The United States has _ oil” — why do you think the President is drilling for oil? The President does not drill for oil; that is not his job. Who decides how much petroleum is made? Petroleum companies — whom it benefits to have a low supply and a high-demand. It is easy for them to produce more or less oil; they decide the prices for it. The United States does not drill for oil, including the military. The military does help some corporations they have contracts with delivery to their facilities. When you’re saying that “ we are not drilling anymore,” WHO IS THE WE? Is it EPIC, LLC Fuel Services? I’m not a part of that corporation. The government isn’t part of their decision making. What are we talking about, actually? Nothing? If you ask me we should stop destroying the land and our natural habitats in order to extract every possible penny from the Earth. You would not believe how many beautiful, natural places I have been to whose environments are completely tainted by resource extraction. They heavily regulate ancient Native American sites that they have stolen, as if concerned about the preservation of history — which I would be a proponent of — but then, if there is a natural gas well beneath that ancient site then they really don’t care anymore. They pretend to care, but I actually care. If you actually cared, the land wouldn’t be covered in refineries and pumps. Some places are meant to be left exactly how they are; there are a lot of lessons which we seem to have absorbed in our past that are completely missing today.
It would all be so hilarious if the world wasn’t rapidly heating and we didn’t live in a radically corporate country. It is so crazy how few places you can actually walk anymore. You can only walk on the road, or in very limited public land. Why am I the only one who thinks this is insane? You can’t go anywhere ! I am frustrated — I am a free soul in a restrictive world where everyone thinks they are unrestricted. The corporations are sucking up all of the oil from the land. I am misanthropic — I hate people. I hate to say it but I have finally gotten way past the point of caring. Vote for Kamala in November. I would argue that it has never been more important, considering the groundwork these freaks have been laying the past 4 years to make the entire government Nazi loyalists. A vote for Donald Trump in 2024 is a vote for a dictator. A vote for drama. Maybe you could argue he would destroy this crappy system faster, but the ends don’t really justify the means. It is worth voting for. Goodbye.
