All very sad. It is time to bring the wealthiest back to heel. Companies and individuals cannot be above the law or the states which sustain their lives and businesses will crumble. Time to take back control.
It's an important distinction.
"Democracy" is a family of types of government, of which the absolute democracy many imagine in one form. A representative democracy is another.
As it happened, the next day the assembly changed its mind, and sent off another galley rescinding the order. The second galley was indeed able to overtake the first in time. Thucydides attributed this to deliberate slowness by the captain of the first.