Anyway, over here in continental Europe democracy mostly works. And when people complained about privacy issues for years and Facebook laughed in our faces we eventually got the GDPR. That's exactly the kind of "either get your shit together or we will legislate it" this thread is about.
The constitutional part is important too — it limits what people, and their representatives, can do even if they have a majority.
Similarly when electing the president people vote for a person who will vote for the president. While it is a weird system, in essence the leader is chosen by the people.
Calling only direct democracy a democracy would be weird, by that standard a country pretty much can't be democratic for purely practical reasons (though Switzerland comes close)
People like to say this all the time like it's clever, but being a republic does not preclude being democratic. The United States is a democracy.
No, but the particular form of the US republic does so in practice.
> The United States is a democracy.
The United States may have been built around an idea of representative democracy, but in function it is more of a plutocratic republic with quasi-democratic rituals.
"We're doing stand-ups and we use story points, we're agile"
You elect you president ; you elect your representatives to congress and senate at federal level ; you elect your representatives and governor at state level ; you elect your mayor and your city council at local level.
That's the definition of democracy.
I very much dislike neo-nazis, but I have to applaud the gentleman for at least understanding the simplest nature of his government and attempting to educate his countrymen.