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Comment by serge2k | Hacker News Reader

They are not mutually exclusive. The united states is a democracy.

Err, how so? There is no direct vote on any governance; certainly not at the federal level.

So it's not a direct democracy but is still a democracy, specifically a representative democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representative_democracy

"Republic" is just a term to refer to a nation that is ruled without a monarch: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/republic

Therefore, the two are not mutually exclusive.

Ok, but I wasn't referring to democracy as a general concept, because that's useless. Why not just say "people vote"?

"Democracy" just means "government by the people". That's why we have different types of democracies, to tell them apart.

If you actually meant a direct democracy, then you should have said it. Don't expect people to be able to read your mind and then get mad and snarky when they don't. We can only interpret what we read, so being specific that you mean a direct democracy when you say the word "democracy" in a political thread is really needed.

And yet, it's not government by the people. It's government by representative.

Elected by the people.

Then say "governors by the people". Governors ain't government itself.

Dude you can debate until you're blue in the face but in the end, it's called a representative democracy for a reason. That's an accepted term in politics.

We have given you all the actual definitions on these terms and they show clearly that you're wrong. Just admit it and stop arguing this pointless debate. It's not that hard to do.

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