What does “democracy” mean? Is the idea of political “representation” falsely defined?

10 November 2026, Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)

What does it mean to say that a government “represents” its people? For example, on 14 February 2025, the AP headlined “Where US adults think the government is spending too much, according to AP-NORC polling”, and listed in rank-order according to the opposite (“spending too little”) the following 8 Government functions: 1. Social Security; 2. Medicare; 3. Education; 4. Assistance to the poor; 5. Medicaid; 6. Border security; 7. Federal law enforcement; 8. The Military. That’s right: the American public (and by an overwhelming margin) are THE LEAST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on the military, and the MOST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on Social Security, Medicare, Education, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid (those latter five being the functions the Republican Party has always been the most vocal to call “waste, fraud, and abuse” and try to cut — but those 5 were the most-favored by the American public). Meanwhile, The Military, which actually receives 53% (and in the latest year far more than that) of the money that the Congress allocates each year and gets signed into law by the President, keeps getting, each year, over 50% of the annually appropriated federal funds. Furthermore, the U.S. Defense Department is the only Department of the federal Government so corrupt, so intensely corrupt, that it has never been audited. (Just think about that. Now, why would it be so?) ‘Defense’ contractors — the corporations that sell (mainly weapons) only or mainly to the U.S. Government and its colonies (allies’) — have far outperformed the rest of the U.S. stock market ever since 1991.

Does a Government like this represent the American people, or instead represent the super-rich who derive most of their wealth from the U.S. stock market — corporations the own and control?

Trump is increasing the military and border security, and decreasing education, assistance to the poor, Medicaid, federal law enforcement, and even Social Security and Medicare (the latter two by laying off many of the people who staff those bureaucracies). This Government’s policy-priorities are like the public’s turned upside-down — in other words: are the REVERSE of the public’s — and therefore the U.S. Government right now is a perfect example of a dictatorship. One might say that this is so in only the Executive branch, but it’s not necessarily true: As always when one political faction (regardless whether it it is one Party or a coalition of Parties) has control over both the Executive and the Legislative branches of the Government — as now is the case in the U.S. — these two branches (Executive and Legislative) function as one, and there then will even be a totalitarian dictatorship if they can get the Judicial branch or Supreme Court to call it “Constitutional.” Currently, the U.S. has recently been slipping from a dictatorship towards a totalitarian dictatorship; but America has been a dictatorship ever since at least 1980. Every electoral ‘democracy’ degenerates ultimately into an aristocracy — a dictatorship by the super-rich. It is actually a bipartisan dictatorship, in which the political Parties alternate in power but ALL of them being controlled by only their respective megadonors. The first-ever billionaire U.S. President, who is Trump, is merely the worst-yet example of it. All of this takeover by the super-rich started with the stupidest-ever U.S. President, Harry Truman (at least until Trump came along).

On 29 April 2025, Axios headlined “Exclusive: Most Americans see Trump as ‘dangerous dictator,’ poll says”, and reported the results of a PRRI “Survey of 5,025 U.S. adults conducted Feb. 28 to March 20, 2025” (and the survey itself can be seen here) which asked whether “President Trump is a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy?” and found that the breakdowns were:

Overall, 52% of Americans agree [answered “Yes”]. By party, 87% of Democrats and 17% of Republicans agree. Along racial and ethnic lines, 67% of Black people agree, compared to 45% of white people.

All Americans  52%

Party

Democrats 87%

Independents 56%

Republicans 17%

Race/ethnicity

Black 67%

Latino 63%

Asian American or

Pacific Islander 58%

White 45%

Furthermore, “The margin of sampling error is +/- 1.69 percentage points at the 95% confidence level, for results based on the entire sample.” That is extraordinarily good mathematical parameters, far better than for the average national opinion poll in the U.S.

Furthermore, the poll’s “APPENDIX A: Survey Methodology” exhibits that this poll met state-of-the-art standards in its sampling techniques, so that the poll’s findings are, from a scientific standpoint, extremely trustworthy as displaying U.S. public opinion.

In short, then, the NORC findings back in February 2025 showing that the reality is America’s being a dictatorship (by the super-rich), not a democracy (not a government that represents its pubic), is displayed, as to its results, by the PPRI findings in April 2025 that the American public — by overwhelming margins except for by Republicans (who answered a mere 17% in the affirmative) — RECOGNIZE that they (we — I am an American) live under a dictatorship. (And the supreme test was, of course, that AP-NORC poll finding, that Americans’ policy-priorities were the U.S. Government’s policy-priorities turned upside-down.)

So, the standard definition of democracy is a phony definition of “democracy” (though it’s the normal way that “democracy” is defined), because a democracy is instead a Government by representatives of each citizen equally, without regard for wealth, religion, ethnicity, or any other attribute — it is (and the term “democracy” can realistically be applied ONLY to) “EQUAL Justice Under Law” — and it CAN exist but never yet HAS existed (because of that false common definition for it — the definition according to which the term “democracy” IS applied to America). And another way of expressing this definition (“equal justice under law”) is that a democracy is a Government whose policy-priorities are the same as the public’s are. Therefore, all that we have had is aristocracies — rule by only the super-rich — (and a few theocracies), not yet any real and proven democracy.

Furthermore, the available empirical evidence indicates that almost all of the U.S. regime’s foreign ‘allies’ (or colonies) LIKEWISE have heads-of-state who DON’T represent their respective public. All of them (like the U.S. regime) claim to be a “democracy” but probably are just different aristocracies than the U.S. regime itself is.

So, a “democracy” is a country whose Government’s policy-priorities are the same as are the public’s policy-priorities. It is NOT a country whose Government’s policy-priorities are the same as are the policy-priorities of only the richest .01% of the richest .01%, such as America actually is.

There are two ways possible in order to attain this end-result. One is the way that philosophers and political ‘scientists’ advocate, which is by means of elections by the public between competing political Parties, all of which Parties are private political clubs whose only actual legal responsibility is to its Members (now 450 for the DNC, and 168 for the RNC), and not at all to its voters or anyone else, and whose Members select new Members by the extent to which an applicant is an effective fundraiser for its campaigns so as for the Party to be able to advertise enough in order to be able to win those elections and thereby actually REPRESENT that Party’s mega-donors who made the competitive political win possible.

I have elsewhere explained how an AUTHENTIC democracy can be structured and achieved. It would represent the public, NOT the mega-donors. It would represent them mathematically,* instead of (like in electoral ‘democracies’) fictitiously. It was designed so as to be impossible for billionaires to control. It could be instituted by means of adding an Amendment to the Constitution. In order for that to happen, however, first this article must be spread widely amongst the population. I have linked here to all of the necessary information. If the public won’t support it, it won’t stand a chance.

Either this will be the path to democracy, or the existing phony electoral type of ‘democracies’ (based upon contests in deceiving the public) will continue to be touted though they’re fake (empirically proven so), in which case there can be no realistic hope — democracy will continue to be a mere mirage. All that I can provide is the information, all of which I have linked-to here.

The political ‘scientists’ don’t teach this, and won’t. But you can teach it to yourself by accessing the information that has been linked-to in this article.

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* Anyone who wishes to see the mathematically formal proof of that statement can reach me here and I will send it by email.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.