For the most part, you are right, but I must point out that "democracy" is just a nice way of saying oligarchic republic, since every form of government is some form of elite rule.

Absolutely correct, although I've made this same argument and there are some people here who actually believe that modern "democracies" mean that the people rule. I've long believed that Western countries were not democratic at all, because I see that they are totally unresponsive to their populations. I just did not know why, until I read Burnham's Machiavellians, which your comments also sound simialr to.

My point was that Rome was not a 'democracy' even by the quite pitiful standards of modern times.

In the Roman Republic, just as in the American Republic, democracy means plutocracy: the rule of wealthy elites by means of the media.

That certainly is true of the American republic.

It would be nice if real democracy, i.e. the rule of the people, were possible, but it just isn't.

I agree. But there's still ways to be more and less democratic, and the current situation is rather egregious. For example, my country is a member of the EU, and as a result we're even less democratic than we were before, and there's even less accountability.