If it were a democratic republic, as you say, the representatives would have to vote on war. Representatives would also have to vote before 190,000 pages of CF

If it were a democratic republic, as you say, the representatives would have to vote on war. Representatives would also have to vote before 190,000 pages of CFRs are created by unelected bureaucrats and then enforced as if they were law (sometimes, by the exact same bureaucrats that write the rules they enforce as law [ATF for example]). Most of what people think they know about this country is a facade. They are living on lies, confirmed to them through the legitimization of a SCOTUS that lies to your very eyes about what the constitution says, so that people don't rebel when a politician tells them peace is war and love is hate.