Ah ha! We have a frame of reference issue.
For the record, when I use the term 'democracy' that is exactly what I mean. One voice = one vote and majority rules. I believe --and will hold on to the belief-- that that is untenable in a household.
Let's step back a little, let some of the vitriol settle, and let me see if I can weave a couple of anecdotes into something that makes sense when I'm done.
I used to have two guys who worked for me. They were from the same place, were the same age, had the same interests, and were friends outside of work. Dealing with them should have been pretty much a rubber stamp process right? Nope. Not by a long shot.
One of them was 100% praise motivated. If you so much as looked at him funny he took it as a criticism and he would literally mope for weeks. His work performance would suffer for it. If you wanted him to do something you had to tell him, "Look, you're the best guy I've got for this ok? That's why I've chosen you..." It was a non-stop ego stroke with him. If there was something you wanted him to improve a little bit in it was "Oh man! You kicked so much as at this last week, and you're the best in the whole organization at that, and why couldn't everyone do something else as well as you? You know what though? Tom told me that Bob can do something else entirely just a little bit better than you. I told Tom 'fuck no' and that you're the best at it. He says...."
See what I mean? An extreme example of praise motivation was required or this guy was absolutely fucking useless.
His buddy on the other had, was exactly the opposite. If I didn't find something to literally scream at him about at least once a week, he thought that I was ignoring him and he'd go out of his way to fuck something up royally so that he would be the center of my attention. With him, praise didn't do a thing. Screaming did. My conversations with him would usually involve a closed office door, me in his face with spit flying out of my mouth threating violence on him. He'd be out of the office like one of those Evil Knieval wind up toys. Motivated and moving fast for a couple of days, but then he'd kind of wind down, realize that I wasn't on his ass, and fall over. Or, in a more literal sense, do something really stupid so that he'd get in trouble. So I would have to look for little things to yell at him about before he felt like I didn't care about him anymore and he screwed something up really badly.
Two guys who required radically different communication styles to get the same result.
So having the understanding of myself that communication requires more than just "I say it, everyone gets it" I will often seek to clarify, especially if it becomes apparent (quickly!) that I'm being misunderstood. And that's what I call it too... clarification. My point hasn't changed, though my method of explaining it might. That's somewhat different than back pedaling in my book. I didn't 'spit it out' in a manner that people got what I was saying the first time, I'm going to try to convey my point through a different approach. I have a dry sense of humor, I'm sarcastic, and I'm snotty. It's hard enough to pull off in person and not piss people off, it's ridiculous to think that I can do it on a web forum. But it's who I am. It's how I talk, and if I think I'm upsetting someone unintentionally, I'm going to try to clarify that.
Rarely --and I mean rarely-- do I deliberately try to incite someone.
Part two:
I'm going to tell y'all something that I'm relatively certain won't be believed at this point. Perhaps after I'm a little better known it will be.
I'm a cool-as-hell parent.
Seriously.
Here's how it breaks down, just so we know who I'm talking about: I have a 13 year old daughter, a son who is about to turn 7, and a four year old daughter.
When my 13 year old asks me if she can go out, I ask her "What time will you be home?" I don't say "Be home at whatever o'clock." I try to give her the option to come up with something reasonable and then I hold her to it. If it was say, a school night, and she wanted to go out and told me she'd be home at three a.m., my response would be "try again" until she got down to something reasonable. I do my best to let her determination of reason preempt mine if I can't find anything inherently dangerous about it. Because I do think that kids need to make their own choices and their own mistakes. Within reason. As soon as life, limb, or eyesight might get compromised, I reserve the right to put my foot down.
Here's where it gets funny with this one: I go to great lengths with her to explain my reasons for doing something whenever it impacts her. If I have to tell her "No", I always want to explain why. My folks were "because I said so" types and I hated it. I don't want to do that with my kids. She, however, doesn't care. All she hears is that "No" and doesn't want to hear a thing that I have to say. My other two --who are much younger and could change-- on the other hand, will listen raptly to the reasons behind my parental veto and usually are ok with it once they understand it.
The oldest though... she'll abuse any privilege that you give her. Phone, internet, going out, going shopping... it doesn't matter. It's never enough with her. She wants what she wants when she wants it, and anything that stands in the way of that is awful.
She was recently restricted from the phone and the computer. I don't really like to punish but there were a slew of incidents leading up to it. One of the things was I caught her on the phone with her friend at 12:30 on a school night. I came upstairs and herd her talking. I looked at the phone base station and it showed that there was a call on. She heard me coming and she hung up.
Me: "Are you on the phone?"
Her: "No"
Me: "Were you on the phone?"
Her: "Yes" (Well hooray for her for not lying. That was a bad habit that took a looooooooong time to break)
Me: "Your mother told you not to use the phone and it's 12:30 at night. On a school night."
Her: "Oh, you know, I forgot Mom said no phone and I didn't realize it was so late"
Me: "Oh, you didn't know you were doing something you shouldn't have been doing then?"
Her: "No"
Me: "Then why did you hang up when you heard me coming?"
Busted. She knew.
Anyway, the point is for a variety of reasons she lost her phone and internet privileges. She did really really well not sneaking around (another problem we've had with her) so I gave them back with a congratulations for doing so well, I really appreciate the maturity you've shown, etc. When I took them away I made a point of saying that I'm not trying to keep her from the phone, and I'm not trying to monitor what she's doing. What she needs to do is realize when it's appropriate to use the phone, and when it's not. She needs to have the maturity to say to herself "It's getting late, I should be in bed, I'll call tomorrow". THAT is all that I want her to demonstrate to me. That she is capable of doing things with a modicum of responsibility. She's not though... yet. She still has to have it *all* right fucking now.
I give her the phone and the internet back on Friday. On Saturday morning she was sitting at her computer and I asked her to do something to help her mother that would take all of about five minutes. She says "Ok". Fifteen minutes later she's still at the computer. I remind her again that she needs to help her mom with something and that mom is basically waiting on her. "Ok, I'm getting up now" she says. Ten minutes later she's still sitting there. What choice do I have at that point but to say "Get up now and help your mother." ?
I don't like doing it. I don't want to do it, but she does things the hard way. Instead of placing the needs of others above her own wants for all of five minutes (which is a sign of maturity) she had to turn me into asshole dad telling her do it now. She got right back on the computer and was almost late for music lessons because she didn't want to get up and get ready to go.
She almost missed the bus this morning because she was on the phone. Her missing the bus is not something that only impacts her. Her school is is ten miles away. Either her mother or myself then has to take her, and she's got a little brother and sister that need to be ready to go at certain times too. If she's not on the bus, the entire morning schedule is blown.
So I'll let her make her own mistakes, and I'll let her make her own choices, right up to the point where they become dangerous or have a detrimental impact on others. If that makes me a shitty parent, then I'm a shitty parent. But I believe that some parental structure and guidance is critical to understanding that there are consequences for the choices you make, and sometimes you don't get exactly what you want in life. Sometimes, consequences are good, sometimes they are bad. Otherwise, that realization comes as a judge is banging a gavel, or the paramedic is running an IV.