It might be laughable to a Canadian but we've always remained in a tenuous debate in the US, and referring to it as something other than a democracy has come off as hyperbole. I mean yeah, it's always been a corrupt democracy, but it was still technically a democracy. Now it's factually incorrect to call America a democracy. From a scientific standpoint, the one referring to it as Democracy is the one using colorful rhetoric, not the other way around.