Naive as I was, I didn’t believe them at the time but time has proven them right.
https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a35090601/saudi-activist-p...
Saudi society itself is far from homogeneous. The largely Western-educated royalty is (was?) in a marriage of convenience with the Wahhabi Sunni extremists who lead the religious establishment, there's a growing middle class that's not particularly extreme in any way, oppressed native groups like the Shia, a huge population of completely powerless and frequently abused foreign workers keeping the kingdom running, etc etc.
The US tended to downplay the issues in SA-we need them—so unless someone digs into the history and region it was a bit of a don’t ask and don’t tell.
MBS behavior has made even someone as politically naive as me see what SA really is (and isn’t).
Worse for you, but better for its citizens, which is the whole point of Democracy.
Its not democracy only when the west likes it.
And the average person there isn't as extreme as you think.
Of course, I meant "worse" from a Western liberal point-of-view, which I would think should be obvious here.
My whole point there is that Western liberals seem to usually think that if people in oppressive regimes only had democratic governments, then they'd magically turn into countries like Norway. So they try installing democratic governments in places like Afghanistan and then are shocked when these countries don't turn into clones of liberal Western democracies.
But consider that I’m representative of the average American of a certain age and older; whose interests begin and end with oil and our involvement because of it.