You can demonstrate in countless ways that democracies are freer than dictatorships but that will never stop a huge swath of online population from claiming that they are, in fact, the same.
But in fact in such cases they're more right that you think. If a force is powerful enough to push a healthy democracy towards authoritarianism you damn well should be very, very concerned. Because it takes an enormous amount of will and effort do do this but it gets easier at every step. This is far more power than most dictators have to just maintain the status quo.
Like a train slowly rolling out of the train station, don't think it's barely moving, think that the motor behind it can move the whole damn thing from a standstill. By the time you figure out what's happening it's too late to fix anything without a lot of collateral damage.
I think either can be the prominent message; it depends on the speaker(s). People who favor dictatorship-enabling factors will rationalize and redefine those factors as freedom.
But it makes sense because in the way it's meant to be understood it's correct. One is a threshold that's reasonably easy to judge, the other is a process and the rate of advance can be the same whether you're close to the start or end of the process. The rate is the strongest signal, not just the absolute position.
If you travel from NY to LA most of the time you can tell if you're closer to one or the other. But no matter where you are on the route, you are indeed traveling from NY to LA. Going back to what I said in my previous comment, you should be scared that it's happening nonetheless. Getting a huge democracy like the USA to start to slide into authoritarianism, even just localized (for now) takes a lot of power and every step towards that destination becomes easier. The hardest part was already done - the inertia was defeated and the train is slowly rolling. Don't sit comfortably thinking "we're clearly freer than Belarus" because you're right today but you won't even notice when you pass the point of no return. Boiling frog and all that. I say this as a person who lived through times like that more than once. Freedoms are lost in the silence of the night but are (re)gained usually with blood, sweat, and tears. Wherever you think you are, be mindful of that.
*I have some bias here, I have mostly Western/EU-like views, I'm on forums with more US/EU people where they may complain about their own home, but they're also likely to "silence" opinions like "dictatorship better than your country". Or any opinion that doesn't align with the same Western views. More and more places are open just to pandering to the popular opinion. Like sitting in front of some 1st place football team supporters telling them their team is slipping, you'll still get your clock punched even if you're right.
I wonder what it is about people in the West over the last generation that eliminates their ability to distinguish between “not ideal” and “terrible”, if the “not ideal” is their home base.
Income inequality is probably more likely, with internet making it easier to see.
In the US, while economy is "good", it ignores a large % of population struggling, and if they are on Social Media, they see the differences.
Then popular uprising, and boom, revolution, dictatorship.
The people that are suffering, don't have the bandwidth to think about "not ideal" versus "terrible".
I've increasingly found that the more life manages to centralize around just a few people being in those types of positions, the worse it gets.
nothing is simple. most immigrants praising usa do from your moneyed family leaving Yugoslavia or Persia or something.
everything can be demonstrated in countless ways. not just a point based on your limited personal experience.
it is all veiled in a thin veneer of legitimacy, of course - protecting children, fighting terrorists, fighting nazis, fighting disinformation, etc, etc, etc, and there are plenty of people who will foam at the mouth to defend such measures as absolutely necessary and morally just.
I live in an authoritarion shithole myself, and I'm watching EU/US/CA/ANZ rapidly become more and more like my country with a mix of amusement and dismay.