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I could make the same arguments about "communism" in '80's-era Eastern Europe, or "theocracy" in modern Iran

No, you can't, without completely making stuff up. Plenty of people have lived in those and also the other alternatives who could tell you this, not that it's difficult to surmise without that experience.

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Are you claiming that Soviet communism did not promise a bright & prosperous future to the young and the working classes?

Or do you feel that it delivered on such a promise?

Or what?

The idea that "democracy" is some ineffectual promise like "communism" and "Iranian theocracy" is obviously wrong because we have the record of a whole bunch of democracies being a lot more successful than any communist or theocratic state. It's a rhetorical flourish than doesn't survive the slightest scrutiny.

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