It’s sad to watch my country commit suicide. Not only will my compatriots be poorer for it, but the rest of the world will be too.
Look at Russia, they jumped off a cliff to protect a regime from democracy, and people are checked out - they take no accountability and still act confused of why Russia is being despised - all while accelerating economic and demographic decline with more than one million casualties in a special 3 day military operation.
You can't make this up.
In the US you might get your funds cancelled, in Russia you'll get your life cancelled instead - and not in the metaphorical sense.
Also as incompetent as the current US government is, the incompetence of the Russian government is on a whole different level (the "3 days to Kyiv" are taking longer than the whole "Great Patriotic War").
> Russia is a de-jure democracy
As is North Korea, it must be even more democratic than the rest of the world because it calls itself "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" ;)
Trump and Hegseth are explicit in their admiration for Putin and Xi. So being technically right here is largely to miss the point. The trajectory the US is on is pretty clear.
Just pointing out that Putin has systematically turned Russia into a full-blown fascist autocracy, but even in Russia this took nearly two decades until all opposition was crushed.
MAGA has the same goal (turning the US into a fascist autocracy), but I bet it will be much harder and would take much longer to dismantle the checks-and-balances system in the US as completely as Putin did in Russia.
If you weren't aware of these differences, I'd encourage you to radically change your media diet; there are unfortunately many outlets which find it advantageous to exaggerate how bad the US is and deemphasize how bad dictatorships are. (Some are paid Russian propaganda, I've seen a shocking number of people send me RT links as though they're a legitimate news source.)
But those four puppets served the same ruling class interests, and they manufactured consent for each other the whole time.
I also struggle to see how it can be that different Presidents with often directly contradictory policies could both be serving the same ruling class interests. If the funding rules for scientific grants are changing, and defenders of the old rules argue that this is a terrible change that will cause huge problems, how can it be that both the old rules and the new rules serve the same interests?
> I also struggle to see how it can be that different Presidents with often directly contradictory policies could both be serving the same ruling class interests.
Using the polarizing topic of COVID (whose risks remain in 2026) as an example, we can answer both of your questions:
https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-co...
Which ultimately led to:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240802024326/https://docs.hous...
This can be applied to virtually any topic. The party of "good cop" and the party of "bad cop" promise no change from the status quo. Of course, anybody easily distracted by the culture wars will not see the commonality between both corporate parties, by design. These people see a close election and use that as "proof" we still have a functioning democracy.
People who are concerned about "corporatism" have the same problem. I often see them get confused and frustrated when the news presents "big government" as a scary thing that people are worried about - doesn't everyone know big business is the more important concern? Most Americans don't agree with them (https://news.gallup.com/poll/701054/perceived-threat-big-bus...), but if all your friends think big business sucks and government programs are great, it's hard to know that this is something you should check.
/r/ZeroCovidCommunity continues to be growing community for good reason.
> I'm not sure what difference there is between them.
Good hyperbole
That's why they're considered a rogue state at the moment.
So at best you can say the Russian regime claims Russia is a democratic, that's not de jure, because for it to be de jure you'd need institutions to make sure it was in fact de jure.
There's none, just signs with the name on the wall, and people roleplaying.
The flagrant corruption and voter suppression efforts underway at the moment make the next 2-3 years the final chance to bring it back from the brink. That doesn't just mean a Democrat winning. It means an actual democrat (lowercase) winning and building a coalition to repair what has been broken. I don't personally think that looks very likely, but I hope for all our sakes it can happen.