[stickfigure]

> like Taiwan and South Korea.

You had to reach back 50 years to find US support for dictators.

> they just often happen to be with dictatorships

No, they always happen to be with dictatorships. The motives of US politicians are not relevant to this fact (I personally think Trump is corrupt and incompetent); the US system is democratic enough, and Americans are moralistic enough, that even corrupt and incompetent politicians can't get away with military adventurism except with dictatorships. Thus the end of that Greenland nonsense.

[tw1984]

> You had to reach back 50 years to find US support for dictators.

US allies in the entire middle east are literally all dictators or worse than dictators. For example, Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy, you just need 6 years education in school to understand that is worse than dictators when religion is also heavily involved at the same time.

[Ajedi32]

Yeah I would refine that argument a bit and say the US will sometimes support (or rather, ally with) dictators when the only viable alternative is an arguably worse dictator. There aren't exactly a lot of democracies in the middle east we could be supporting instead.

[flumes_whims_]

Like supporting Al Qaeda to overthrow Assad.

[Ajedi32]

Exactly. Unfortunately, "arguably better" doesn't always turn out to be "actually better" once you have the benefit of hindsight.

[jicko]

there weren't a lot of democracies in the world until recently. And even a good many of them are effectively oligarchies.

if you want a good path to true improvement in civil rights (not a useless piece of paper or declaration) just track the wealth of a country. Wealthy countries that didn't rely on natural resources to get wealthy tend to treat their citizens better because, well, they make up the fcking economy.

most western countries had a shortcut to that via colonialism and slavery. It's very rich to then point at countries that don't have that cushion and talk about being morally superior.

[Ajedi32]

Nice theory, but it seems demonstrably untrue to me. Has China made any major strides in civil rights since their economic miracle? They seem as determined to stamp out the few remaining bastions of civil rights in their corner of the world as ever.

Democracy is a morally superior system of government, because it's fundamentally premised on a moral idea; that governments "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed". Dictatorships and aristocracies can make no such claim.

[Daishiman]

Democracies are not a guarantee of civil rights and easily turn into authoritarian and repressive regimes.

[Ajedi32]

Usually only after they stop being democracies. It's rather difficult to repress people who can fire you if they don't like the job you're doing.

But in principle I agree, democracy on its own doesn't guarantee morality. There's such thing as the tyranny of the majority.

[glenstein]

Right, and if distance from the present matters, probably the biggest risk to global peace (such as it is) comes from China's increasingly serious preparations for a military attack on Taiwan.

[jicko]

People are literally talking about tiananmen square upthread like it's the biggest problem ever with China. Both Taiwan and South Korea had their own version of tiananmen square.

I don't think you realise that much of the world was under de facto dictatorships (eg. absolute monarchies) and it wasn't like people in the years before were living in democracies that then got taken away.

The US doesn't have a higher moral ground to stand on vis a vis many other countries in the world.

[flumes_whims_]

> You had to reach back 50 years to find US support for dictators.

More recently, Sadam and Noriega until America turned on them.

Or currently, the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia, Egypt, and many others.