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by tw1984 53 days ago
> 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.
1 comments
Ajedi32 53 days ago
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.
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flumes_whims_ 53 days ago
Like supporting Al Qaeda to overthrow Assad.
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Ajedi32 53 days ago
Exactly. Unfortunately, "arguably better" doesn't always turn out to be "actually better" once you have the benefit of hindsight.
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jicko 53 days ago
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.

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Ajedi32 53 days ago
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.

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Daishiman 53 days ago
Democracies are not a guarantee of civil rights and easily turn into authoritarian and repressive regimes.
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Ajedi32 52 days ago
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.

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