tl;dr: > The answer is that Putin’s blundering and brutal behavior has accidentally highlighted democracy’s greatest superpower: the trait that insures that, f

tl;dr: > The answer is that Putin’s blundering and brutal behavior has accidentally highlighted democracy’s greatest superpower: the trait that insures that, for all of democracy’s flaws, it will triumph over autocracies in the long run. IMHO that's some serious copium. Russia (briefly) had a modicum of democracy and now doesn't. It's suffering really because it's in decline [1]. Compare it with China, which by any objective measure is an autocracy, and it's doing just fine. Democracies historically have been few and far between and they've thus far not lasted that long comparatively. Some examples: - Roman Republic may well be the longest lasting and I'm not sure you'd call it strictly a democracy but it's close and it lasted several hundred years before being swept away into empire; - Weimar Republic -> Nazi Germany. Let's not forget in 1933 when Hitler was appointed Chancellor, the Nazis held the most seats through elections; - Athenian democracy -> (briefly) a territory of an empire and then a Roman province - Turkey is now effectively an autocracy - In completely honesty and seriousness, the attempted insurrection of January 6 (yes, that's what it was) foreshadowed an end to American democracy. It's a race against time between evangelicals trying to institute a fascist theocracy through subversion of every institution meant to protect the republic vs demographics making them irrelevant [2]. Democracies just have different failure modes and nothing lasts forever. [1]: https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/why-the-population-decline-in-russia-has-hit-its-highest-in-history-54327 https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/why-the-population-decline... [2]: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/01/5-facts-about-u-s-evangelical-protestants https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/01/5-facts-abo...