But we're now at 20 years of this. And the world has gotten more authoritarian and more autocratic on the whole, much of the backing for which has emanated from

But we're now at 20 years of this. And the world has gotten more authoritarian and more autocratic on the whole, much of the backing for which has emanated from Russia. People call Russia a gangster state, but that's not really true; it's a secret police state, run by a KGB man. And its favored tools of assassination, secret trials, disappearances, silence through fear, domestic mass mind control and international information warfare reflect that. The chances of something less malevolent crawling out of that swamp seem highly unlikely, since the country has functioned for over a century as an evolutionary experiment in eradicating anyone who shows a shred of conscience.