Do you think that there isn’t independent press in China? You’re not allowed to spread baseless conspiracy theories, but you can express dissatisfaction with the government or its policies. This 'aint the Cultural Revolution.

Hong Kong’s system is still entirely intact under the one country two systems principal. China has shown more restraint in reintegrating it into the national system than pretty much any other country that has undergone something similar, like when East Germany was plundered and deindustrialized by West Germany.

The Harvard study was a study of all Chinese people, not sure why you think that Uyghurs would be excluded. They stopped collecting that data because, frankly, they didn’t like the results they were getting, which is that China’s government is successful and that the people living under it aren’t trampled and downtrodden and miserable. Meanwhile in the “free” west, our population dutifully changes its opinion on foreign countries when it’s commanded to by the ruling class.

Cuba’s democracy is actually a 0-party state. Candidates stand on their own for election, and most politics are run through local orgs and workplaces. They recently concluded one of the most democratic exercises in the history of the Western Hemisphere, when through a series of local referendums they amended their constitution. No lobbyists, no special interests, no controlled media - an almost totally pure example of a government run by citizens, for citizens.

As for China, the Chinese people have something like 90%+ satisfaction with their central government, as measured by independent observers. The reason for this is their commitment to Full Process Democracy, which means that your democratic participation in the system doesn’t end with your vote for a representative - low and mid level officials are required to constantly be polling their constituencies, and they can be dismissed (either by a recall election or by higher ups) if they don’t act in accordance with the desires of the people they’re supposed to represent.

Furthermore, China’s ruling party may be one party on paper, but it is “one party” that is made up of over one hundred million members. It has internal factions that range from neoliberal to anarcho-communist, and it is very intentionally embedded into every single Chinese institution. Most of the service that the CPC provides to the people is provided at a local or even individual level - for example, a Chinese worker’s equivalent to a union leader is a coworker who’s with the party, where if you have problems with your boss you can get it resolved through them.

Meanwhile Brazil went back to their last progressive president after Bolsonaro’s failure, and Bolivia has foiled two attempted coups by reactionary forces. Venezuela and Cuba also remain strong, with the latter being possibly the most democratic country on this planet.

In Africa, the most notable “democracies” that have been overthrown in recent memory were all client states of western countries whose previous governments cannot in good faith be said to have been representative of the people.

The Middle East is pretty bad, what with Israel going full fash in the past year. It’s not like they haven’t been edging for decades, though.

But in Asia, the only country that might be more democratic than Cuba is China, and they’re as strong as they’ve ever been. Since that’s 1/5th of the population of this planet living under one of its premier democratic governments, I’d say the prognosis for global democracy is fine.

Ukraine can fight this with whatever they can get from around the world.

You ignored the entirety of my point, which is that Ukraine has signaled that they want the conflict to end, but their masters in Washington and the EU are pressing them forward regardless. Donbas has been functionally independent from Ukraine for almost ten years now, and only two of those with Russian troops supporting it. It’s not Ukrainian territory anymore in any way that matters.

It’s Ukraines fight

The US and its allies have sabotaged peace talks between Ukraine and Russia on multiple occasions. European politicians have been talking about putting EU troops on Ukrainian soil in support roles so that more Ukrainian men can charge directly into Russian artillery fire for the past few months. In the months leading up to the invasion, the western media apparatus was braying for Russian blood with a fervor that I hadn’t seen since the runup to the Iraq War - and for ten years now the US has been directly backing anti-Russian elements inside Ukraine, regardless of the fact that many of those elements were literally fascists, leading directly to the Maidan coup and the ethnic schism in Ukrainian society that resulted in the civil war.

It’s a proxy war, always has been.

All over the world

Showing your bias here, because really this is only happening in Europe and the Anglosphere.

I mean, for the majority of the country’s history, huge portions of its population had literally no democracy due to no right to vote. But I guess we’ll ignore that.

Don’t forget the millions of felons who still don’t. In Florida they passed a direct referendum to give them their franchise back, but the state government employed legal fuckery to prevent it from working as intended.

This is a law

The US also has laws against providing arms to military units that have been credibly accused of war crimes, but in Israel (also Ukraine) they simply don’t investigate allegations in order to keep the arms flowing. If Biden wants a legal casus belli to deny Israel arms, he has many to choose from, but he is actively choosing not to employ them.

one is a guy trying to stop the genocide that’s been negotiating behind the scenes for months

I don’t believe you. Or more accurately, I don’t believe the alleged “leaks” from the White House about how mad Joe Biden is but it’s behind closed doors just trust me bro. This guy has been hard in the pocket for Israel his entire career, why wouldn’t he be now?

If by “not falling in line” you mean “actively sabotaging the working class for selfish reasons” then I suppose you have a point, but I would argue that in class war those organizations which do not support the working class are fair targets.

the will of the proletariat during the 1917 and 1918 elections

By the time the Bolsheviks were disregarding the results of elections, the People’s Soviets were the state power in the former Russian Empire, and they were a hundred times more democratic than the Duma ever was.

amassing personal power and wealth

I’m sorry comrade but the Soviets simply never did this. The benefits enjoyed by even top Party officials paled in comparison to the lavish lifestyles of the former Russian Empire’s aristocracy or those of the ruling class of any of their contemporary capitalist rivals - even fucking Stalin lived in a shared apartment!

Objectively speaking the Soviet Union was one of the most democratic and equal societies on this Earth during the time of its existence, and you can very clearly see in the data how their system equalized wealth (not “perfectly”, just “better than everyone else has ever done it”), and how the destruction of their system undid all of their progress.

You could put the Sega CD or 32X into this meme and it would still work, the Dreamcast was just the last in a series of flops.

If the Dreamcast hadn’t had the misfortune of coming out during the objectively best console generation, it would have done fine - but also, if it hadn’t been the latest in a series of flops (Sega CD, 32x, Saturn), then maybe the Dreamcast’s failure wouldn’t have driven Sega out of the console market. Sega struck gold with the Genesis and they just couldn’t replicate it, RIP to a real one,

To push the Dems left you can either a) reward them for moving left or b) punish them for moving right. Continuing to vote for them year after year as they continually move to the right accomplishes neither of these things.

If every single incentive structure rewards the Democrats for shifting to the right, please tell me how on earth they are under any pressure at all to shift back to the left. The answer is that they’re not, and the people who believe that they’re engaging in the system and pushing it in the right direction are simply fooling themselves as they take part in the system’s unstoppable rightward movement.

We have class war waged against us by the bourgeoisie, and thousands of people are casualties of that war every single day. Expecting to turn the tide against them without getting our hands dirty in turn is useless idealism.

So you wouldn’t accept any system that’s not a direct democracy? Where every single person is involved in every single vote? It’s a coherent position I suppose, but IMO totally impractical and idealistic.

As I said in another comment, this mode of thought is completely defeatist. If you rule out the possibility of a violent uprising and look at how to change our system from within the system itself, the ONLY way to push the country left is for a dedicated bloc of people to refuse to vote for centrist Democrats for multiple elections in a row until the party center aligns with that bloc. That’s the reason why every one of the last few elections has been “the most important election in history” and all the other crap.

but I don’t believe authoritarianism is the best way to go about it.

Humor me for a moment, which of the following do you consider authoritarian?

• asking your boss for better wages
• using the power of a union to force your boss to give your coworkers better wages
• using the power of the state to force all bosses to pay all workers better wages

Our election is going to work like Russia’s does

We already have sham elections, ours just pretends to have two democratic parties instead of one.

Tankies are hypocrites who didn’t understand their self-proclaimed ideologies.

Tankies are very frequently the only people in the room who’ve done the reading. If you believe that so called “authoritarian methods” are antithetical to leftism, then I recommend you read the following pamphlet by Engels.