Comment by YZF
12 hours ago
You're trying to convince a flat-earther with logic or physics. Western democracies are evil. Worse than China and worse than North Korea. The answer is Marxism.
EDIT: This reminds me of a Russian person I used to work with. He truly believed that elections in all western democracies were fake and rigged. That is you go and vote but the vote is predetermined. This was a long time ago but I think it was some story told in Russia about the west (basically how the west is not really free) that stuck as an unshakeable belief when he left Russia and moved to the west. This was about 40 years ago give or take. People can hold weird beliefs and conspiracy theories (like people that believe the earth is flat) and those beliefs can not be assailed with logic or facts.
The reality is(?) that western democracies with all their flaws are better than authoritarian regimes but a person can not grasp the entirety of reality. One can always find examples where people are treated unjustly or unfairly in western democracies and ofcourse one can find examples of people being "ok" in authoritarian regimes. The key is to apply the scientific method to the question vs. relying on anecdotes but the human mind is not really wired for that.
Increasingly, people in the US get convinced that Europe is pretty much like China (they usually focus on the policing of online spaces in the UK as proof of that).
There was apparently a recent push in their media to introduce and reinforce this narrative. Can’t see what good would that do, except the current leadership wanting to worsen relations with everyone.