Comment by jgilias

Suppression of humour is a canary in the coal mine. If you can’t make fun of the politicians, it implies multiple things:

1. There’s no freedom of speech;

2. Which implies there’s no freedom of thought;

3. There’s no separation of powers. Meaning, there’s really no “politicians”, just the ruling “nomenklatura”;

Which is fine-ish as long as the nomenklatura is benign and competent enough. It becomes problematic when (not if) the nomenklatura stops being competent. This can happen naturally because people age, still cling to power, and/or they care about their children, so they try to push them into plush nomenklatura jobs regardless of how dense their offspring might be. This is btw happening in China right now as far as I know.

When that happens, because of 1. and 2., as well as the “repression muscle” that the government has, change becomes near impossible, as you have no leverage for change outside the nomenklatura, but the nomenklatura resists it because it’s suicidal for them. Then you start stagnating and/or getting pulled into pointless wars that the nomenklatura starts to “rally the flag”.