Re elected, bolsonaro was not re elected. but you re right that this is a challenging moment. what i ve noticed, though, is thatjust a few years ago, autocrats had confidence that they could pursue what they would call managed democracy, so they would tilt the playing field just enough. you know, they would suppress some speech, they would restrict some political parties, they would stifle some civil society. and on that tilted playing field, they could win. they no longer have confidence in that working because of these popular uprisings. and so we ve seen this resort to what is basically zombie democracy. you know, they have an electoral charade. that s what lukashenko did in belarus. that s what putin did in russia. that s what 0rtega did in nicaragua. that s what museveni did in uganda. these are complete charades. yes, the autocrat stays in power, but with none of the legitimacy that even that managed democracy would have brought. that is not a great long term strategy for surviva
Be a piece of cake. and, you know, we see where that went. we have xijinping, you know, insisting and insisting on zero covid, suddenly in the face of popular protest changing his mind, but with zero preparation, opening up the country without investing in vaccination of older people, without letting in the mrna vaccines, without investing in intensive care units and hospitals, it was a disaster. and, you know, this is what you have when you ve got autocratic rule. you know, they like to say, oh, autocrats are better than democracies because democracies are messy and divisive and slow and short term oriented. and, you know, that s all true, but democracies also can self correct because of debate. autocrats don t do that. and indeed, ithink. well, let me. that s such an interesting opening gambit. i m going to stop you. you see, you sound like a classic glass half full kind of guy. but the direction of travel surely is what matters. i mean, you took over human rights watch in that perio
I mean, in many, many parts of the world, people make absolutely clear we want democracy. and the latest is iran. just before that was sri lanka. now, these don t always work. you know, sometimes you get rid of the autocrats. sri lanka did that. sometimes electoral processes work. you know, trump was not re elected, bolsonaro was not re elected. but you re right that this is a challenging moment. what i ve noticed, though, is thatjust a few years ago, autocrats had confidence that they could pursue what they would call managed democracy, so they would tilt the playing field just enough. you know, they would suppress some speech, they would restrict some political parties, they would stifle some civil society. and on that tilted playing field, they could win. they no longer have confidence in that working because of these popular uprisings. and so we ve seen this resort to what is basically zombie democracy. you know, they have an electoral charade. that s what lukashenko did in belarus
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There was some with joe mccarthy in the 50s. though the republican establishment did stand up. interestingly they had the deer in the headlights look then. a lot of people were afraid of joe mccarthy. finally a lot of people stood up and eisenhower said what he privately thought, was the guy needs to go and he did. and that was the end of him. this reminds me of the end of the 1920s, a lot of wealthy billion-airs and not everyone else doing so well, it ended up in a great depression. we re helping for a train wreck right now, and the truth is autocrats don t know how to run anything. and if you don t believe me look at the mess putin got himself into. do we want to live in an autocracy where someone gets to make the rules for women, for poor people, for people of color, for kids who happen to be transgender? i think this kind of stuff is des gusting and i m betting the american people s decency