It’s so two-faced. Imagine the nerve it takes to sit in a meeting with representatives of these ‘hybrid regimes’ and ‘authoritarians’. At least the writers have the humility to call the US a flawed democracy (their freedom and democracy cheerleaders aren’t going to like that lol; the rivalry between the limeys and yanks is still alive).

The Anglo-Europeans are lucky the rest of the world is so much more civilised and willing to be the better person in the room. If I was an official for Mexico or Turkey I’d start every meeting with a recent news story and ask for an explanation to watch my democratic counterpart squirm.

I have the feeling that this is how China is starting to respond to this shit. Glorious to see. Unfortunately, it assumes that Angleuros are capable of shame (Angloeuros? – I’m coining a new word).

not like it’s a foreign military occupation or anything

It’s like a sort of heat map of liberal capitalism. The bluer the color the more aligned you are with the leading imperialist powers lol

That actually works surprisingly well

because the capitalists can democratically use their labor for fractions of a penny to manufacture goods to then sell to the rest of the world at inflated rates.

They had an election, after all. It’s not the military’a fault the people chose wrong. The flawed bit is that it was the military with the veto power, rather than an electoral college or unelected legislators and unelected cabinet ministers/advisers/PMs making the big decisions; i.e. unlike the US and Britain, there’s slightly less pretence of democracy.

Democracy is when you vote and it doesn’t mean anything.

The reason that Thailand gets a better “democracy score” is because it is more closely aligned with the US and has a more liberal (read: more open to corruption and to being bought off by western monopolies) economic system than its ASEAN neighbors.

You should never take the rhetoric about “democracy” at face value, because in almost every single case whenever a party or a movement in the global south brands itself as “pro-democracy” that is just code for “pro-western” and likely receiving NED (CIA) funding.

I have not heard anything about this veto by the military in Thailand (last i heard the PM was sworn into office earlier this month) but i can tell you that things are not always that simple. It depends strongly on the orientation of the military establishment whether what they are doing when they interfere helps to protect or impede democracy.

For instance if the military intervened to prevent a western backed puppet from taking power, that is in the interest of the people and helps preserve democracy in the long run by preventing a loss of sovereignty. You cannot have democracy when your government is a puppet of the West.

Whether or not someone “won” elections does not tell us much without looking deeper into how the political and electoral system works and more importantly what the media environment was like leading up to the elections. If the media is overwhelmingly dominated by pro-Western liberals, owned by pro-Western oligarchs or outright controlled by the West, then they can disseminate a huge amount of propaganda and brainwash the population into voting against their own best interest.

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I actually really want to know whats going on with Portugal. From where i’m sitting Portugal is one of the better functioning countries in Western europe.

No, that’s where you got it mixed up, tankie, lower participation = freedom

You can see the data on Wikipedia

Direct link because I’m not a lib, but you’d have to give your info to The Economist

The U.S. was demoted from full to flawed in 2016 if that helps you decide.

I think they genuinely believe these rankings

It also gives them plausible deniability. If you pint out an inconsistency they can say that they’re “unbiased”