Excellent point. As long as Saudis have homes, income, food, healthcare, politicisation increases the cost of having a living. The outdated and incorrect economic assumption that revenue at lowest cost of cash or hours of the day seems to hold in that circumstance. However, even that is bolstered by security agencies to control the population. But tight control of personal relationships, disallowance of arts and culture activities steadily erode the autocrat's hold on power, forcing ever tighter control on cultural and religious conformity. All that eventually collapses into what? Not sure what, might be organized democratic society, might perhaps more likely be chaos resulting in new kleptocracy, newly branded feudalism, new autocracy. We can never make assumptions about the rise of democratic society simply because we wish for that.
Ukraine isn't a democracy. Far from it. In democracies there is more than one TV Channel, main political parties and main Christian denominations aren't banned, no mass extrajudicial killings, disappearances and torture, men from 18 to 60 aren't banned from leaving the country, people aren't rounded up in the streets and dragged to their death. Democracies hold elections after all. Well, it's a quote from The Time article. Zelenskyy top advisers say about him: “He deludes himself, ” one of his closest aides tells me in frustration. “We’re out of options. We’re not winning. But try telling him that. It is immovable, verging on the messianic.” According to the Economist Zelenskyy is literally screaming at his generals at this point. One Austrian artist was in a similar state in 1945 . Zelenskyy "achievements" to date: 700,000 Ukrainians are dead, 3x that mangled and crippled for life, half of Ukraine's population is living as refugees scattered all over Europe and Russia right now, they're drafting women because they've run out of men to kidnap off the streets, gyms and public transport. NYT wrote about these mass kidnappings that were happening only in Zelenskyy Ukraine and Hitler's Germany in 1945 in an article ‘People Snatchers’.
Oh dear. Here's someone who hasn't heard that Ukraine streamed its tv stations into one BECAUSE OF THE RUSSIAN INVASION. If you don't follow the news, why post comments on it?
Ms. Applebaum is the kind of person who loves to get the world in a fight. She'll get it started, tend to the flame, get it burning and then disappear as soon as the blood is dry. A most insidious purveyor of "soft power", for as long as I can remember, she has towed the line for the expansion of American empire. She's the perfect combination of patriotic tool in a woman's body . A "Stepford wife" to her ambitious Polish minister husband.
What articles are you "quoting" from? Which issue? What do you suggest? Ukraine should surrender and join Russia , Iran etc, in the autocratic club? Zelensky should step out? You accuse him of killing his own people? Not Putin? I do not think you are quoting anything, but I think you are simple Putin's troll
