There’s an idea among rulers of the past that their control was necessary and even better for the population than something closer to democracy.
It goes hand-in-hand with using religion as a tool to keep people ignorant and discourage them from learning about the world.
Now that it’s pretty clear which side won and we’re living in the aftermath, do you think it’s an improvement?
Part of me believes that we’re progressing way faster than we’re evolving and nobody is able to keep up with how fast things are changing around them. It seems like the forbidden fruit of knowledge is giving us problems instead of only solving them.
No, I think the 1990s were genuinely good. That was after the Cold War but before 9/11.
(For context, I was born in the 1990s, so don’t have many personal memories of them and didn’t know anything about geopolitics then.)
Note this experience is specific to the US and Western Europe. A great deal of relief and prosperity. Things get more complicated for the former Soviet centered world as they tried to navigate the new situation
Putin came to power basically because post soviet Russia failed to reach the sort of prosperity they hoped for.