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I should also mention that going from autocracy to democracy is insanely difficult to do, even if you've managed to overthrow your rulers.
The United States sucked at it, initially. We earned our democracy and then suppressed the majority of the population from voting because they either had vaginas or dark skin. We continued enslaving an entire race. And I'm not even including the Articles of Confederation disaster that almost tore the country apart from the inside.
It's very, very possible that, if any of these populations were hypothetically able to overthrow their rulers, the result would be messy, disasterous, and with an oppressive new ruling class. We shouldn't snuff out democracies or in this case, aid the suppression of democratic protesters, simply because we think we know best. What's best is going to unfold over decades, and it will be messy for a while. But the first step must be the homegrown overthrow of the current regimes.
We have a homegrown overthrow, a patriotic part of our history we regard as near-sacred. A couple centuries later, we're working against other people doing the same.
**** that.
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