I’m just trying to understand. Erdogan in Turkey, Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary etc… Why do these leaders still get so much support after all they’ve done? What do they exactly like about them?
Aren’t these people seeing a massive drop in their quality of life?
Who else would try to be elected into such a powerful position? I mean, why else would you run, except to exert your own authority?
Go ahead and try to fantasize about what you would do in your first week as the elected leader of your nation. Would you be tough on crime? Restrict access to guns? Criminalize transgender people? Criminalize people who want to hurt transgender people? What about war, or taxes? There’s really no way to do the job without being authoritarian.
Edit: Shit, I was hoping the whole downvote-to-disagree mentality stayed over at Reddit. If you disagree, fine, but at least contribute something of substance to engage with.
deleted by creator
But that’s just it, though. How do you expect to “improve” things from that position without using the authority the position grants you?
I think you might be mistaking authoritarianism for totalitarianism. Authoritarianism doesn’t need to go to the extremes that you see with totalitarian dictatorships. Authoritarianism can be just something like banning guns, or drugs, or abortions, or LGBTQ+ people.