The flagrant corruption and voter suppression efforts underway at the moment make the next 2-3 years the final chance to bring it back from the brink. That doesn't just mean a Democrat winning. It means an actual democrat (lowercase) winning and building a coalition to repair what has been broken. I don't personally think that looks very likely, but I hope for all our sakes it can happen.
In the US you might get your funds cancelled, in Russia you'll get your life cancelled instead - and not in the metaphorical sense.
Also as incompetent as the current US government is, the incompetence of the Russian government is on a whole different level (the "3 days to Kyiv" are taking longer than the whole "Great Patriotic War").
> Russia is a de-jure democracy
As is North Korea, it must be even more democratic than the rest of the world because it calls itself "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" ;)
Trump and Hegseth are explicit in their admiration for Putin and Xi. So being technically right here is largely to miss the point. The trajectory the US is on is pretty clear.
> I'm not sure what difference there is between them.
Good hyperbole
If you weren't aware of these differences, I'd encourage you to radically change your media diet; there are unfortunately many outlets which find it advantageous to exaggerate how bad the US is and deemphasize how bad dictatorships are. (Some are paid Russian propaganda, I've seen a shocking number of people send me RT links as though they're a legitimate news source.)
But those four puppets served the same ruling class interests, and they manufactured consent for each other the whole time.
I also struggle to see how it can be that different Presidents with often directly contradictory policies could both be serving the same ruling class interests. If the funding rules for scientific grants are changing, and defenders of the old rules argue that this is a terrible change that will cause huge problems, how can it be that both the old rules and the new rules serve the same interests?
> I also struggle to see how it can be that different Presidents with often directly contradictory policies could both be serving the same ruling class interests.
Using the polarizing topic of COVID (whose risks remain in 2026) as an example, we can answer both of your questions:
https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-co...
Which ultimately led to:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240802024326/https://docs.hous...
This can be applied to virtually any topic. The party of "good cop" and the party of "bad cop" promise no change from the status quo. Of course, anybody easily distracted by the culture wars will not see the commonality between both corporate parties, by design. These people see a close election and use that as "proof" we still have a functioning democracy.