Whether a country is a democracy or not depends on whether its people are really the masters of the country. If the people are awakened only for voting but enter a dormant period soon after, if they are given a song and dance during campaigning but have no say after the election, or if they are favored during canvassing but are left out in the cold after the election, such a democracy is not a true democracy.

—Xi Jinping

I appreciate your engagement, just wanted to suggest you think about this idea a little differently:

how a dictatorship treats its people really depends on the situation and where the "power" is coming from.

Can you define what you mean when you call something a dictatorship? I think this term gets bandied about as a way to discredit state enemies of western nations without the public having to think about what is meant.

Whatever you may believe about the CPC, what means are actually available to you to prevent your rulers from ignoring you? If you live in the US your state is likely gerrymandered to hell, your rulers are picking their constituencies to preserve their positions.

Do they have to do what the public wants? If you don't like the two parties can you actually pursue an alternative? The public overwhelmingly supports a ceasefire in Gaza, why is almost the entire government lock-step in refusing to even bring up the idea?

This isn't to say that there aren't governments in the world that aren't accountable to the public and that act in their own interest regardless of what anyone else wants. But you can have elections and do all the gesturing that western liberals expect and still be an unaccountable government with no real need for popular agreement or input.

Guess all of that is to say be careful with the word, it might be shutting down questions it would be good to ask about your own (presumably western liberal) society.

but bringing it back to a more general aspect: how a dictatorship treats its people really depends on the situation and where the "power" is coming from.

Is this any different than a liberal democracy? The US is a genocidal slave state which murdered and enslaved Native Americans and Black people. The old European empires like Britain, France, the Netherlands, etc did the same even when they were ostensibly democratic. The "Middle East's only democracy" is carrying out apartheid and genocide as we speak, and the original South African apartheid state was a democracy too. Let's also not forget that the Nazis rose to power directly from the legitimate democratic mechanisms of the Weimar Republic.

Looking at all these examples, it's pretty clear that democracies are perfectly happy to murder and enslave if the victims can't strike back at the democratic country's power structure.

I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:

• yewtu.be
• inv.zzls.xyz
• yt.artemislena.eu
• piped.video