I like your thinking, Vince, even when I do not agree with all I read. Or better, I am still missing your insights about the different forms of democracy.

In the US, we have winner-take-all. Voters competing with voters for representation instead of candidates competing with candidates like they do in Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain.

The long-term ruler of the world was Britain, that other winner-take-all nation, and then the US got that role, both not the smartest governments for people, but really good at supporting the elite and large businesses.

A one-party nation like China has its own internal political structure to consider. When there is only one party, then that one party must not just please the majority, it must try and please the super-majority. Dictatorships can get tumbled by fewer than 10% of the population if the other 85% looks the other way. The price of bread has tumbled dictatorial governments.

But what that single-party government cannot do is deliver self-rule.

After WWII, the United States sided with the colonies and pressed for their independence from Britain (France and a few others). As such, the US has been the largest instigator of freedom. It just did not play the role well afterwards; it didn't know what to do and where it made that decision things did definitively not go well all the time.

Same with Russia after the wall fell and Perestroika changed the playing field. In came the American specialists with their top-down reform approach that was the exact opposite Russia needed.

I appreciate your mentioning Yugoslavia because it is a vile part of modern European history. However, the Serbs holding on to power was utterly dumb, and most likely did so because they felt supported by Russia backing them in that hardened stance. So, I am glad you are mentioning the other side of things, but I do not see an innocent Serbian power at all.

Here is that image about the two forms of democracy once more. Green is a reality that is rather real and obvious and yet in a two-party system green cannot surface. Vital decisions cannot be made based on the truth because the truth cannot fully surface in district voting.

In China, full colors will surface yet they will never be as bright as in a full democracy.

Thank you for your insightful article.