Thanks, and yes, there doesn’t seem to be any kind of movement for another revolution in China by any means. Something like 500 million people joined the middle class. They’re surely not eager to toss out the people responsible for that. And in fairness, it’s a genuine success.

Putin was popular, too. Russians are used to dictators, a condition that acted as its own form of authoritarian infrastructure Putin was able to feed from. The Ukraine war may be impacting his popularity some. That seemed apparent when Prigozhin seemed to be welcomed with open arms when it looked like he might march into Moscow. Prigozhin probably would have been an even worse kind of dictator than Putin if he had somehow prevailed.